Oooh! The new version of iTunes is out, 4.9, with built-in support for Podcasts.

Now, what to subscribe to? IT Conversations has some interesting stuff, and Radio 4's Today is a must have. Any other good podcasts out there? Any good music ones? (This is my taste.)

Tube Hell, The Movie, via Going Underground.

Is it just me, or does the Northern Line show up a lot?

To be honest it doesn't actually feel all that bad. Perhaps it's because even relativley minor problems show up. I had to stand on the way in today, 'cos the gaps between trains were around five minutes as opposed top the usual two to three, but I still got in OK.

I can't say I'm looking forward to The Big Closure, though.

I was at a bit of a loose end this weekend, so I watched some of Glastonbury on the telly. I left the window open and didn't hoover to give me that outdoor feel - or at least, as near as I'm comfortable with.

Hey, what can I say? I'm a city boy.

Anyway, Coldplay left me as cold as ever. Pretty, but shallow. I did enjoy the Kaiser Chiefs, though. Fabulous band. It's not serious stuff, it's just pop - but it's good pop. They just radiate fun. Employment is recommended.

I'm kicking myself that I missed The White Stripes on Friday. I gather that they mainly played stuff from their superb new album, Get Behind Me Satan. I stayed up 'till two in the morning the day I got this album, playing it again and again and drinking too much red wine.

I also enjoyed Roisin Murphy, too. I've not come across her before, but I'm very impressed. In fact, she may be my perfect woman; talented, beautiful, intelligent, interesting, red-headed, high maintainance, and mad as a snake. I may have to marry her.

Err, sorry. But very much in his style, don't you think?

Anyway, every cloud has a silver lining. Anything that upsets Carol Vorderman can't be all bad. I'm just sorry that it wasn't her.

Update: I've just been having a Carol Vorderman rant at work. I seems that some people in the office weren't aware that she's an anti-MMR campaigner, and since she seems to have some utterly spurious scientific credibility for some reason that I utterly fail to fathom, people listen to her, causing a diminution of the herd immunity to Measles, and thereby risking an epidemic, which would cause the deaths of many very young children. Well, they are now.

I've not yet touched on her advertisements for dodgy loan sharks, or that anti cholesterol margarine, which they fail to mention is as bad for some people as it is good for others, instead irresponsibly selling it as generally healthy. Bloody woman.

Bizarre - no hits for "I hate Carol Vorderman". Well, I'll be the first.

Mum is looking to do a spot of Instant Messaging with her Amida Buddhism chums. (My, look at all those blogs! All down to Mum's example.)

I've been looking at IRC recently, and it's really nice for techies. I've been using Bersirc as a client and Freenode as a server, and it's dead good. I've had some really useful help with Spring on #spring, and #python is cool too. (Say "Hi" if you are around there - I'm on as "small_values".)

But is it good for non-techies? If not, what should I recommend to her instead? Trillian? Miranda? Using what protocol? ICQ? (Anyone mentioning MSN can bugger off. These people are Buddhists, and need to keep their souls pure.)

You have no idea how many emails and blog entries I had to read. Thousands, literally.

More later.

I'm off to CenterParcs with the kids, and my Mum, sister, brother in law and nieces next week, so Small Values will be even quieter than usual.

Blogging has been sporadic at best recently 'cos I've been so busy, mainly with a new Java web-app that we've been working on, using Spring and Hibernate running over a legacy database. It's been hard work, but I think we are over the hump now.

The other thing that's been keeping be busy is doing the Python URL. It's hard work - but it seems to be going down well. If there's one next week, though, it probably won't come from me...

Anyway, have a good week all. I might possibly post next week if there's a 'net café around, but don't count on it. I should have loads of photos by the 20th.

The girls have discovered the Crazy Frog. Sigh. I made the mistake of showing weakness, and they were merciless. In the end, I had to threaten them with pocket money fines to get them to stop.

Also popular in the playground at the moment:

Loser, Loser,
Wanna be the man,
Ain't got the look,
So talk to the hand.

Tulna is very keen on this on, too. The actions and the appallingly bad fake American accent are as important as the words, I gather.

See also an earlier outtake.

Via Steve, a woman tried to smuggle 51 fish into Australia under her skirt.

"What about the smell?" she was asked.

"If they die, they die."

Suit yourselves.

Tomatoes are evil.

Err, that's it, really.

In this morning's Indy, an ad for Sainsbury's melons was followed immediately by an article about the Triumph Doreen. Coincidence? I think not.

And another non-coincidence - on Monday, I spotted over someone's sholder on the tube that Wonderwall has been voted the best ever British song. Just as I was thinking "bollocks it is", guess what came up on my iPod? Eh? Eh? It's bloody AI, that's what it is.

Note to self - when copying files with Ant, never apply a filter to JAR files. They break.

If you do do this, try not to spend ten bloody hours working out what's gone wrong.

On a similar note, jMock is lovley, but don't get too carried away and mock the object that you are actually trying to test. You won't find any bugs, and your EMMA stats will suffer.