That didn't last long. Looking at my reciept this morning, I see that it reads "Arctic Monkeys, Whatever".

Well, I like it, anyway.

So, that's it. We are all doomed.

Well, he may be right, but that's no reason not to try to save the world. But what's the best way? Go nuclear? Improve energy efficiency? Renewable? Depopulation? Even the experts don't seem to agree - though the common sense approach of trying all of the first three at the same time doesn't seem to get many press inches.

Anyway, perhaps it is all useless, what with the Asia-Pacific pact leaving it all to the barely regulated market to sort out. If China, India, and the US don't cut emissions, nothing the rest of the world does will make any difference.

In the way back to Reading this weekend, I asked Freja what she was listening to on her new iPod. She told me "The White Stripes; one of the songs from the new one, Get Behind Me Santa".

Now that's a superb name for a record. The Red Stripes should use it for their next one.

London 2.0 rc2 is on for tonight. I hope to see a bunch of you there.

We didn't get a room, I'm afraid. It's all my fault - Sam didn't book a room because he though I would have done so. I didn't book a room 'cos I had been thinking of another venue, so when Sam's post mentioned The Bank of England, I assumed that he'd booked the room. Sigh. Sorry about that. Piss up in a brewery, anyone?

Anyway, I'm hoping for a bunch of nerds of many colours - Python, Ruby, Java, Django, Turbogears, Rails, you know the kind of thing.

What I'm not expecting is many women. One or two - Katherine and perhaps Sarah - but London tech meetups suffer from the same malaise as the IT industry in general; a woeful gender imbalance. I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done about it, but Sarah is having a go by organising the Geek Girl Dinners. Do get along if the rules allow - and pass on the news to the nerdy women of your acqainance.

This Month's London Python meetup on Tuesday will once again be just a part of a pan-nerd event, I'm glad to say - London 2.0rc2. And don't forget - the multi-talented Python celebrity Steve Holden is hoping to get along, as is Django co-author Simon Willison, and Python's answer to Max Clifford, Dr. Tim Couper, so don't miss it.

As last time, it's at The Old Bank of England, Fleet Street, any time after work. I'll see some of you there, I trust. I hope I get home a little earlier this time...

My iPod let its magic smoke out over the weekend. my Mac's Disk Utility reported broken B Trees. First aid couldn't fix it, and the disk couldn't be partitioned either - it just sat there for hours trying to build a partition table.

Sad, but perhaps unsurprising. It has spent the last eighteen months pretty mush constantly in the pocket of the must clumsy, drunken man in South London. That's got to be hard on a hard disk.

Two days without sounds on the road proved that my teenage music addiction had come back with a vengance, so I went and blew the remains off my bonus on a shiny new 60GB iPod Video.

What's bad? All the accessories that I'd accumulated - cases, mains charger and a remote - are useless. I'll have to start again from scratch. :-(

What's indifferent? The 'Video' bit. I've ripped a couple of DVDs, just for the hell of it, but I really can't see myself watching anything much on it - especially given the way watching video burns through the battery.

Errr, well, rocket boom perhaps. ;-)

What's good? Everything else. It's lovely. The screen is beautiful, and I love being able to see the covers of my CDs as I'm listening to. The new iPod seems louder than my last one, which suits me fine. I can fit all my music on it. And as usual, it's the little touches that Apple get right. The icon on my desktop even knows which colour iPod I bought! Class.

Over the Christmas period I was attacked by a huge number if comment spammers linking to fake BlogSpot blogs - ocassionally over a hundred posts a day. Gits.

The number of different URLs leading to these fake blogs was large enough that I took the uncomfortable decision to block URLs containing 'blogspot' from comments altogether. So, sorry to any blogspot users who find themselves unable to leave thier URLs when commenting here - that means you especially, Mark and Katherine - but until blogspot sort their game out and get rid of the spammers, that's the way it has to be. :-(

Back at work, and straight back into the thick of it. Meetings all day for the past two days.

Anyway, it'll be less frenetic tomorrow, I hope. Still got 2000 Bloglines entries and 500 email threads to get through. In the meantime, a Happy New Year to all of you, and yes, the Python meet is still on for the 10th. ;-)