I once wrote the following on this blog about Brooke, having read an article she wrote about autopsy on Barbelith:

As it turns out, that’s not half of what you wouldn’t have guessed!
I rather suspect that the media storm is only just beginning.

This post seems to live on, with good comments going on. Maybe I should write more food posts….

I can’t be the only one that read this news story and thought of this blogger.

Well, there’s a funny thing. For the first time in at least five, maybe six years, I made it to a meeting of blogging types organised by Gordon and featuring an impressive collection of bloggers, some known from years past, some from their writing and some new to me. It was, undoubtedly, excellent. Links to at least some of the attendees as soon as I’m not blogging from my mobile.

UPDATE: I knew that, if I waited long enough, someone else would do the hard work and link to all the attendees.

I’ve been asked to meme. I think this breaks a rule somewhere, but the flesh is weak. I hope it is painless.

1. There are some sweet pea seeds on my table – they are a heritage variety that I grow and propagate every year from self-sown plants. They should be in a paper bag, but where do you get paper bags these days? Shops are hopeless in this regard, addicted as they are to plastic. I think I may have to use an envelope.

2. I’m currently drinking a cup of black Earl Grey tea. I only have milk in my tea when someone else makes it and doesn’t ask if I take milk before liberally applying the bovine lactations. And I only have tea other than Earl Grey when there is no Earl Grey available unless, of course, I’m having a mad day and treating myself to some Darjeeling or lapsang souchong.

3. I have discovered that there is more to vodka than meets the eye. Of course, it probably isn’t sensible to put vodka in your eye, although a quick search of Google reveals umpteen people who are prepared to try it.

4. The above thought reminded me of a link I saw Darren post today which provides top tips for new bloggers. Amongst the tips is this: “If you spend a little time searching before you post, you can probably find your idea well articulated elsewhere already.” Which has probably sent my already weak blogging mojo into hiding completely.

5. I am thinking of getting a new phone as my old phone has a nasty habit of switching itself off at random. But I’m concerned that all the latest models of the candy-bar variety (my preferred phone format) are perfectly rectangular and therefore very difficult to grip. Have these people never heard of ergonomics? I’m quite tempted by the Nokia E51 though.

6. I have never been a Venture Scout. I was in the Cubs though. Dib dib, dob dob.

7. Are we there yet? I’m not a fan of memes and have generally avoided them. However, I’m sure I’ve done more than a couple in the seven years (seven? really?) that this blog has been going. So I will not damn them entirely as somebody would end up searching the archives and I’d end up being hoisted by my own underpants.

8. Right, I’m off now to light the fire.

A thoughtful and thought-provoking piece.

If, when using WordPress, you get error messages that look like this:

WordPress database error: [Can't open file: 'wp_comments.MYI' (errno: 145)]

…then your database has become corrupted. Don’t panic. Either contact your hosting provider or go to PHPMyAdmin and repair it yourself.

I learnt this today.

Note to self: write long post about self-regulation of blogs and why it will never work; why the current libel, race and discrimination laws should be sufficient; and how people clearly don’t get it.

I’d just like to point out that I don’t know anybody who might have a legitimate reason to go to the DEFRA website in the course of their work, who might then be slightly amazed at the arrogance of an online "public consultation" ("the citizens WILL do this, the citizens WILL do that") and who might then tip off a well-known political website about it.

Nope, nobody that I know.

EDIT: global media coverage.

Looks like I started something here. My comment at number 2. Comment 73 puts the same idea that was in my head in far better terms. I’ve submitted other comments to the Nick Robinson blog too, but none have been published (yet?).

For those that were concerned about His whereabouts, Vaughan is currently exploring that which is humdrum.

• get up early
• study BBC online weather forecast – observe white fluffy cloud symbol and yellow sun symbol and assume the day is set fair
• saw logs so as to make them more woodpile-friendly
• create new border in the garden
• go to nearby farm to purchase a sack of well rotted cow poo for said border for one of your fine English pounds
• apply poo to new border
• get changed from poo-ey clothes
• welcome brother-in-law to house
• drive to extremely nice nearby public house
• park car
• strap small child to chest in slightly bizarre harness device
• walk in opposite direction to public house wiuth a view to making a large circuit, returning to said public house with hearty appetite for fine ales
• observe rapidly deteriorating weather conditions
• wade through mud, fight brambles, attempt to pacify child – all in steady rain and a cool breeze – whilst cheerfully reassuring one another that the weather "will blow over in a minute and surely improve"
• reach a farm with a large barn
• take shelter in said barn
• change child’s nappy and then eat sandwiches whilst heavy rain continues, whilst regretting not bringing any sort of waterproof clothing for anyone other than small child – the same small child who, whilst being only 12 weeks old, has already developed the ability to laugh and point at his soaking wet father from within the warmth and dryness of his red waterproof
• decide that the rain is not going to stop
• run back through the mud and rain to the car, leaving brother-in-law, wife and child in barn
• drive back to collect rest of party and then home, to glorious sunshine
• head to the pub next door for a pint or two
• return home, eat pie
• search for hotel for stay in Budapest – realise that no hotel there has been renovated since 1967. Decide to seek advice from the only person I know with much experience of the Hungarian capital.
• read the best post in ages on Parallax View – end the day contented

Karen responds to my post about becoming a father. I’ve added comments to her post too.

Dave‘s back.

Use a pseudonym on the net? Leave comments on blogs or newsgroups? Well, you could be in trouble with the law.

Under new legislation recently signed by Dubya, it is now an offence to “cause annoyance” on the internet without disclosing your true identity. So if you flame someone on a site, perhaps in their comments, and do so using a pseudonym, then you could be liable for fines or up to two years in the clink. Sledgehammer and walnut, anyone?

Cyclops kitten – thanks Bob.

Hmm. A baby due any day now and people send me links to deformed kittens.

Have you been following Fraser’s tale of his trip to North Korea? No? Well, nor had I, but on one of my all too infrequent trips to his site I caught up with the whole story. Recommended reading.

Kennamatic retires or dies a long death. You choose.

I’ve just installed the new Akismet anti-spam plug-in for WordPress. I’m not sure that I like the way that usage is conditional upon signing up for wordpress.com and downloading and using Flock – but it looks like it works. It’s cleared out nearly 4000 spam messages from the grayblog archives at the time of installation. Since then, I’ve been upstairs and taken a bath. In that time, it has detected and quarantined more than 150 new spam messages. Yikes.
Admittedly, most of these messages would not have come to my attention previously because my use of the WordPress blacklist feature actually picked out the vast majority of spam that I was receiving, but occasionaly something was getting through, and usually in large quantities at one time. This seems promising and I’ll report if there are any major new developments as I use it.
(Another thirteen in the time it took to type this – thank goodness for the auto-delete feature, which clears out any comment in the moderation queue that is more than a fortnight old).

The Day Tom Coates Was Spammed By Cillit Bang. Not really a modern folk story.

UPDATE: Tom gets an apology.

Pete posts a picture of a cat. Resigning from blogging, my foot.

A new and worrying variant of comment spam has hit my site this morning – just a single spam comment so far, but it was sufficiently unusual for me to look at it closely before hitting the "delete" button.
The spam itself contains the usual "I think your site is great" crap and a link, telling me to scroll half-way down for a recipe. Now, this is the sort of thing that I might do, but I usually check that the link is not to some pr0n or cas1n0 site before clicking, particularly as the link has come from a stranger (and consequently went straight to moderation for me to review).
In fact, the link is to a legitimate weblog, specifically to this post. As you can see, I’m not the only one to have experienced this.
It seems that the comment spammer is trying to pollute comment spam blacklists by getting valid websites blacklisted. This would have the obvious consequence of rendering blacklists useless and reducing the value of anti-comment spam tools and plugins. This is a worrying development.
You can read more about it at The Net Is Dead. The advice is to carefully check comments left at your site and do not blacklist legitimate sites and URIs.
Personally, I find this all immensely tiresome. I had reduced the problem of comment spam to a minor nuisance, but now I’m back to getting 50 to 100 comment spams per day. This is not why I have a website – to wage a constant war on idiots is not why grayblog is here. A more timid soul might throw in the towel in the face of all this crap. It seems that waging this war is the price I must pay for subjecting you all to my words and pictures.
Some might argue that it’s a fair deal!

Robyn is back with a new site. And a piano. She got me started in this thing, you know.

Read this: the LiveJournal of a New Orleans resident who is still there, working to keep 800,000 websites up-and-running with a diesel generator on the 9th floor (hauling diesel up the stairs) whilst barricaded in against the looters (and, it seems, the police and military) – and reporting the actual situation on the ground, as relayed to him by friends and supporters elsewhere in New Orleans.
The situation is utterly chaotic and the authorities are going to have some really difficult questions to answer. Remember, George Bush Sr.’s popularity ratings fell dramatically after the public perceived a slow response by his White House in the wake of Hurricane Andrew, with forces at that time maintaining the new and controversial no-fly zones in Iraq.
As a taster, here’s a recent entry relating the situation as described to him by his friend "Bigfoot":

via the LinkBunnies.

Update: the BBC’s Alistair Leithead reports from the Convention Centre and reinforces much of what Bigfoot says.
Further update: the BBC’s Robert Plummer reviews the likely economic impact of Hurricane Katrina. As usual, the poorest will be the hardest hit but all Americans will feel the impact in some way. And, as we all know, if the Americans sneeze, the world catches cold.

There is a new blog created every second according to Technorati, which now tracks 14.2 million blogs. Do we really need that many?
(cue: comments about how the world might be better without one particular blog).
(cue: comments about how it all used to be fields around here).

If there are 14.2 million blogs, I wonder how many spam comments there are?

Tom Coates on the lack (as he perceives it) of IT start-ups in the UK. I’ve added some thoughts on problems faced by small businesses in the UK, many of which I think are of their own making.

Dave the Kennamatic needs help. "Nothing new there", I hear you cry. But take pity on the poor chap and head over to his site to give him some advice on romancing.

I’ve just heard that London has won the Olympic bidding process – and how did I hear? Not from the BBC – their server has given up the ghost. Not from Ananova or Reuters, who haven’t updated their pages with the news. I heard from LinkBunnies – officially first with the news.
Anyway, well done to the London bid team. I’m not sure if it is all a good thing or a bad thing – it’s probably good. I also think that I’ll start planning to be abroad whilst it is taking place.

EDIT: This Isn’t London comes out of hibernation to list the major new infrastructure projects the announcement brings forward:

BBC election blog:

Also:

Could prove to be informative and amusing. However, other election blogs are available.

Closer-to-Death Kenny is 41 today.
Sorry, that was unkind and probably uncalled for – but funny nonetheless.

How Brian met Julia – altogether now: "ahhh!"

Bystander on solicitors and policemen.

It’s a long time since I last linked to it, but if you are interested in music you should absolutely bookmark DJ Martian’s Page, which has more music links than you could shake a very large musical stick at, and will be celebrating its fifth birthday just a couple of weeks before this site.

…and play that funky music til you die.
There’s a Bloggers’ Disco going on, and whilst I could have nominated any one of a thousand tracks for the playlist that none of you would have heard of, I decided to go for Play That Funky Music by Wild Cherry.
It’s for charity, you know. And Mike is paying, which is nice.

LMG is 5 years old.

I now have a Gravatar and I’ve implemented gravatars in the comments. I was slightly concerned that Gordon’s didn’t show up, but that is because he adds anti-spam text to his email address when he comments. Any comments or suggestions on the formatting of gravatars in the comments will be welcome, although as I have struggled with this for the past half hour, you may get short shrift.

Kottke quits his job and attempts to pay his way in the world with his blog. I think he’s completely mad. After all, who will pay good money for kitten pictures?
I’m not sure that this is going to change anything in the blogosphere – put simply, there are plenty of blogs out there that offer high quality content (note that I don’t include myself in that category) and do not make a charge for it. Also, there are plenty of non-blog sources of the sort of technical and opinion pieces that Jason writes – some of which are paid-for but many of which are free. Since Jason is not making any compulsory charges for his content, the question has to be whether people will pay enough voluntary contributions to him for him to keep writing without any other means of support, and the answer to that will depend on just how much people value his particular take on the issues with which he concerns himself. I admire his nerve but don’t fancy his chances. Plenty of other people ask for donations to help keep their sites going, but I don’t see many people that actually get much income that way.
And speaking of donations:

• support this site
• give me stuff

ahem
EDIT: Jason has an RSS feed. He distributes his content widely and for free. I’m still not getting why people are going to pay enough for him to share his opinions without any other work. Mind you, film critics do that all the time.

WP1.5 is out. Fetch! (though upgrade with care, kiddies! Back up first!)
UPDATE: follow the upgrade instructions if you’re going from 1.2 to 1.5. I plan to play with this after the weekend, as tonight I must get ready for a journey to France.

Phil Ringnalda on why we should all write more about the links that we offer on our sites.

I’ve just got very confused. Has anyone told Mr Blogadoon that it’s 2005?

The media circus surrounding the Michael Jackson child abuse trial seems completely alien to those of us who are never likely to be caught up in such scenes. It seems that the child abuse allegations are, at the moment at least, secondary to the stardom and fame of the defendant. Either way, Peter Bowes’ quasi-blog™ on the court case is worth reading and provides a lighter view of events.

This will be linked all over: The Register interviews a comment spammer (via LMG) who lets us know the best techniques for frustrating comment spammers.

The Law West of Ealing Broadway will appeal to people that already enjoy The Policeman’s Blog.

Following my post the other day about this, here is a link to the actual blog.
Who knew that umlauts broke RSS?

Mark Mardell’s Africa diary, with real personal content with amusing asides. Perhaps there is hope for BBC-sponsored quasi-blogging(™ Vaughan!) after all?

EU Commissioner for Communication, Margot Wallström, is to start a blog. As you know, I’m already a fan.
Thanks for the tip-off go to Kathy, who picked it up on EUObserver.com.

Current favourite new-to-me weblog: The Flat at the Top of the Stairs, mainly for the high levels of footnote with each post.

There has been discussion in several places about the three minute silence that was held on Wednesday in remembrance of the victims of the tsunami. I’ll point you to Vaughan’s site where I have commented on my concerns about "silence inflation".

Only 38% of Americans know what a blog is – this doesn’t surprise me in the least. I wouldn’t mind betting that in the UK the percentage is even smaller.

Is it me, or is the Beeb on a mission to write loads of rubbish about blogs at the moment?

• Looming pitfalls of work blogs going over the Queen of the Skies thing again.
• Bloggers reveal their motives – well, two do anyway, and whilst their motives are interesting, they are far from representative. And check out the fascinating "12 Rules" section.
• Web logs aid disaster recovery – note the lack of consistency of terminology at the Beeb – weblogs, blogs, web logs, etc.
• Blogs take on the mainstream – a shocking example of lazy journalism, as eloquently pointed out by Gordon.

I dunno. Is the Beeb just trying to be cool and "down wid da kidz"? They even try to present news coverage in pseudo-blog format, in which they cull reports from other media (mainstream online news reporting, radio and television coverage) and cobble them together in "reporters’ log" format (recent example). This does not really give the reporters completely free rein to report with any sort of freedom (FOOC remains the only true home of that, and that is a reprocessed radio programme). The only true blogs on the Beeb, as I would understand them, have been Ivan Noble’s moving tumor diary and the fabulous but late and lamented Newslog by Nick Robinson (a man who seems like a fish out of water at ITN).
Perhaps I’m expecting too much to have truly free reporting in blog format on the Beeb – it might be the wrong place, the wrong organisation or simply the wrong style for a "serious" news reporting organisation. But it would be good if there was a little more proper understanding of the form – maybe that is too much to hope for from a body so deeply entrenched in established media formats.

http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/
Worth reading.

I’ve just had a note from Amazon to say that the gift I ordered for Secret Santa will not be despatched in time for Christmas, and that I’ve been awarded a £5 gift token as compensation.
This is interesting, as five days ago I had a note to say that it had already been sent. This means one of the following must be true:

• the gift has been despatched and yet I’m £5 to the good
• the gift has been despatched, I’m £5 to the good and the recipient is going to get a second one which they can then sell, although my credit card may be debited twice
• the gift has not been despatched, the recipient will think they’ve been ripped-off by their Secret Santa and I’m £5 to the good
• the Amazon system is totally borked and yet I’m £5 to the good

We shall have to wait and see.

Thanks to Jo for tipping me off about the excellent London News Review Cat Blog – compulsory reading that provides the first excuse in ages to update the regular reading list in the sidebar.

It looks like I won’t be able to get to tomorrow’s bloggers’ party after all. H is ill, with the consequence that she won’t be able to come along and drive me back from the railway station (12 miles away). The alternative, a late-night taxi, doesn’t bear consideration. Bah!

There is a party for UK webloggers in London this Saturday. I will be there. H may be there too, although she is off work sick today, so may not be.

Apparently.
Of course, some of us have been doing this blog thing for quite a while now.

Secret Santa 2004.

The great thing with WP is that hacks and plug-ins are encouraged. I’ve just implemented a nice little WP hack by Wellard that seems to leave normal functioning intact, but should stop the comment spams, at least for a while. There are other plug-ins and hacks that I can deploy, so if this doesn’t work, I’ll try them.
Honestly, you’d think that running a site would be easier than this. If only people wouldn’t keep trying to butt in on my space.

US blogger fired by her employer after putting pictures of herself in her uniform on her website. Not a terrible crime, you would think, but if you actually look at the blog itself and the images, which show her with her blouse unbuttoned to reveal her bra, and then consider the corporate image of the airline in a nation that is still largely prudish and conservative, then Delta’s decision is hardly surprising. Bloggers must continue to beware of their employer’s image and reputation if they write about their work on their site. Even those of us who are self-employed still must be considerate of our clients and suppliers.

Keep checking the webloggers’ party page – it looks like a plan is coming together.

Mo returns to more traditional blogging style – a good thing I think. I’ve never been convinced by the idea of a separate list of links on this site and have never implemented one. I find the practice that some adopt of putting their "recent links" lists in tiny text particularly annoying and squint-inducing. But each to his/her own, I guess.

There will be a webloggers’ end-of-year party. Fact. Webloggers can influence where and when it takes place by employing the FunJunkie editable page which can be found by clicking here. I intend to attend unless I’m moving house, getting married or doing some other reckless thing.

Scaryduck on Pinky and The Brain.

From Boris Johnson’s shiny new weblog (which is clearly going to be the most avidly watched new blog of 2004 – eat your hearts out Belle de Jour and Wil Wheaton!) comes Boris’s sage advice to women who are experiencing difficult pregnancies – get on the teacups at Legoland. Utter class.

Meanwhile, over at wysiwyg, Steve worries about children’s television.

Reuters covers Belle de Jour’s decision to stop updating her blog, one of the great interwebnet non-events of the year (second only to the Grauniad’s "best" blog competition, in my opinion – or do I sound bitter because I wasn’t shortlisted?).
Believe me, if ever I decide to quit, Anna Ford will talk about it as headline news at one o’clock on the Beeb. This is one of Britain’s longest-running blogs, after all.
(via LMG)

A blog about allotment gardening. Good stuff.

I’ve been at it again. Posting at Uborka. Sorry.

I’ve written a new piece over at Uborka. I can’t believe that they still let me do that.

You know how it is – you’re sitting in a restaurant in Alphen an der Rijn and you spot someone wearing an "I’m blogging this" t-shirt. So you go an introduce yourself and exchange URIs. It’s the only polite thing to do!

In other news – I really miss Hels.
And this trip is really useful already, with only two of five working days completed.

Meg is back.

Mike of Troubled Diva fame has moved to Troubled-Diva. He claims that the addition of a hyphen to the URI is a response to incompetence amongst his hosts. Personally, I think it’s all just a ruse to get the entire blogging community to link to his site. Such attention seeking!

Go and tell Robyn where you are, there’s a good chap/chapess.

I know it isn’t particularly busy here at the moment – that’s largely because I’ve been entertaining the troops, Vera Lynn stylee, over at Uborka – and there’ll be cocktails there tomorrow.

Latest Lexicon of Luuuurrvve entries:
F is for Flowers
N is for Nudity
W is for Writing

You are keeping up with my Incomplete Lexicon of Luuuurrvve over at Uborka, aren’t you?

A is for Amour
P is for Passion

Teenagers use blogs for "self therapy". Not surprising, and by no means limited to teenagers.

This week, I shall be guesting over on Uborka. Go read, if you feel that way.

Little Blue Fox is dead. (That explains the broken link I posted the other day). Neurotic Camel is alive.

This site now runs on WordPress. If you see anything that is broken, please let me know.

I’m still sorting out the archives at the moment, and there also seem to be some CSS issues which need fixing. Give me a few days and I’ll get there. I also need to sort out the comments template.

General comments:

• install WP in the same directory as your blog if you want an easy life
• the five minute install certainly works if you are starting a completely new blog – in fact, if you’re a little web-savvy, I reckon you could do it in four!
• it is possible to run several blogs from one database using multiple installations of WP, in spite of what some of its detractors will tell you
• the documentation isn’t bad at all
• importing MT entries is a doddle
• it’s free, and that has to be a good thing

Overall, I’d definitely recommend it. It took me about three hours to do the transfer from MT to WP, including revising the templates so that they look something like the site that you are used to.

UPDATE: I’ve been trying to get a gizmo going so that, if you should try to follow a link on another site that goes to the permalink for an old entry, you get pointed towards its new home. Unfortunately, it seems at the moment to point you to entirely the wrong entry. I am, as they say, working on it.

I’m honoured.

Delete entire weblog. Are you sure? [Y/N]

When trolls kill a weblog. Some people have more time than sense.

Vaughan on the mystery of Belle de Jour.
I’ll be quite honest – I was quite fascinated by the Belle de Jour site. And, in a way, it has brought blogging even further into the mainstream, as the tabloids (and the broadsheets) get their fishnets in a twist over who may or may not be behind BdJ. I’m sure that it was the high quality of writing and insight into another mind that drew me to the site, and nothing to do with sexual depravity and voyeurism at all.
But now, I find the whole thing a little tiresome. The content at BdJ has veered towards embroilment in the whole "is she a she, or isn’t she, and who is she anyway?" thing, and has become quite tiresome. Some other blogs have become fairly tiresome on the subject, but that tiresomeness is fairly widespread in the blogging community right now. It reminds me of the whole Salam Pax thingy, a good weblog that was spoiled by people busying themselves with trying to unmask the author, rendering the whole thing …well, tiresome.
Thankfully, readers of this site have averted tiresomeness because your author has never made any secret of his identity, and I think that should be the model that all bloggers follow. It’s much more simple that way, and makes it easier for publishers to come running with their cheques for the book deal.
Doesn’t it?

Dave confesses. And draws my windows. Nice man.

The best thing in Blogdom last month. Official.

Oh yay! yay! and triple yay! Emma is back. Not that she ever really went away. She just wore high collars and dark glasses a lot.

Karen has an ongoing problem with lazy GCSE students cluttering her comments requesting analysis of the poems that she publishes on her site.
Grayblog, on the other hand, seems to attract business studies students seeking SWOT and PEST analyses for big-name companies like Waitrose and B&Q. And I don’t think that any of us will forget the large wads of moolah that was made from selling our CIM case study analysis.
Maybe I should set up a sideline doing some of these things? If only I had the time.

Rodney becomes a father, in fairly terrifying circumstances. Thoughts going to the whole family.

From yesterday’s Grauniad magazine:

Does the world need blogging jokes?

Hmm. Haven’t we seen this sort of thing occur sometime before?

Scaryduck writes well on the state of the world. No real solution is offered, but still worth reading.

Guardian Best British Blogging Awards results announced. No gongs for me once again, not that I expected any, but congratulations to Darren.

Tom wants to know how many UK-based blogs there are. If you are not already listed there, you can help Tom with his useful research by submitting your site to the list of blogs at weblogs.co.uk.

Katy goes to a party.

Plep in Nepal – making me feel mildly inadequate in that my Nepal-related content is being provided in a somewhat second hand manner. I can’t even promise blogging from Denmark next week, as I’m under strict (and quite reasonable) instructions to leave my laptop at home – not that I’d planned to take it with me anyway. However, we may have blogging from the East Midlands tomorrow.

Mo says a few words on intelligence and the problem of being spoon-fed.

Recently, I’ve seen a few television programmes (I don’t have a TV at home, so generally watch it only rarely – that’s a conscious choice on my part). Last night I saw the BBC historical drama Charles II – The Power and the Passion. I found it really quite dissatisfying because it neither spoon-fed nor informed, but rather sensationalised and confused. The relationships of the principal characters were not well explained, and rather too much emphasis was put on the sex instead of the consequences of the relationships and blackmail that were associated with the sex.

Maybe this sort of approach gets more people interested in history. I’m not sure. But I think that there are some things that are better explained in documentary form. And before you suddenly start thinking that that is a terribly dry and dusty way to present something, on Saturday I listened to a radio documentary entitled "When the World Was Young", part of Radio 4′s season of programmes to mark the 40th anniversary of the assassination of JFK. This was fascinating and interesting, and brought the history "to life" (for want of a much better phrase) far better than a docudrama might do. Clearly it had the advantage of being able to include recordings of JFK and interviews with people who were there and knew him, but I know of similar programmes in the past when actors have been used to read the words of the people of the day, and it has been set in a framework that aids understanding. Not spoon-feeding, mind you – but a presentation of the evidence that allows the listener or viewer to draw many of his/her own conclusions and opinions.

Generally though, Charles II just reminded me of why I prefer books, radio and the web to television.

If you are not already signed up for Secret Santa, then you should do so soon!

I can’t make it to this as I shall be in Copenhagen, but if you live in the UK and have a blog, then I’d recommend that you go. If you’ve never been to a blogging event before, don’t worry – a more friendly, diverse and interesting group of people you could not wish to meet.