Calamari That is one big Cephalopod.

Style or function? Those chaps at Apple have gone and done it again and created a must have product with the iPod Nano. But I can't help feel that at some point they need to move the game on a bit, after all the Nano has no more functionality than it's larger brethren the Mini and the standard iPod, although they seem to have quietly dropped the Mini; well I can't find it on the Apple site anymore. Pity as I rather like the Mini but I suppose the Nano would only have gone and competed with the it, although I can't help thing the Shuffle is now redundant too. Although I never saw the point of it anyway! However Apple have got together with Motorola to create a phone music player hybrid, the Rokr, but it only has a 100 song capacity even if you add a bigger memory card so my Smartphone frankly makes it looks ike a waste of time. No expandable memory on a device like this? Do me a favour. Let's not forget that devices like the upcoming Samsung's SGH-i300 with it 3Gb HDD shows how far the game has moved on.

Losing the plot… Football I’ve written a few words about Premiership football in the past, in large part about the knife edge it walks between being a sport/entertainment and a business so it’s interesting, for me anyway, to see how this particular season has highlighted how bad things have become. Even a certain Mr Wenger, who strangely has a christian name almost the same as the club he manages, has commented that fans coughing up £50, £60, £70 or more should at least expect to be entertained, but his counterpart Jose Mourinho doesn’t agree saying it’s all about focus and winning. And you can see his point; the Premiership now embodies free market economics so who cares if the fans get value for money as long as you keep winning and bringing in money. One thing that Jose forgets however is that without fans there is no football, they are in business terms ‘the customer’, and are the most important part of this sport/business. So how dull has this season been? Well in the first month of this Premiership season fewer goals were scored than in the previous ten. Of Man Utd and Liverpool’s 0-0 draw both Ferguson and Benítez admitted it provided nothing for the fans but at least the players showed ‘good spirit and attitude’. As Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian noted here was a bunch of footballers, some paid up to £5m a year, and fans are expected to except their good attitude as a bonus. Oh and Liverpool’s manager is a pleased as punch that his team has yet to concede a goal but how many have they scored? Er…hint it’s between 0 and 2. At least I suppose the players themselves offer some level of entertainment as most put in Oscar winning performances when tackled and Wayne Rooney just can’t help losing his temper with referees. However help is at hand and it was staring footy fans in the face. The Champions League. More goals, lots more as it happens, variety and best of all you haven’t a clue who’s going to win. So abandon the over paid, whinging, IQ just scraping in double digit, Cadillac Escalade driving, look I’ve married a Spice Girl underachievers and rediscover why you liked football in the first place. Lost I was warned the JJ Abram had a tendency to start something without having a clue of where he was going and it looks like they were right. Lost started brilliantly and I for one was hooked but the slow realisation that it’s not going anywhere, and I don’t mean just ‘cos they are stuck on an island, has dawned on me. Too much characterisation, not enough plot and some breaking of the immutable laws of script writing have left me feeling JJ doesn’t know what he’s doing. Yes it’s great that the characters are being fleshed out but hey some weird stuff has happened on the island and it barely gets a mention. In the second episode someone shoots a polar bear, not strange you might think but as they are on a tropical island it should at least raise a eyebrow or two however it’s never mentioned again. Oh...perlease!

My favorite American Is Gore Vidal and the great man in 80 is a few weeks. But I write this now as I just saw this amusing quote. Q. Are you aware that people think you have a relentless superiority complex? A. It's because I speak in complete sentences. That's considered un-American.

The Wheels of Justice... ...turn very slowly. Two days on jury service, all of which has been spend sitting around waiting. On a related note last time I looked snorting lines of Columbian Marching Powder was illegal, so why hasn't a certain Ms Moss been arrested? And is anyone surprised she uses drugs? She's a wafer thin fashion model going out with a wasted drug dependant rock star. Go figure!

Update Not been near blogland for a bit as we’ve been busy putting the house straight so we could put it on the market. What I don’t know about wooden floors and varnish has yet to be discovered. Anyway after only a week we’ve had an offer a close to the asking price so we’re now officially ‘under offer’ which considering how slow the UK housing market is supposed to be at the moment is reassuring, we just now have the difficult task of finding a new place in the same area. We’ve been looking but not found anything that says, “I’m your new home.” We maybe on to one but its early days and the English system of buying and selling property means nothing is certain until the creaky legal system gets involved, even then you might as well depend on the Magic 8 Ball as a method of predicting how things will turn out. Recently got hold of a Line6 Guitar Port which allows you to download lessons, effects and all kinds of guitar riffage on to the PC to help improve your playing, and some might say for me that’s a good thing! It’s an excellent little bit of kit and for a beginner like me is a great practice aid. It’s nice when you get approached by people at work asking you to join their team as they hear you’re not a bad sort. I’ve had a couple of roles suggested to me, one is the Product Manager for Sharepoint which with v3, Office 12 and Exchange 12 less than 12 months away sounds very interesting and the other is a Channel Development Manager in Business Partner looking after Mobile devices, a gadget fest if ever I’ve heard one. They are a small but significant step away from what I’ve done in recent years but it’s time for a change and a challenge. The judicial system has finally caught up with me and from Monday I’m on Jury service. I hope it’s over quickly as I understand there’s a lot sitting around twiddling your thumbs; the advice I’ve been give is take a good book. I notice Choddo Hayden is at long last going to get rid of his badge engineered Shanghai Automotive 75. But again Rob’s usual impeccable taste of all things vehicular have abandoned him as he opts for the aspirational choice of today’s young executive who should know better. The new BMW 3 Series is ugly enough in a Mitsubishi Carisma clone sort of way but in estate version it sinks to a new low, it even makes the scaled up 5 Series alternative look less of the Lovecraft inspired abomination it is. This a car even the chaps at Top Gear couldn’t be bother to add the The Cool Wall as it was so dull and let us not forget the Chodmeister once drove a Honda Integra Type R which had been hand build by naked Japanese super models, or something! Please mate don’t do it!!!

Simulation I always been a bit of fan of PC based flight sims the daddy of which is obviously MS Flight Simulator, however I've always found it a bit dry and technical especially as the planes don't tend to come with guns attached. Not so long ago combat flying games for the PC were coming out of our metaphorical ears but due to long development cycles and the related costs most games studios seem to bailed. Focus Multimedia publish IL-2 Sturmovik - Forgotten Battles which might not have the most catchy name but is by all accounts rather good. However it might come as no surprise that the one I've been playing for a while now is MS Flight Sims cousin MS Combat Flight Simulator, and the combat bit means it comes with guns and bombs and rockets and all kinds of 40's flying goodness. In version 3 however it's a bit of a double edged sword as it spanks anything but the most up to date machine and even then it's close but more importantly the developers decided to use a different games engine from standard MS Flight Sim, in version 2 it used the standard engine which made life easy for modders because if they could make plane models for Flight Sim they could do the same for Combat Sim. This has meant it's taken the modder sim community a little while to get up to speed and begin to provide new planes, missions and other enhancements, however spurned on by GMX and the brilliant Firepower there's plenty of stuff to keep the WWII plane plank more than happy. Chocks away!

...guitar! I've been playing the guitar for a few months now and the tips of the fingers on my left hand are now noticeably harder than those on my right. I'm still stumbling around the fretboard but at least I know a few chords and at least I'm not embarrased when I go to guitar emporiums; I always get odd looks when I play the Imperial March with as much distoration as I can muster from whatever amp I get given. My Korg PX4 is good for this too. Oh and The Killers and Kaiser Chief albums are excellent. Smile like you mean it!