If I had regular readers, they'd know that I think that Alastair Reynolds is a genius. I read his series all out of order. Reading Redemption Ark, I gradually realized that I'd read the succeeding book in the series, Absolution Gap. I'm not very good at navigating around the country …

At the work pre-Christmas drinks evening, Emily painted the nails of my right hand black! Very glossy.

I picked up a random book from the library. Bloodmind by Liz Williams. The book appealed to me, and I'm trying to work out why. Whether or not it would appeal to others in the same way, I don't know. I think the atmosphere that Williams creates, a kind of …

Lovely house :)Yes, please post inside pictures. No, I'm not looking to rent a room, just curious!

Nicely done! (I had to do that once, too. Mine wasn't nearly as neat)

It's always interesting to see what one keeps when they purge a room, house, or garage for whatever reason. Before I do any of that, i ask my kids to see if they want anything - you never know what odd thing contains a vivid memory for someone else.

I used some powerful spray stuff to clean the cooker, and it started to strip the writing from the surface, so I stopped and took a photo.

I've written what I think it should say on the photo below. I'll refer back to this if I get confused when cooking …

Andy's starting a new venture involving various preserves. It hasn't officially been launched yet, but here are a couple of preview photos:

I've posted an ad for a room to rent in my house. Here are a couple of the pictures I took for the advert:

Really I need to take some photos of the room itself!

In Ubuntu I installed the H.264 and MPEG-4AAC decoders in the belief that this is legal since the UK doesn't recognize software patents. Despite searching, I couldn't confirm this, so I've decided not to use them. It's difficult to uninstall the codecs so I'm simply going to not install …