I was doing some cleaning in the office last night and went for the washing up liquid. There were two strange shaped bottles of Fairy (as kindly modelled by Jon from the office here) with “Fairy apple blossom” and “New improved perfume” printed on the label.

In the age of cross branding where the same name is on washing up liquid, kitchen wipes and floor cleaner I thought I would check that this new bottle was for the plates. Nowhere on the front of the bottle does is say what the liquid is for, and I found this amusing (it does not take much). Eventually Jon did find the words “Dishwashing Liquid” in the small print on the back.

It was a bit windy last Thursday and a blast of wind took the side off a portable sign next to the office car park. Not the most exciting of things but we did catch it on the company webcam.

Now I can’t remember the full lyrics to the Tigger song, but I do remember it had the line “The most wonderful thing about Tiggers is i’m the only one”. At a car boot sale the other week we managed to prove that this is not the case.

This weekend I was persuaded to carve out a Pumpkin for Halloween, and we were fairly happy with the result. The purpose of such a scary face is actually to scare off ghosts and gools, but I think some people missed the point….

As you can see this is not so much going to scare off ghosts, just vegetarians. I still find it rather amusing though. You can see more pumpkins like this on pjguyton2002’s flickr page.

I have been doing some tidying in the office and decided that it was time to clean out the several sets of RS catalogues that we had acquired. I have away a couple of sets away and kept one, leaving only these 5 sets to send for recycling.

or reference I have asked not to be sent any more unless we ask for them as we tend to use the Internet to search and the trade counter to purchase.

I have been meaning to make a list of my favourite podcasts and publish them here. The reason why was that if I liked them, and you like reading my blog, then you might like the podcasts as well. After producing a list on my Vox Blog in answer to a question of the day I have cross posted it here. I This is not an exhaustive list as I am subscribed to many and am adding and removing them daily, but this is a list of the podcasts I have listened to for a wile and enjoy.

Tech Podcasts;

• CNET News.com daily tech news podcast
• this WEEK in TECH *
• Security Now! *
• Tech Talk Radio *
• BBC Digital Planet
• The Geekcast
• FLOSS Weekly
• The Web 2.0 Show

Science Fiction Podcasts;

• Escape Pod
• Spaceship Radio

Music Podcasts;

• High Orbit *

Miscellaneous Podcasts;

• Off the Hook *
• PodCacher *
• Manager Tools *
• PodCast 411
• PodCheck Review
• Media Talk (Guardian Unlimited)

* These are my favorites and often get listened to the day they are downloaded.

For many a year we marveled at the spinning globes on BBC1, and then in 1997 we were treated to a globe style hot air balloon. Things were good until 2002 when the balloon was not replaced by the obvious (globe styled juggling balls :-) ), but by dancers NOT wearing globe t-shirts. I was not a happy bunny.

Four and a half years on I am pleased to report we have a new set of indents on the way including kites, the moon, a surfer and hippos among others. Errr, yes, that’s correct, hippos. The globe has not reappeared, but they all have a rounded styling and a soft and friendly BBC One logo in the middle.

You can see more of the new indents on the BBC Press Office web site.

Please not that this posting may be a little bios against dancers and pro globes, and hippos. :-)

Update : A montage of the new idents (including the hippos) are available to view here on YouTube. If you fancy a trip down memory lane you can also watch the baloon and the dancers.

At 9am on Saturday 12^th August 2006 a group of Geocachers including myself set off to reach the top of Scafell Pike. In short we all made it to the top, and we only lost a few going down ;-). You can read more about the adventure here.

It is not often I get the opportunity to compliment a support service, so imagine my surprise finding that I want to do this for a free service.

I have been looking at a few ways to manage my images and make select ones available online and have been playing with Google’s Picasa beta, and the test online image hosting service Picasaweb.

While using the software and the online web service I have had a few issues and logged both support and feedback. To my surprise I have always got a personal and constructive reply. What surprise me most was that each post was not considered blindly in isolation but looked at in context and considered properly.

I shall helpfully not be contacting them again, not because I don’t want to, but because all my issues have been addressed. Well done Google.

I while ago the Garmin i3 satnav devices were going cheep as they were at the end of the line, and after a lot of pondering I decided to get one. Although I don’t do that much driving and like to plan my journey in micro detail before I leave I am still very pleased I purchase the device.

It is a very basic device with limited functionality, but it doss have a full postcode look-up and gets me from A to B, and that is all I need. If you occasionally need to drive in a place that you are not familiar with then I recommend the Garmin i3 as a great budget device.

I mention this now because Comet have a few left of £99 in there online store.