Wed 2007-02-07 The Targus AMU01EU wired optical mouse that we use with the laptop has started behaving erratically: it frequently ignores right-clicks. At first I thought it might be a Ubuntu software problem but, after finding nothing similar mentioned on Ubuntu Forums, I tried the mouse on our Windows XP machine and it exhibited the same symptom there. I can see another walk to our local branch of PC World coming up!
Tue 2007-02-06 The snow drops have been out under the trees for at least two weeks now. When I went out at lunch time I saw a magpie flying with a long twig in its beak: it must have been making a nest. However, tonight the temperature tonight has fallen to -3C and looks as if will drop further before dawn if the sky doesn't cloud over. Tomorrow we are having a new gas boiler fitted.
Tristram Brelstaff
The temperature by 7:00am was below -6C according to the Reading University Atmospheric Observatory, which is just 10 minutes walk from here.
Mon 2007-02-05 
On Sunday, at around midday, the low winter sun was shining right through the living room and into the hallway producing some nice light effects in what is normally the darkest part of our flat. I took a lot of photos of Zoe brushing her hair and walking to and fro. The above picture is one of my favorites. A proper 'Flickr photo'.
Sat 2007-02-03 Ben Goldacre has been reading the PhD thesis of TV nutritionist 'Dr' Gillian McKeith and it turns out that it is just as fraudulent and pseudoscientific as the rest of her work. Entitled “Miracle Superfood: Wild Blue-Green Algae, the nutrient powerhouse that stimulates the immune system, boosts brain power, and guards against disease” it is, according to Goldacre, full of cargo-cult science. The PhD was from a non-accredited correspondence course at Clayton College of Natural Health in the USA, in other words, it is a cargo-cult PhD.
Fortunately for TV viewers in the UK, McKeith's 'You Are What You Eat' program on Channel 4 has some fairly stiff competition from the excellent Dr Alice Roberts with 'Don't Die Young' (on BBC2 on Tuesday and Thursdays) and also from 'The Truth About Food' (BBC2, Thursdays), which seemed quite good when I watched it last week, even if the experiments were a bit oversimplified.
Thu 2007-02-01 
Over at Planet Lisp I came across these little graphs being used to indicate the posting history of blogs. The software to produce them was written by Zach Beane. I think they are a rather effective application of Edward Tufte's 'sparklines'. Various other implementions of sparklines are available out on the web.
