Have been practising a talk I have to do tomorrow about the Heritage Gateway. I'm a bit scared. I don't do talks. I don't like meetings because they have people in them, so doing a talk in front of those people is a nightmare... Oh well, chances are I won't die.

Since I last posted it was Rob's birthday. We went for a walk in Martinshaw Wood. It was raining and very muddy, but it was fun. And we went to the 50s American Diner. That place is brilliant. It's an actual American diner from New Jersey. I ate so much I nearly died. Which is kind of like America really. Except maybe there was actually slightly less food than there actually is in America. :)

My brother John visited for the weekend - he ate the most food at the diner, it was amazing! Three quarter pounders with pineapple rings between each burger and with bacon... a scary amount of food. He forgot his laptop power supply when he went home. He was sad. We posted a power supply to him - it got there yesterday - but I posted the wrong one! It works though, I think. At least, the one he left here works with my netbook, so it's probably reciprocal.

The Google Nexus One Phone seems to have a few problems. Turns out (like everything else Google do) they released a beta and are getting everyone to test it for them. I don't mind that when it's something you're not paying for (like Gmail), but when you paid £400 for it... Main problems are when you touch the screen it sometimes thinks you're pressing about an inch away from where you're actually pressing. And it has problems connecting to some wi-fi routers. Also there's a weird problem where the screen doesn't work if you're applying pressure to the sides of the phone. But as long as you don't squeeze it too much it's ok. Rob still seems happy with it but Google have gone very quiet about the problems - almost like they're hiding somewhere going 'la la la la I can't hear you'...

The new iPad looks cool, very shiny. If it catches on it's going to be bad news for the eReader market. Lately Apple seem unable to put a foot wrong, so they clearly think there's going to be demand for this. And at $499 it's cheaper than a $529 Google Phone (ok so it's not a phone, but it's basically a shiny gadget, and that's why people will buy both items, because they're shiny gadgets, and the iPad is so very, very shiny). And I don't really get the fuss about the name. I mean, come on, Nintendo Wii anyone? How quickly people forget - you get used to something and it stops sounding ridiculous. Bah.

I have a new phone, incidentally - a Nokia E63. It's kind of complicated, lots of Symbian related fun. I don't know what normal people would make of it. But for a geek it's cool. I set up my e-mail and made my Google calendar sync with its diary. Stuff like that. Obviously it's not all that shiny and doesn't have a touch screen, but you can't have everything, can you?

If you don't hear from me again I guess the talk tomorrow did result in my death. But as I said before, chances are that I won't die, so...