And to think that I worry when I redesign Dayorama. Imagine being in charge of the BBC News website, and its sport equivalent, when they both launched thoroughly revamped new looks this morning.

And then imagine how they felt about an hour later, when the largely negative feedback started to pour into the comments beneath their respective blog entries.

That's the problem with website design. You can user test the bugger until you're blue in the face but, until you lob it over the top of your trench into the sights of a public armed with keyboards for Kalashnikovs, you won't know which way it's going to play.

I think it's fair to say the first day has not been one hundred per cent successful. It didn't help that the content management system the BBC's journalists use was down for longer than anticipated. When I reached the newsroom at 8am, for my first ever shift working on mainstream sports news rather than Olympics stories, I discovered a bunch of colleagues drumming their fingers impatiently, unable to publish to the new-look site. (Not that this particularly mattered today, thankfully, on one of the slowest sports news days in a very long time.)

We all knew the site was going to change this morning, but that didn't stop oohs, aahs and general expressions of surprise when people saw it for the first time. When these things happen you see a Powerpoint slide or two, but none of the journalistic footsoldiers get a working prototype or anything like that. (And why should they? When I redesign Dayorama, the first my esteemed co-authors know of it is usually when they visit the website the next morning...)

With image sizes changing, templates widening and indexes getting an overhaul, there was much shouting of numbers, dimensions and instructions back and forth. Half an hour spent analysing golf's newly published world rankings produced my debut effort:

So, let's pick the last five comments to have been posted to the big announcement blog entry, at the time of writing:

270: Horrible! Horrible!

271: I work in IT and if I treated my customers like this I'd be sacked.

272: The old site was the best on the net. Not a fan of the new site.

273: The current new design is a diabolical mess.

274: Not good.

This is not particularly the vote of confidence I imagine we were looking for. Certainly it doesn't feel great from my point of view that a fair few people have chosen to condemn the site in pretty harsh terms - even if you allow for the fact that usually it's the disgruntled sector of society which hollers from the rooftops, while those who like it or couldn't care less just get on with life.

However, I reckon it's going to win people round. For a start, very wisely, it's been made clear that this is the first stage of a gradual process which far from being done and dusted this evening, will go on for months and months. The new look is only going to improve as the designers learn from the feedback and incorporate ideas, fixes and tricks into future modifications.

Secondly, I can't help but like the new design. I think some commenters make good points about screen size and font size, and the number of stories displayed on the front page, but I still think the overhaul has taken our front page from 2005 to 2008 at precisely the moment the old look was beginning to flag. While many commenters have screamed, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" on the blog, that wouldn't wash if in a few years' time we couldn't do all sorts of really useful things, and it was down to sticking with the same old site.

I'll be honest and say that at the moment, I think the news front page looks better than sport. To my eyes it's settled down more quickly and already looks powerful, vibrant and attractive. It might take a bit longer to get the hang of what works best and how on the sport homepage, but we'll definitely get there. Some of the more vocally disapproving seem to have reacted as though we've "ruined" their browsing experience on purpose when actually, we're all dedicated reporters who love our jobs, are honoured to work where we do, and deeply, deeply want people to enjoy coming to our site to read our stories. Hacking people off is not part of the plan - so expect the new sites to grow and develop.

And I'm not touching Dayorama's look and feel for a good two years at least after today. Learnt my lesson!

I was in Waterstone's earlier. Now, book categories. Pretty simple, right? Gardening. Cookery. Poetry. Fiction. Crime. All familiar. But what about this one... "Tragic Lives". You what?! The shelves were covered with a range of books, all with ghostly white covers and script writing, and all written by authors telling the tale of their, "tragic lives". Somehow, I just don't quite get it. When did we become a nation obsessed with other people's lives, problems and depression. It might work for some people, but there's no way I'm going to have a relaxing read absorbing someonelse's unfortunate life. No thanks. OK, I guess it could enforce the fact that the grass isn't always greener on the other side... but... just, nah.

The vanity search of the journalist is dead! Long live Journalisted!

This website automatically keeps track of journalists whose bylines appear on 14 major news websites in the UK, including the BBC. Its stated aim is:

... To make it easier for the public to find out more about journalists and what they write about. It is intended to make the news media more transparent and accountable on behalf of the public. It allows you to build up your own tailored list of journalists whose views you respect and trust.

It also gives journalists their very own page with all their articles on it, even counting the average number of words they write. Sod the public, from a journalist's point of view this is really rather nice indeed. Discovering I had my own page on the site was a nice little thrill, as was noticing that people can actually sign up to be emailed any new articles I write, or subscribe to an RSS feed. Crikey, there's nowt so good as free publicity!

If for some God-unknown reason your favourite journalist is not me, you can have a rummage for them on this page. All the people who have written for BBC News are listed here - some 750-plus, apparently. My six articles trump Jeremy Paxman's lone listed feature, Sir Matthew Pinsent's two contributions and Martha Kearney's five, but I'm still some way off Eddie Mair's 525. (It's not fair - people with blogs score far too highly.)

Ronnie O'Sullivan delivered a filth-fuelled press conference to shocked Chinese media. That's what those of us who hadn't seen it were told yesterday. The video above shows the media session in question and it's not quite how I'd imagined it.

Crude, obscenity-ridden rants at the top of Ronnie's voice are notable by their absence. Smutty, schoolboylike, juvenile stage-whispered asides are, however, liberally sprinkled throughout.

Watch as Ronnie...

• wields his microphone like a penis


• offers it for waiting reporters to suck


• analyses his microphone's "girth"


• and much, much (well alright, not a lot) more

This was less Ronnie, more Rodney. The snooker star looks and sounds like the Only Fools And Horses legend as he inspects his weapon in front of a camera that he either didn't see or didn't care about. Certainly, when he moves the microphone to his mouth and says, "Suck my prick?" to the waiting media, he can't have been overly bothered.

What would we do without characters in sport, eh? Just in case you're utterly appalled and need to balance things out, try Rebecca Romero for size. She's just become cycling world champion in the women's 3000m individual pursuit but, more importantly, she could become the first British woman ever to win medals in two separate summer Olympic sports.

Four years ago she won rowing silver in Athens with the women's quadruple scull. This year, if she qualifies for Beijing (which as world champion you'd imagine is likely), she'll be a contender for gold. By all accounts she's an incredible woman and in her post-race interview last night she came across as a very likeable individual.

If you're interested you can find out more here, watch her become world champion here, and visit her website here.

This evening was, perhaps, the first evening I've had a "proper" drink after work in Canary Wharf. I've had a couple of drinks but in restaurants, and I even had a very enjoyable dinner with Ollie on Monday, but not a simple pint of Stella. And, well. Urgh. Before I'd even got to the bar, you can see it heaving with lawyers and bankers. Inside, outside, everywhere. There's a stench of alcohol. By the time I've walked across the bar, I've probably inhaled enough substance in the air to make me high. And I could probably have sniffed enough drugs in the female toilets to have me sent down. And this is a standard, chain, bar. I'd truly forgotten how utterly grim the Wharf can be. Perhaps exaggerated by the fact that a colleague and I had to take a prospective employee for lunch today... and it took a 15 minute walk to the nearest decent pub / restaurant. Beam me up.

In other Wharf wittering, there are now new vending machines scattered around. Chocolate and crisps? No. Umbrellas. Made by the company behind "Umbrolly", here. They cost £2. Hardly a multi-million dollar enterprise, but strikes me as a viable money spinner. Now, is it me or does the logo for Umbrolly look incredibly similar to that of Durex? Now is it me, or are there a number of euphemisms involved there?

And now I'm back in my flat and the only semi-decently amusing thing to watch on tv is about sleeping with your sister? Oh dear!

Never have I been more glad to have been the first Olympics journalist on board after the cut-off date for going to Beijing:

The BBC has called in the police after files holding details of staff due to go the Beijing Olympics went missing.

The folders with addresses, passport numbers, pictures, and hotel details of more than 430 staff vanished from Television Centre in west London.

The BBC fears the files have been stolen, possibly for identity theft or an attempt to embarrass the BBC over the number of staff going to the Games.

The corporation says it is sending 437 people from the UK to the Olympics.

I can't help but feel the identity theft theory leaves a little to be desired.

Picture the scene at the brand new Terminal Five, replete with the technology to scan every extremity, crevice and orifice, when a demonstrably foreign gentleman brandishing a fake passport turns up at check-in.

"Hello, I'd like to board the 3.20 to Beijing please."
"Thank you sir, can I see your passport please?"
"Here it is."
"Thanks, mister... er... mister Edwards! Sir, are you Huw Edwards?"
"Um, yes. Yes! I am."
"No you're not. You're speaking in a Birmingham accent, you're bald, and you're six foot seven."
"Er... ahem... 'And now the news where you are?'"

And to think people sometimes call me a drama queen.

As you can see from the video above, my table tennis ability has slowly diminished from a high of "criminally sub-standard", back in 1996 when we played round-the-table at junior school, to the current low of "unable to stand during play".

The gent in the front of shot, somehow managing to play table tennis without being overcome by the force of gravity, is my colleague Mark. We had about ten minutes on this table when nobody was looking. Surprisingly enough this was the warm-up table for the stars and celebrities at the Royal Albert Hall's Dunlop Masters night last week. In a converted changing room with five sinks at one end. Classy!

Well, a belated Happy Easter. Radio silence fell due to an extra-long weekend spent in the Peak District. Wonderfully relaxing, an excessive quantity of good food and decent beer, fresh air, a couple of decent walks, beautiful scenery, Spring flowers and snow!

Just before we reached Kinder Scout...

Snow...

Viaduct... (because they're great)

And primroses (just for Belinda)

And the above is why I could never live abroad.

Enough has been written about Jean Charles de Menezes - nearly 4,500 articles on a search of bbc.co.uk alone - that precious little is going to be added now.

But graphics can tell a story that thousands of written stories will struggle to properly convey.

I've happened upon the BBC News website's superb graphic demonstration of how Jean Charles de Menezes was shot. There was a link in an internal email last week after the graphic, originally produced in November last year (on my birthday, in fact), took a silver award at a prestigious award ceremony.

If, like me, you never saw this at the time, take a look now. For a while we've known he was essentially an innocent man, the victim of a bit of a cock-up, but the graphic makes the breathtaking horror of his demise all the more real and - not understandable, perhaps, but vivid.

What do fruit smoothies, muffins and portable digital storage devices all have in common? Well, they've been added by the Office for National Statistics to a "typical basket of UK goods" in order to measure inflation. Frozen vegetarian ready meals, CD singles and 35mm camera films have all been sent to the dustbin (recyclable, one hopes). The Office for National Statistics reportedly updates its 650-strong basket of goods and services on an annual basis in order to assess, and better reflect, public spending habits and thus calculate the Retail Price Index.

It's rather interesting, when you think about it. Fruit smoothies and muffins are, apparently, reflective of a growing "cafe culture". I'd be tempted to argue that the muffin has seen it's day. At least in "health" circles, anyway. I think it's become associated with the unhealthy full fat latte and possibly ditched by many in favour of the fruit smoothie. No doubt Alex is pleased. And what about the humble packet of blueberries? Aren't these now consumed on such a scale as to make the price index? Or is this just a "London" perspective? Move beyond the Home Counties and would you find people purchasing fruit smoothies or muffins in such volume? I suppose it's all about balance. These are just a couple of products out of 650. I suspect that the pork pie still features but the consumption of that particular grocery is likely to be increased beyond the realms of the M25. How on earth the vegetarian frozen ready meal made it on though, is beyond me. Was there a phase a while back where we all purchased frozen veggie lasagne? The boom of Linda McCartney and quorn sausages?

It must be rather interesting to analyse how spending patterns have changed and which products are no longer considered as "common" - like the 35mm camera film, for instance. That was such a common non-grocery a few years back. And the top 40 single used to be the regular way in which many spent their pocket money. Instead we have memory cards and storage sticks, MP3 players, mobiles and computers. I suspect the humble video has also been dropped and replaced with the DVD. And yet some things must be constant. The loaf of bread, even if sales have declined due to the Atkins mentality, has to be there. And the price of fish n chips must continue to be indicative of inflation. And what about the mars bar. As I pointed out here, suddenly these seem to be around 50 pence. It's criminal. I suppose the question remains though... has the potato remained through the passage of time?

Some "slim-line" or "diet" products taste alright. Low fat soup is passable. Lower fat butter is OK. I'd actually chose low fat yoghurt out of choice. I'm not saying they replace the real thing, but they're OK if you're trying to "watch" your figure. Yes, whatever, who am I kidding. I've 4 days of pub food in the Peaks coming up. But anyway, back to the point. Hellman's light mayonnaise. There is no excuse for this. It tastes of nothing. It's thin. You want twice as much anyway because it tastes of so little. And, well, I may hve just bought the full-fat version and have been done with it. There's a lesson in there somewhere for us all.

If you want to know what life will be like in a post-industrial wasteland following an apocalypse, go to Greenwich.

Greenwich is a post-industrial wasteland - at least if you get off at North Greenwich tube.

Things started to get a little weird as soon as we decided to have some lunch before exploring. Conveniently somebody built a massive great big dome here a few years ago, so we went in there and it turned out the place is a bit like something out of Mad Max.

We approached a little brasserie in among the identikit food chains littering the "street" which follows the dome's curvature just inside its perimeter. This is a superb idea - in an age when people can't stop complaining about identikit high streets, the O2 boffins have had the idea of stripping out even the concept of an actual town, leaving just the Pizza Huts, Nando's et al. I'm not even sure if I'm being sarcastic when I say it's superb. It certainly does a job.

"Hello," we said to the man outside the brasserie, who offered us a choice of seating arrangement. "Would you like to sit outside or inside?"

Er... eh? Outside, you say? We're inside a bloody great big dome, how do we do that? And then it twigged - the "street" area is just like being outdoors, except not. Street lights, boulevard atmospherics, even heat lamps on every restaurant's terrace. A whole community conning itself into believing it has an "outdoors" when in fact the whole dome is one big "indoors". Spooky! We chose to eat "outdoors" and savour the view. This is how life will be when we have ruined our planet and have to live in domes. "Outdoors" will mean a slightly different take on "indoors".

Having finished lunch we took a walk down to the Greenwich Peninsula Ecology Park, in the hope of finding plenty of lush scenery and birdlife to recapture our enthusiasm for the area.

The people in charge of the ecology acre (let's not be calling it a park) have clearly put some effort in, let's give them that. The nice little log cabin that forms an entrance to the inner loop has lots of information on the walls and is very child-friendly. This is to be encouraged and we left a donation with that in mind.

But the park itself just felt utterly futile, surrounded as it was by industrial wasteland and the semi-derelict banks of the Thames, overlooked by monstrous multi-coloured flats and apartments. It's not wonder all of seven birds and a bee had chosen to call this "home" for the day. We spent ten minutes in the hide in the middle of the park and were treated only to a lonely coot, who sidled over, dipped his head in the water in a half-arsed bid to find something edible, then wandered off again, his shift having clearly finished.

At least the park had a bit of greenery to sustain us. Walking down from North Greenwich to the part signs like to call "Historic Greenwich", we were treated to some of the most obnoxious, despairing scenery I've ever come across.

This must be one of the most soulless parts of London. Even if it had hooligans and vandals smashing the place up, it'd at least have some signs of life. Instead we gave the "Village" development a wide berth, jaws gaping at hideous oranges, blues, reds and greens, a wrong-headed, ignorant, god-awful attempt to make these enormous developments look like happy places to live.

Ten minutes later we'd crossed the Blackwall Tunnel approach and were in something a little more redolent of Ye Olde London, but the area around Maze Hill station is hardly "historic" either. Just as we were going to call it a day, Greenwich Park and the Observatory hoved into view.

At last! This was much more like it. Greenwich Park has a beautiful little children's play area which immediately restored my faith in humanity, watching happy toddlers playing in a sandpit. A sandpit! I thought they'd been done away with years ago in case the odd hypodermic needle found its way into the depths - brilliant to see one alive and well. There were even separate toilets for boys and girls, with the adults' loos round the back. Perfect.

Over the hills we went til, on clambering up a particularly steep slope, we found ourselves outside the observatory. This would be the pinnacle of the trip, a monument to human endeavour that would wipe out bad memories of desolate North Greenwich.

Except last entry was half four, and it was now five to five. Bollocks.

So we lingered outside the observatory for five minutes, cursing North Greenwich for deciding to ruin the rest of Greenwich for us,then set off to see what else we could find. Greenwich, God bless it, tried its level best to rescue the situation despite having been handed a dull, grey, rainy day with which to do so. Squirrels came out to play, the market provided plenty of tempting trinkets, and Greenwich Pier offered the exciting prospect of a boat trip back to Waterloo.

Who actually commutes using boats in London? Somebody has to because otherwise they'd be out of business, but it amazes me given there's an extra cost on top of your travelcard or Oyster, and the boats take forever and a day. It was a lovely trip and offered a surprisingly refreshing view of London from the water, but you'd only do it once or twice before you could tick it off the list. I hadn't expected to find the boat as busy as it was, and it was telling that by the time we reached Waterloo, it had gone dark.

The evening was spent holed up in an upstairs corner of the Riviera restaurant on the South Bank, as the rain lashed down outside. The funny thing is, for all the miserable weather and the malaise of North Greenwich, it was nice simply to have gone exploring. I've never been in that part of the world before and at least now I know where to go, and what to do. It feels like the recce for a proper trip to come. And maybe we'll arrive at the observatory before 5pm. This has either been unplanned madness, or advance planning like you've never seen from me before.

I’ve two advertising gripes at the moment... naturally from two of my favourite companies.

First, Marks & Spencer. You know the rather effective line of M&S adverts which follow the “it’s not just any food” “it’s Marks&Spencer food”? Well there’s a new television advert for organic chocolate Easter eggs. Not just any chocolate, but organic, full of goodness, nut free, gluten free, enhanced, something, wonderful chocolate. I can’t remember the exact wording – and nor can I find it online – but needless to say, it simply sounds a little ridiculous. It’s as though M&S have now realized people remember these “it’s not just any food” adverts and have gone utterly over the top. The result isn’t effective, it’s annoying. And not “just annoying”. It’s “M&S annoying”.

Second, Barclaycard. The Barclaycard One-Pulse is the new Barclaycard which is also an Oyster card. You can read about it here. In short:

It’s an Oyster card - Use your Barclaycard OnePulse in the same way as a standard Oyster card, for the fastest and cheapest way to travel around London. Remember, you’ll need to pre-load the card with pay as you go, Travelcard or a bus pass before you travel

It’s a Cashless payment card - Forget having to find cash for smaller purchases. OneTouch payments allows you to make purchases of £10 and under in an instant wherever you see the ‘wave’ symbol at participating retailers.

Anyway, that’s all fine – although I’m skeptical as to whether it shall ever take off - the adverts though, currently plastered across London’s transport network, have one confusing feature. The catchphrase ends with a /. Not a full-stop, but a “/”. So, you have a phrase such as “the new cashless card”. But you don’t. It says, “the new cashless card/”. Why? It’s the same throughout the series of adverts. I just. Don’t. Understand. Is it trying to look like a web address? Is it trying to be a forward slash? And if it is, then why? Is it just trying to look modern? Well, whatever. It just looks like a typo. And very silly. The other flaw appears to be the use of “wtf”. Apparently this stands for the “what’s the future” forum. Urr, no. Commonly known as “what the f*ck”. Come on Barlcays, wake up. Wtf indeed.

Yesterday I was driving through the Blackwall tunnel, Northbound. It’s a notorious accident black spot and as a result there are now 30mph average speed cameras set for the length of the tunnel. I was, as is my habit, in the right hand lane. I was being followed by an AA driving instructor in a marked car. Clearly annoyed that I was sticking to 30mph, even though this is both i) enforced by the speed cameras; and ii) really necessary in the tunnel – at parts you can’t sensibly exceed 25mph, he began to tail me. Dangerous in itself, the instructor then decided to cross the solid white line in the middle of the road – a road marking indicating that you shouldn’t cross or overtake into the next lane. He then proceeded to overtake me – well, undertake me – and exceed the 30mph limit in order to get ahead.

This really annoyed me. I’m not fussed that he broke the law. I admit to exceeding the speed limit from time to time, particularly whilst motorway driving. What he did wasn’t particularly safe, but in defense it wasn’t a particularly busy time of day in the tunnel. But I think what annoyed me the most was the fact he was an AA driving instructor – or at least driving an AA driving instructor car. By driving the car, he’s promoting both the AA and his trade. I’m not saying driving instructors can’t speed from time to time, just in the same way that hairdressers can have bad hair days, but he created an unnecessarily dangerous situation and he shouldn’t have done it. He’s meant to be setting an example, not driving like a pr!ck. Ultimately it was unnecessary - I met him at the traffic lights after the tunnel. It really narked me.

I’ve managed to update my sat nav today though, which is a moderate success. And also managed to switch to Sky broadband. Small achievements are important in this life.

I'm not quite sure why the article titled, "Spud We Like" in the Economist (dated March 1st - 7th) caught my attention so avidly on the DLR this morning. It may have been the fact I actually had a seat for a change and therefore could fully concentrate on reading the Economist, rather than half reading and half trying to prevent myself from landing in the lap of some unforgiving business man. It may have been because I was surprisingly awake. I fancied a beer when I was in from work last night. Despite the fact I've self-imposed a drinking ban on myself from Monday through to Thursday, I decided to buy a bottle from the shop. Absent minded I purchased non-alcoholic beer. Clearly my sub-conscious was at work. Anyway. It may have been because, for some reason, I am wearing a grey suit today, with electric blue shoes. This in itself isn't such an issue. It was the bottle green coat I chose to wear. I was trying to engross myself in my Economist in order to distract myself. Alternatively, it could have been because it actually is a rather interesting article.

I've tended not chart history in my mind by reference to the humble potato. In fact, I'm not sure I've seen reference to it before. Often we can chart history with reference to developments in a particular object or
manner of acting. For example, you can assess the development of battle armoury or weapons over time... from 1066 to the Battle of Waterloo to WWI to the recent conflicts in Iraq. Or alternatively chart the progress of the washing machine back to the mangle and then back to the humble stream. The potato, on the other hand, is slightly different. The potato is, genetic modification and Darwinian theory aside, still a potato. It's a calorific, carbohydrate-fuelled tuber. Apparently, it's also the world's fourth-most-important food crop, after maize, wheat and rice. I'd hazard a guess that in the Western world, it's probably one of the most consumed, even with the Atkins died. The potato is what it is, and always has been. But whilst the potato may be constant, the Economist's surprising article notes how the way in which we use the potato has changed over the years, can be said to reflect globalisation and may, in the future, be able to
alleviate poverty and promote economic development.

Huh? Well, it's really quite simple. 2008 is the International Year of the Potato, according to the United Nations. As the Economist notes, this is "well worth celebrating" since the "potato is intertwined with economic development, trade liberalisation and globalisation".

Still not convinced? Let me take you back to the C19th and the industrial revolution in England. There, the potato provided a cheap source of calories and was easy to cultivate, thus liberalising workers from the
land. Where factories sprung up, particularly in the North, so did potato farms. It provided food and work. Apparently Friedrich Engels declared that the potato was the equal form of iron for its "historically revolutionary role". In 1845, when the Irish suffered at the hands of the "potato famine" as their potato crop perished, grain needed to be imported in order to relieve the situation in Ireland and thus forced the then-government to reverse it's position on the restrictive Corn Laws. Consequently it can be argued that the potato also promoted free trade. This then paved the way for liberalisation in other areas and the Duke of
Wellington apparently complained, "rotten potatoes have done it all". There really must be a DPhill thesis in this.

And so potatoes have been ever-present in our past. But what of now? French fries, served along the burger and coke, are now an icon of globalisation. Whether mashed, fried, boiled or roast, the Economist
states that the "humble tuber" has "changed the world" and "free-trading globalisers everywhere should celebrate it". A romantic ideal, but perhaps there is some truth in it. It may well be able to alleviate
poverty in parts of the world if this cheap, nutritious food is cultivated correctly. And in turn, this will promote economic development. Considering the potato was originally thought to cause leprosy, be fit
only for animals, poisonous and associated with the devil, it seems to have come a pretty long way.

And to me, at around 8.10am the other morning, that all seemed rather interesting. I wrote the above a few days ago, namely because I've changed internet provider (another long story) and I'm also currently in Kent (it took me ages to get here, don't ask, bl++dy French strikers) and I'm also up at 07.16am on a Saturday (proof I'm mad).

Morning all - here's a quick one to start your day. Yesterday afternoon the BBC News and Sport websites relaunched embedded video after last year's trial.

As you may have discovered by clicking in frustrated fashion at the static image above, you can't embed the actual videos on your own sites yet. But it makes our site look a whole lot nicer and should make you a lot more inclined to try out some of our video. We've had shedloads of the stuff for ages and it's all good, but who wants to click a boring "Watch" link?

Speaking of which: watch the Jonny video on being dropped from the Six Nations, which was the first sport offering (and see it in its new form). Then go on the news site and find the Google one, which I believe is the news boys' first offering. Excitement!

I know, jumping on the lolcat bandwagon once again is lazy blogging, but it's becoming ever more difficult to escape the phenomenon.

Remember the lolcat site which takes BBC News headlines and combines them with photos of cats? Well Imogen, author of this fine weblog, spotted a couple more gems:

And here's two more from me, nabbed earlier today:

Meanwhile the lolcat lexicon - a backward, misspelt and child-like vocabulary presumably intended to reflect a kitten's thought patterns - has infiltrated Gateway, the BBC's intranet.

On the Gateway forums, a message title reads: "Oh hai. I has eated ur metadata." It turns out to be a post about a Wikipedia entry's details on a BBC programme, versus the BBC website's own version of the same info. But that takes a back seat. "Extra points for the first use of kitty pidgin on Gateway," reads the first reply.

And in case you've not seen this before, lolcats even have their own programming language:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
IM IN YR LOOP UPPIN YR VAR TIL BOTHSAEM VAR AN 10
VISIBLE SUM OF VAR AN 1
IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE

This may well mean nothing to you. If you were a complete geek though, you'd be splitting your sides with laughter. The programming language works (to a degree) by the way - you can actually make stuff happen using the language of lolcats.

Back tomorrow with news of beer mats. K thx bye!

Right then. Give me your top five reasons why senior sports journalists might quit their jobs.

Here's mine:

1. Received a better offer from elsewhere.
2. Early retirement, maybe spend time with the family.
3. Got something drastically wrong editorially (e.g. Piers Morgan).
4. Decided to go into the (comparatively) lucrative world of PR.
5. Married someone incredibly rich or won lottery.

Okay. Now give me your five least likely reasons why a sports journalist would leave.

Mine goes something like this, in reverse order this time:

5. Forced to leave having thrown dart at boss during argument.
4. Found in compromising position with colleague in gents' loo.
3. Resigned to take up place in al-Qaeda hierarchy.
2. Developed rabies after squirrel attack.

And in at the very top:

1. Off to spend eighteen months in French Buddhist retreat.

My jaw slammed into the floor at a good 40mph when my immediate boss sat my down a mere hour or so ago and, out of nowhere, produced unlikely reason for leaving number one.

And good on him. What a brave, gutsy, life-changing and indeed life-affirming decision.

To give you some background - background I didn't have til he told me - he's already spent a year on this retreat, returning to work a couple of months before I joined.

Now he has discovered that if he wants to complete a second stint there, this time for eighteen months, it is now or never. And with his wife still at the retreat having found a job there, it became something of a no-brainer. He's going to leave us at the end of April to live in a small cottage on the edge of the retreat, in the middle of nowhere, and until late 2009 that will be the focus of his life.

Our team will be all the poorer once he has gone - he's an extremely good journalist and manager, and part of the reason I was so keen to keep my job in London (which I have done, by the way) - but I've every respect for his decision.

In many respects I wish it was me. I'm not religious in the slightest but, having written at length about Anglo-Saxon monasteries while at university, a bit of that rubbed off, and more than once the thought of being a monk idly crossed my mind.

I'd never, ever, pluck up the courage to even seriously consider it, let alone drop everything and go, but it was a thought. What a beautiful environment in which to live, and what a pure, noble life to lead, eh? I don't think the Buddhist retreat is necessarily quite the same existence (I was still rescuing my jaw from the floor and asked fewer questions than I should) but all the same, that's an enormous change in lifestyle and certainly not one you'd associate with a sports journalist at the top of his game.

I wish him all the very best for the next couple of years and as I said once the bombshell had been dropped, hopefully I'll still be here on his return, holding the fort. He'll have absolutely no trouble getting his job back should he want it, that's for sure.

Meanwhile, Sunday night was a bit of a nightmare for the BBC's hockey commentators. My colleague Andy and I arrived at Bracknell's ice rink to discover somebody had ruined our broadcast point by tugging the wire out of the wall so, to cut a long-ish story short, we broadcast the entire game via mobile phone.

I have never been responsible for a three-hour phone call before (happily the studio dialled us, not the other way around!), and I found ending the broadcast to be a novel experience:

It's amazing how much trickier your job becomes when you don't have the right technology. Holding the mobile phone to my lips made commentating ten times harder than it normally would be - all the time, as you talk, the phone somehow nags away at you. It doesn't feel right. I think both Andy and I struggled, and certainly some of the fans listening were less than complimentary (although their team were 5-0 down at the time, so I don't think we were fully to blame for their mood).

Barry Davies would agree with me. Last night he covering hockey of a different sort, providing live commentary as the British men's field hockey team booked their place at the Olympics.

GB beat India 2-0 in Chile in the final of their Olympic qualifier, but Barry was back in London (so he told Andy on the phone earlier). This meant he was having to commentate simply by watching the pictures being fed back from Chile, a technique often used in TV - for example, Five's coverage of U-21 matches is often voiced by one person sat in a small box of a studio in the UK, no matter where the game is taking place.

I came in this morning to an email from a field hockey fanatic friend bemoaning the poor quality of Davies' commentary - but Davies himself admits he had a bit of a nightmare, because he found it impossible to tell the players apart, squinting at his television set every time the cameraman zoomed out.

Sometimes there is nothing you can do. Happily we're back at Slough next week, where the broadcast point is behind the player-coach's exercise bike and therefore tucked away from meddling paws - and I suspect Barry has his plane tickets to Beijing in the post. Much more stress and we'll be needing eighteen months in the south of France...

I've never read anything so ridiculous as this (and no, I'm not just saying that because it's an article from the Daily Mail...).

It seems that we now have a "safe text" street. And what makes a street worthy of such title? The lampposts in Brick Lane are now padded. Why? To protect people, whilst texting, from injuring themselves. This really is particularly silly. It's silly that we're wasting money on this - surely there must be a better use of public funds? It's also silly that the local government are worrying about these things - it isn't up to the state (or local state) to protect us from bumping into street lamps. Whilst texting. It's our own fault. Totally, and utterly. If I walk along the street texting and bump into a lamppost, then that's my problem. It's also rather silly as an idea since it looks so unsightly. Overall, just very silly. I hope it doen't catch on.

Yes, viDayorama makes a triumphant return! Join me on a trip into the Somerset levels as we go...

• ... on the trail of the treetop heron


• ... into the crib of a long-tailed tit


• ... chasing the million-starling dusk spectacular

The levels, around the Glastonbury and Wells area of Somerset, are home to an immense variety of wading and woodland birds. There's even the occasional otter, although not when there's a blogger with a camera around, there isn't.

Shapwick Heath nature reserve lies in the middle of all the feathered festivities. You follow a long path from the Railway Inn (the Somerset & Dorset Railway used to have a station here, on the way to Bristol and Bournemouth), which takes you into the heart of the reserve. All around are lakes, marshes and bullrushes - ideal territory for a starling roost.

If you've not seen the mass starling roost for which this area is famed on telly before, you've missed out. It's a spectacular gathering of upwards of one million starlings, who often dance and swoop in the air as night falls, before bedding down among the reeds.

I ended my day lying in wait for the little fellas in the middle of Shapwick Heath, since the Starling Hotline (I kid you not) told us that's where they were the day before.

The problem is, one million plus starlings are not immensely easy to second guess. And even if you get it right, sometimes they can't be arsed with the dancing and just lazily, boringly, head for the reeds. Plus we're near the end of the roosting season - so would we get lucky?

When you've watched the video, you can see Flickr photos from the day out.

I've suffered with a ghaslty cough / cold / lack of voice all week. Some homecoming. Anyway, today I finally gave in and took the day off work. And what better way to recover than on my sofa, with chicken soup, a selection of lemsip, cough medicine and strepsils... and watch a marathon of Cranford. Perfect. Thank you, Ollie for my delayed Birthday present :)

Just as I reached the M4 at Reading yesterday, the radio told me about government plans to ease congestion by opening the hard shoulder as an extra lane.

This seemed strange to me. For decades the hard shoulder has existed, and certainly for the last ten or so years we've had pretty abysmal traffic conditions in certain parts of the country. If the fix was that simple, why haven't we done it before?

I decided to do an incredibly unscientific experiment for the rest of my trip down to Somerset: count the number of vehicles stationary on the hard shoulder. After all, if the hard shoulder is opened up to traffic, it will be bugger all use to anyone if cars are broken down on it. So how far can you reasonably get on the hard shoulder before coming up against a hazard?

The answer, for the 35-mile stretch of the M4 on which I conducted this survey, is about three miles.

There were no fewer than nine cars, or groups of cars, on the hard shoulder, and only once did I manage to cover five continuous miles of road without passing one. I should also add that the hard shoulder was coned off for a good four-mile stretch of my survey area.

By the time I got to the M5 this frequency had died a little, but the road between Weston-super-Mare and Exeter is hardly the government's biggest congestion headache. Even then a ginormous lorry had thrown itself onto the hard shoulder, settling wonkily over a ditch just before the Sedgemoor services.

So the biggest problem of this plan is that cars, tending as they do to break down, will thwart their own bid for freedom. After all, where are we going to put broken-down vehicles once we use the hard shoulder? Traffic will immediately back up behind them, and the emergency services will be unable to quickly reach accident scenes because the hard shoulder is now blocked by traffic.

Of course, many broken-down cars don't end up magically on the hard shoulder. When you feel something is wrong with your car, or you hit something, you can make for the hard shoulder as a guaranteed point of (relative) safety. The other day I passed two lorries on the M40 which had been in a horrendous collision - their drivers had clearly tried to nurse the vehicles toward the hard shoulder, with one ending up face down over the embankment.

If the hard shoulder didn't exist, presumably these vehicles in distress would just have to either stop where they were and hope pursuing traffic realised (as any motorway driver knows, that's not always the case), or throw themselves off the road entirely. "Refuge areas", as piloted on the M42, are a nice idea, but still don't solve the problem of how emergency vehicles get to accidents.

It seems to me - and I may be missing something, so please do jump in - that using the hard shoulder is a recipe for more gridlock, not less. It is interesting to note that the M40, an incredibly congested road riddled with accidents the nearer to London you get, and the M25, are both missing from a list of motorways where this plan might be put into action.

Of course it's all very well me decrying government hard shoulder lunacy, but that doesn't help to solve the problem of traffic congestion. Cue a separate report, also made public yesterday, demanding a "modal shift" from road to rail.

That report approaches the topic from an environmental perspective, with rail touted as by far the cleanest mode of mass public transport. The issue on a day-to-day basis is cost, as we all know. I take the coach into work, along that same crowded M40, because it's less than a third of the cost of taking the train at peak time (and still half the cost of an off-peak ticket).

The alluring aspect of the hard shoulder fix, for the government, is that the cost of opening up a section of road which already exists is minimal. Sorting our expensive, tired and overcrowded rail network out probably works out to be astronomically costly. But in the long run, a bit of hard shoulder here and there will simply paper over decades-old cracks. And when this country's transport infrastructure, driving on its own hard shoulder, breaks down, who will be able to rescue it?

Originally uploaded by Vic_DiCiccio

"We are not interested in just any photo of any chairs, but ones that are empty and interestingly out of place.

A pic of an empty chair at a cafe doesn't necessarily fit the bill - that might just be a photo of a cafe not doing good business.

Hammocks aren't chairs. Neither are benches. Masses of empty chairs (vacant conference room, stadia etc) don't suit this group's goal.

Drawings, paintings, or collages of empty chairs aren't what we're after, either.

It should go without saying that it shouldn't have a pillow or a blanket or a dog in it. It should be empty!"