I woke up to the sound of a thunderstorm outside my window this morning.

After a few minutes lying in bed, listening to the distant crackle of electricity in the air mix with the rippling rain, I wondered if OJ was still in Cuba.

If only he had somewhere - a blog, maybe - to tell us about it, because if he is, he's probably a bit wet. Hurricane Gustav has just passed by, lashing Havana with Category 4 (i.e. one away from armageddon) winds, en route to the Gulf of Mexico and New Orleans.

The city is now being evacuated once again, with memories of Katrina fresh in everybody's minds. Except where Katrina was a Category 3, Gustav has the potential to reach land as a Category 5. That's the strongest a hurricane can possibly be on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which measures such things, and only three hurricanes are on record as hitting American land at that strength. Andrew, in 1992, was the last.

The one potential salvation is that Gustav has, as hurricanes must, lost strength crossing Cuba. Hurricanes draw their power from a combination of air and water, so any spell over land is weakening. But with the Gulf of Mexico now available, the hurricane has an opportunity to rebuild on its current Category 3 status.

It's been rather an active month for tropical storms off the Atlantic coast. Not so long ago, Fay was causing trouble, and already Tropical Storm Hanna is parked behind Gustav, idling off to the north-east of Cuba. It's unlikely to develop into anything as powerful as Gustav, and nor does it currently threaten the mainland US, but Hanna is very much the sideshow right now.

I suspect OJ has long since cleared the area and may even be in Devon, where hurricane strike has proved a little less likely in recent years. It's worth noting that there has never been a Hurricane Oliver, nor is there likely to be, as the name doesn't feature on the US list (which comprises Omar, Odette, Otto, Ophelia, Oscar and Olga - used to denote the 15th storm of the year, since storms are named alphabetically, and many hurricane seasons do not produce 15 storms).

There will never be another Hurricane David, continuing down the list of Dayorama contributors, since David was "retired" following its use for the first major hurricane of the 1979 season. David was a Category 5, killing thousands in the Dominican Republic, but reached the US as a Category 2 having weakened en route.

There is no "Amy" on the US list either, though a Tropical Storm Amy (the first of the season, of course, by alphabet) briefly flirted with the US east coast in June 1975.

Next up this year will be Hurricane Ike - enough to worry anyone called Tina should it strike Nutbush.

As Boris Johnson received the Olympic flag during the closing ceremony of the Beijing Olympics at the weekend he informed his Chinese counterpart that, in a nutshell, ping pong was coming home. Naturally, it's won Boris praise all over You Tube and it's even made it onto a mug.

There has been a lot of talk about how the London Olympics will compare to Beijing. No, we probably won't be as organised, regimented or extravagant. But if a London red bus, which then converted into a topiary version of the London skyline, is anything to go by, it will be thoroughly British.

As Boris reportedly aid: "Ping pong was invented on the dining tables of England in the 19th century and called whiff whaff. That is the difference between us and the rest of the world. We looked at a dining table and saw an opportunity to play whiff whaff. That is why London is the sporting capital of the world. Ping pong is coming home, athletics is coming home, sport is coming home."

It's a very "Boris" way to set the stage for the next four years, but it seems a rather cheerful and right-spirited way too.

What can an old chair leg, two lazy Susans, a length of dowel, two pipe brackets and a slab of decking do for your Bank Holiday weekend?

They may not have realised it, but thousands of punters at the 2008 Towersey Festival found the sum of their parts to be something of a focal point…

Once again, our Routemaster was in front-line action as the festival shuttle bus, helping goers to negotiate the two-miles from camp site to civilisation whenever there was a need to stock up on cash and food supplies.

In 2007, we registered our service as Route 73 – an homage to London’s ’73, on which our bus ran for most of its life – and in just two years the Routemaster has become a festival attraction in its own right. We even inspired a bus lantern in last year’s procession!

“Probably the best Bank Holiday bus service in the country” says one of our passengers, loaded with Waitrose carriers on her second ride back from Thame. Camping had never been afforded such luxuries until the dawn of the Routemaster.

It was exhausting work, though, particularly for the conductor on the back. In a journey time of under 10 minutes, he could find himself with up to 72 fares to collect (if you’ve ever wondered why bus crews turn grumpy at the sight of a twenty pound note, that’s why); and with 18 trips per day in each direction, that’s 36 sets of stairs to climb, 72 changes of the destination blinds, and all whilst remaining upright on some of Oxfordshire’s bumpiest roads…

The introduction of half-fares this year didn’t come without embarrassment. One young gentlemen, taller than I, engaged me in some very grown up conversation before proffering his half-fare and revealing that he’s actually fifteen… while another pair of youthful looking lads queried why I’d only charged them fifty pence each.

“You’re under 15, surely?”, I asked.

“We’re both over eighteen”, came the reply. Oh dear.

There’s huge reward, as ever, in the sheer fun of it. The characters, the waves from the crowds, the words of heartfelt appreciation from people who are genuinely thrilled to be treated to a good bus service at a time when they need it. If you’re one of the thousands of festival goers who took a ride this year, why not post us a comment below to let us know what you thought.

And if you didn’t get a ride this year, well… see you at the lazy Susan in 2009.

Wow. Here I am, back in the room after a month-long dream involving the Croatian water polo team, Adrian Chiles, a cardboard cut-out of Michael Phelps, a New York radio station and David Beckham hiding inside a hedge, inside a bus.

I've ruined my body clock with overnights, then days, then overnights, then more overnights; I've ruined my fingers with eight-hour live text marathons; I've ruined my social life by becoming an Olympic hermit; and I've ruined every other Olympics ever, because I don't think it's possible to enjoy another one as much as I have Beijing.

Two Olympics have the chance to change my opinion.

The first is Vancouver 2010. Given the combination of a passion for ice hockey and over a year working exclusively on the Olympics, I would be lying if I said I wasn't angling for a some kind of role reporting on that.

Canada, and Vancouver in particular, is one of my favourite places in the world. I went there with my dad when I was about 14 and even though my memory of the trip is a bit blurry around the edges, every recollection I have is a happy one.
Vancouver itself was beautiful, particularly the sight of the ocean liners in the harbour beneath our hotel. I remember - or at least, think I remember - seeing a huge steam train at Whistler, and I definitely remember a once-in-a-lifetime trip on a seaplane up into the lakes and mountains to the north.

My dad made that day trip all the more adrenaline-fuelled by giving me a book entitled Hatchet shortly beforehand. Here is the book's synopsis from Amazon:

"When the pilot of a small, two-person plane has a heart attack and dies, Brian has to crash land in the forest of a Canadian wilderness. He has little time to realize how alone he is, because he is so busy just trying to survive. And learning to survive, to plan on food not just for a day but until - and if - he is rescued, only begins when he stops pitying himself and understands that no one can help him."

Sat in that little plane flying into the mountains, I started to feel as though this was a less than ideal holiday read, much like the time I read Black Box: All-New Cockpit Voice Recorder Accounts Of In-flight Accidents from cover to cover, the night before a flight to Switzerland.

If I get the chance to go to Vancouver 2010, my only reading shall consist of short histories of the luge, biathlon and cross-country skiing.

The big candidate to surpass Beijing in my "Favourite Olympics" chart is obviously London. Four years feels like a lifetime away right now but, come 2012, I think the entire country is going to have to write off the month of August from a productivity point of view.

Whether I'm reporting on London 2012 or booking August off well in advance, then hopping from venue to venue at my own pace, it already feels like it'll be one of the biggest things to happen in any young Briton's life. I'm sure not everybody feels that way - goodness knows why - but I'll be first in queue to absorb every last drop of the 2012 Olympics. Even the handball, in which, to my delight, my adopted Norwegians won in Beijing. (They are mentioned in this tactfully-titled article.)

As for what I'll be doing for the next four years, it's up in the air. The currency of an Olympics reporter rather diminishes once one ends, so once the Paralympics are over I'll be abandoning those five rings of hope in favour of the sports which must sustain us in the interim - football, cricket, golf, tennis... God, how I want to add taekwondo and open water swimming back to that list. Or at the very least some BMX. I'd pay more money to watch Shanaze Reade and friends annihilate each other round a track than I would to watch Manchester City right now.

I hope you enjoyed the Games as much as I did. If not, I hope you found a way to occupy your time without collapsing under an Olympic bombardment. About the only other sporting event I heard about in August was the world mobile phone throwing championships. How far can you throw yours?

I love equestrianism at the Games. It's the only Olympic sport where no matter how good the human being, they're relying on an animal to ultimately deliver the goods.

And what do the horses think about all this? Packed off in an air crate, given an air-conditioned Hong Kong stable, asked politely but firmly to go show jumping with a typhoon parked just off the coast... they must think the human world has taken leave of its senses. "Can't we just, um, do this tomorrow? Maybe when that typhoon's gone? Is there really a rush?"

Forget watching the riders when this sport is on, just watch the horses, because you will learn far more.

Take the example of American horse Sapphire just now, ridden by McLain Ward in the jump-off at the end of the show jumping.

Halfway through the round, the horse clearly knew that something special was on and it was expected to deliver in spades. Its ears pressed so far back that Boeing couldn't design a more aerodynamic horse, it thundered from jump to jump, hurling itself over each as though leaping from a burning building into the arms of Monty Roberts.

If you had stopped that horse at this precise moment in time and calmly enquired what it was up to, it would simply have answered: "I am legion."

We reached the last fence, an immense clear round in the offing, the entirety of Hong Kong on its feet, hooves clattering like an express train, ears braced for take-off, rider clinging on for dear life.

And Sapphire smashed through that fence like your older brother destroying the finest Lego creation you ever made.

BOSH!

Bricks everywhere, devastation, a minor Asian equine earthquake. It took volunteers a good five minutes to rebuild all the pieces and put the jump back together. The American team, agog at the prospect of victory, slackened their jaws then guffawed in astonishment. Sapphire, quite literally, bricked it.

Is it any wonder the British are so good at track cycling? Could any other nation adjust so easily to a sport so utterly beyond comprehension?

The madness began on Monday, in the men's sprint. I confess my prior knowledge of track cycling is not the greatest (we have a number of experts in the office, of which I am not one), but if you said "sprint" to me, I'd assume the aim of the game was to peg it out of the blocks and go as fast as you possible can. Like, say, the 100m sprint in athletics.

And I'd have been wrong. It turns out that for the first few laps, your best bet for Olympic success is to stalk the other cyclist (there are only two at a time) like a lioness tracking down a hapless wildebeest.

Chris Hoy, Scotland's greatest ever Olympian, even ended up having his heat restarted when his opponent stopped still on the track, like a gazelle playing dead, for more than the legal 30 second limit. That had followed more than a minute of snail's-pace, meandering slow-motion pedalling around the Laoshan Velodrome.

That was bonkers enough, but a top Chinese competitor in the women's sprint surpassed it today. Battling against an Australian cyclist for a place in the final (against Britain's own Victoria Pendleton), the Chinese girl fell off having gone so slowly up the banking that, the moment she twisted her wheel, it disappeared from underneath her.

I assumed that meant the Aussie could coast home into the final, but no - it turns out you get to go again if you fall off your bike! What?! In what other sport do you get another go if you do something as silly as falling off your equipment? If your rowing boat capsizes, tough monkeys. If you fall over a hurdle, hard cheese. If your horse lobs you over a fence, c'est la vie. But fall off your bike and you get a second chance.

Does this mean that, if your opponent is streets ahead of you and about to win gold in the Olympic track cycling sprint final, you are within your rights to stop, topple yourself over, and demand a re-run?

The finale to these madcap capers comes in the form of the madison and points races. In these, from what I can gather, six million cyclists clog up the velodrome and the aim is to go round it for as long as it takes everybody to decide to watch something else.

The commentators, charged with the unenviable task of making these races understandable and exciting for us great unwashed, insist there is a complex scoring system involving your ability to put in an extra lap, your position in various "sprints" and one or two other tricks, but for the uninitiated it is genuinely impossible to follow.

We are told that Rebecca Romero, who competed in the women's points race and finished a very creditable 11th, had to have the competition format explained to her on the morning of the final, since she'd only done it a couple of times before. That says it all.

Perhaps these longer, impenetrable races are beyond even the British ken. After all, I think they're the only ones in which GB have not won gold...

I'm briefly coming up for air before the descent into another Olympic maelstrom, to bring you some interesting maps.

When it comes to working out what an area is like for crime, there's nowt better than looking at a top-down view onto which you can plot all the reported nastiness.

Obviously, doing that is another matter. What about burglaries? Plot those on a map and you're waving a mighty great flag over somebody's house, along the lines of: "This one was easy to break into! This one! Here! Next to the tree, with the orange Skoda in the driveway!" Not good.

But if you've ever played Sim City, you'll have an idea of what I mean. Colours shaded across the city to indicate where crime is at its worst, and where there's virtually nothing to trouble the residents.

Here's the Met Police's early attempt at something similar. It's not the greatest looker in the world, but it's actually more detailed than initial impressions suggest. Keep on clicking and you'll get down to "sub-wards", whatever they may be (I'm no councillor in the making), and the colour code corresponds to the level of crime in the area.

Happily, crime chez moi appears to be fairly unusual. I think the map suggested there had been all of two crimes in my sub-ward for the last month.

Given that I cannot remember the last night when I did not hear sirens belting down the road outside, I consider that a minor miracle. If we were judging on sound alone, Northolt would be the centre of an epic campaign of terror the likes of which may never scar the globe again. The map, by contrast, suggests it's actually a bit like living in Ilfracombe. The reality may be somewhere between the two.

The Met aren't the only ones - West Midlands Police have had a go, as have their West Yorks equivalent.

None of which yet compare to the daddies of this idea - the Chicago crime map, and the Booth Poverty Map, which remains one of the most impressive works of cartography I have ever seen, more than a century after its production.

Olympics update: Survived two night shifts earlier and, in fact, must have quite liked them, because I've signed up for five consecutive overnight live text commentary shifts next week. Do stay up and keep me company.

Still doing the US radio on a regular basis. They cut me short today! Cheeky sods. Though they were cutting everybody short so were clearly struggling, and I came off far better than the previous bloke, who had joined live from the Philippines and was practically bundled off air in a sack when he didn't stop talking on cue.

Had the pleasure of writing this Ben Ainslie report today, and the boy had better win gold tomorrow, or else I'm going to look very silly. In my preview of the weekend's Brits with medal chances, I had Ainslie (and the GB Yngling crew) down as "10/10" for gold.

I have been roundly mocked for that decision, since technically Ainslie could be beaten by the American Zach Railey (and nobody else, he's guaranteed silver). But I cannot see how the man could fail, given his 12-point lead with just the medal race remaining. (If you don't know about sailing, I appreciate this will read: "Blargh blargh man blargh blargh, blargh blargh with blargh blargh remaining." Sorry.)

My 10 has since been the subject of some incredibly high-level editorial intervention, and now resides as a 9-and-a-half to account for all eventualities. Chickens, I say. Back the boys!

I sleep badly. Rarely all the way through the night and if I'm on my own I'll regularly be awake from 3am ish for a while. This has its advantages when you've gone to bed at midnight with a transaction at work on the line. Then you've woken up at 3am as all has kicked off. And suddenly you're awake and able to respond and appear vaguely competent. This law thing, it's all about face. At least it's given me the opportunity to watch some of the Olympics - my first time of viewing. This swimming lark? Amazing. The Chinese National Anthem is a bit naff, though and quality of playing, hardly inspiring.

If you fear the Americans have a stereotype of the British as posh, I apologise. I have not helped it.

I was back on US radio today (get me), with a selection of nice little tales from the Games - like the Thai weightlifter who changed her name on the advice of a fortune-telling nun, then won gold.

"You are posh, aren't you," observed the presenter, just because I'd suggested watching Olympic archery in a thunderstorm lends the event a certain je ne sais quoi.

Alright, maybe not just because of that. My initial faux pas (see, the posh oozes out of me) had been to use the phrase "facial architecture" to describe piercings.

I have no idea where I got that from. I don't think I've ever heard it before. I blame the fever for offering me a spur-of-the-moment turn of phrase.

"Facial architecture?" Asked my host.

"Er..." I said. "Yes. Posh way of saying piercings."

So now the good people of New York and elsewhere, or at the very least the presenters, have me down as a bowler hat-sporting, umbrella-wafting, neatly-attired upper class gentleman of quite some social standing.

Amazing how radio can mask the truth, eh? You can listen to it here.

Fever: Still feel like death warmed up but I'm about to go and spend the night supervising our international Olympics site, so I'd better shake this off sharpish.

Tried to sleep all through the afternoon but was defeated by a combination of unbearable warmth and unbearable kids next door. I don't know how people who regularly work nights do it - there are so many bloody noises!

I am also starting to suspect that kicking off the night with a mushroom and pepper-laden pizza was a mistake. But does one take a packed "lunch" to an overnight shift? Not sure I can cope with the thought of a salmon sandwich at 4am...

PS: The Americans also have a stereotype of British dental health which is, to say the least, a little unkind. I hope Tom Daley's whiter-than-white gnashers, beaming away on televisions around the world of recent times, are doing their bit to change that.

What was his diving partner, Blake Aldridge, thinking when he openly criticised Daley after today's eighth-place synchro finish?

Even if it was more Daley's fault than his (and having watched the whole competition, Daley didn't look noticeably worse than Aldridge), he must have known the media would immediately demonise him for daring to knock the boy wonder.

Sometimes the world is a bit of an unfair place - get to an Olympic Games and all anyone wants to do is interview your partner, then if they do talk to you, they want to talk... about your partner.

But fighting back with criticism of the kid is never, ever, going to play well in the media, who are entirely smitten with Daley and won't hear a bad word said.

I fear Blake is going to get crucified in tomorrow's papers, although Leon Taylor (mentor to both of them) says all is well in the camp. With that great stalwart of diving, the pike, in mind, he's a stupid boy - but I feel for him.

Morning! It's just gone 5am and I've been spending most of the night in front of the telly.

That was kind of the plan anyway, which explains why I was in bed by about 7:30pm, but I hadn't bargained on waking up around 10ish shaking all over.

I have since discovered that trying to look up "seizure" on Wikipedia while your entire body shivers convulsively is a) bloody difficult on a mobile phone keypad, and b) pretty pointless. Surprisingly it offered no useful on-the-spot diagnosis, so I decided I was probably diabetic and had a Kitkat.

I am still alive so have concluded I am a medical genius. Happily there are two Kitkats left, which I shall now save for future emergencies.

Somewhere around midnight the shakes were replaced, in traditional fever style, by quite unbearable warmth, but somehow I ended up asleep til about 3am - then woke up with the sort of headache I've only had once before, and that time I definitely knew why.

I'd been aiming to get up at 3am anyway - although, to be honest, I'd sort of expected about five hours' more kip - so I have hauled myself out of bed, head screaming disapproval, to sit on the couch and watch the Olympics. (I might also add that two Panadol have worked their usual miracle. Those things have never let me down, and here they are again in my hour of need.)

Getting up was the right decision. Becky Adlington and Jo Jackson have just won gold and bronze respectively in the pool at the Water Cube, and I'll confess to being so proud that a little dust got in my eyes and I had to manfully wipe it clear.

What a swim that was. The American girl led for practically the entire race and as I craned my neck forward at the screen, the two Brits seemed "well-placed" (as the commentators told us umpteen times, more in hope than expectation). But then, in the final 50m, they both turned on some kind of rocket pack and roared home, Adlington an entire seven-hundredths of a second faster than the rest.

She can swim faster than I can convulse, and that's saying something. I let out a squeak of "Get in!" as she touched the wall to win the gold, and then remembered everyone else in London is not either a) doing a passable impression of Dr Katz or b) allowing the Olympics to consume their existence, so I shut up.

I've now got the equestrian stuff on the TV and the men's hockey has just ended on the laptop, with GB beating Pakistan 4-2. Again, I'm thrilled. I gave the GB performance director and a couple of players a pretty hard time in interviews back in March, when it looked like they wouldn't even make the Games, and I am happy to be proved very wrong so far. If only the women can sort themselves out - they lost 5-1 to Germany yesterday.

I'm now in that all-too-familiar corridor of uncertainty where I can't decide if lack of food is making me feel sick, or if eating anything at all will trigger apocalyptic scenes in my living room. I am therefore going to watch the men's archery, and if I see ten or more "tens" scored in the next match, I'll have some toast. This, my friends, is the appliance of science.

What an Olympics opening ceremony that was.

I occupied the privileged position of actually being paid to watch the ceremony - and, believe me, I know just how lucky I am. Writing our report on the ceremony, plus helping out with our live text, gave me the luxury of indulging in the whole four hours.

Not everybody would necessarily see that as a good thing! Billed as a three-hour spectacular, the occasion certainly lived up to "spectacular" but ran more than an hour over its allotted time, as thousands of athletes from more than 200 nations poured into the bowl of the Bird's Nest.

That's the part where Olympic opening ceremonies start to drag. My memories of Athens and Sydney are vague at best, but I can remember that by the time we reached, say, Egypt, interest was starting to wane.

This time, there wasn't even any alphabetical certainty to tell you how many nations were left. The Chinese dispensed with alphabetical order in favour of their preferred system, which arranged countries according to the number of strokes you need to write their names in Chinese. That placed Britain 115th and Australia, traditionally out of the traps very early in these things, third last.

But nothing can, or will ever, replace the spectacle that was the opening 50-minute choreographed sequence. A countdown led by drummers, whose drums lit up when struck to spell out the numbers in both English and Chinese figures, was without a doubt one of the cleverest things I have seen in my life.

The fireworks - as every TV reporter has reminded us, this is the home of gunpowder - leapt from street to street until they reached the Bird's Nest, at which point the stadium exploded in a cacophony of light and sound that seemed as though it may never end - nor did I want that to happen.

There were so many images flooding back to Television Centre that picking photos to accompany our stories was nigh-on impossible. The sheer choice was overwhelming, and now that we have the ability to include fairly large photos on the site (not least as the pictures which show up in videos until you click "play"), it's a dream for folk like me who love playing around with images.

Meanwhile the agencies were filing copy left, right and centre, but there was really no need. The occasion spoke for itself, though I may have been speechless at some of the feats performed in the arena - not least the flying lap of the stadium roof peformed by gymnast Li Ning, ending in the lighting of the Bird's Nest torch.

Refreshingly, our text message centre overflowed with positive comments and warm appreciation of the unfolding spectacle. British audiences are certainly cynical beasts at times, but at least 95% of correspondence from those texting in was by way of tribute to the Chinese.

Now, the real work begins. There is not a day in the next two weeks when I won't be glued to a set, watching every second of Olympics action I can get, whether I'm in work or not.

This may sound strange, given I've been in this job for less than a year, but I'm incredibly attached to these Games. I'm well aware this is the peak of my (as yet fairly brief) career, and over the next two weeks I'll get to watch some of the greatest sporting stories in history play out - then make those stories my own.

Certainly this morning, as the clock ticked down to the opening ceremony, the nervous tension was definitely there - and not just me. The whole newsroom felt it, we have put so much effort into all kinds of new technology and, so far, it's paying off.

I'm off to get a very early night so I can be up with the lark - if not a couple of hours before it - to see the first couple of medals being won. And having spoken of all this lovely stuff we've been working on, here's some links for you to try:

- Olympics map
- Olympics blog
- Olympic TV schedule
- Live text commentary (occasionally authored by me!) plus live video, which now updates automatically with no need to refresh
- Medal table

PS Back on US radio on Monday, even though it's technically my day off (swapping from a day shift on Sunday to a night shift beginning late Monday evening). I got a phone call from the American producer a few hours ago! I didn't think I'd be back so soon, I'm incredibly chuffed.

Good morning America!

If you'd told me a few years ago that one day the residents of New York City would be waking up to find me on their radios, I'd have said you were crazy.

If you'd told me on Monday that one day the residents of New York City would be waking up to find me on their radios, I'd have said you were crazy.

This morning, it came to pass. Yours truly spent a blissful five minutes with the hosts of The Takeaway, WNYC's breakfast show, talking them through some of the most interesting athletes about to compete in Beijing. Have a listen:

There is one small factual error in there, which annoys me. Must do better next time, although happily the producer appeared to infer there would be a next time.

(I'm also aware, for the radio professional(s) reading this, that I "pop" into the microphone more than once - that sound of air rushing into the mic when I say anything involving a P. Again, we'll not be doing that next time. Amateur.)

Earlier I'd been studying The Takeaway's homepage and discovered it's not just WNYC, but a chain of public radio stations across the US. Tonight I've had the chance to poke around some of these stations' websites, and the variety is incredible!

As far as I'm aware, among others, I have just been broadcasting on:

KIDE - Radio from the Hoopa Valley Indian tribe in California
"KIDE is located behind Ray’s Food Place in the Hoopa Valley Shopping Center off highway 96 in downtown Hoopa," says the website. I hope Ray enjoyed it.

KOSU - Oklahoma Public Radio
"OPR provides Oklahomans with a well-rounded public radio experience. With two of the largest public radio stations in the state, OPR broadcasts at 100,000 watts on 91.7 in central Oklahoma and on 107.5 in northeast Oklahoma, 24 hours a day."

WWNO - Radio from the University of New Orleans
Wow. Feels a bit weird broadcasting to New Orleans...

KSER - Public radio for Everett, Snohomish County and beyond
Yes! A radio station based in Seattle! Seattle, I'M LISTENING!

WNYC itself claims over a million people tune in each week. Even though I was on air at the relatively ungodly hour of 6:20am New York time, I'm still claiming a few tens of thousands of listeners - plus the odd American Indian and Seattle early bird.

Not only that, but I've been podcasted! You can check it out here.

Just a couple of random observations:

Ridiculous. How can Harrods open their Christmas Shop in August?! It's sunny (or, potentially sunny) outside. We should be thinking of sandcastles, sangria and whatever else. Children will become excited, parents will despair and the commercialism of Christmas will forever increase. Although, I suppose, at the end of the day if it adds a little festive cheer, then we shouldn't complain.

Godiva chocolates. A rare luxury. A calorie that doesn't count. Well, a colleague (who has been away for three weeks) kindly bought me a small box today containing eight chocolates. As I lifted the lid, heaven forbid, but out dropped the Nutritional Information fact sheet. No! Godiva chocolates are weight-less. Why ruin something so perfect with kcal? Needless to say, my supervisor and I took exception to our current chocolate ban and consumed the contents in, ooh, approximately 12 minutes.

I've been meaning to try this for a long time - two and a half years, in fact, judging by the date geocaching.com tells me I first registered.

Must have gradually slipped down the to-do list. Here, for the uninitiated, is geocaching.com's definition of the art:

Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers, called geocaches, outdoors and then share your experiences online.

Well I've had the treasure hunt - now I'm sharing it online. I am a complete geocacher!

There are loads of caches dotted around London, hidden presumably by people like me who enjoy the idea of combining technology with a hellbent desire to make other people tread through thick brambles.

But somehow the idea of rummaging around London's parks didn't appeal. The Home Counties, my distant sort-of-alma-mater (vying for the title with Somerset), called to me.

Watch the video to see how it turned out, and especially to see what kind of goodies people leave in these little boxes. The sheer variety of... crap... amazed me.

At one point, off camera, I nearly broke my ankle on a rabbit warren while descending a particularly steep hill. A rabbit off in the distance was causing such a commotion that I looked up to follow it, then planted my foot straight down the hole, turned on it, and had to limp the rest of the way down.

That rabbit knew exactly what it was doing.

Apparently (and it's a good job OJ is out of the country) a 6ft boa constrictor has escaped from a house in Kent.

Lock your windows and doors. Keep your pets indoors. But don't fear: according to the article "[the snake] had been fed before it disappeared". And that makes it all OK?!

Why? Where is the enjoyment in keeping a reptile like this as a pet? I fail to see how you can derive pleasure from looking after an animal which is, arguably, pretty dangerous. I mean, I appreciate that it's a little more exciting than keeping a tank of fish, but isn't there a balance? Have a hamster or something.

Street lamps. Not just usual street lamps but the ones running along the central reservation of a motorway. When these blow / die / whatever they do when the light bulb runs out, when do they get replaced? I meant, you never see them being replaced, do you? There's never a lane closed and a sign up saying "overhead lights in process of being replaced" or something. I suppose it must take place in the early hours of the morning. Anyway, if anyone can enlighten me / has seen the process carried out, then I'd be vaguely interested. It's amazing the things that come to mind when you're driving down the M1 on a Sunday evening.

Happy first birthday, phone!

The "On this day" column down the left-hand side of the blog informs me it's exactly one year since I spent an afternoon gallivanting between shops in the middle of Reading, trying to decide between Vodafone and T-Mobile for a new Nokia N95.

I'd been a Vodafone customer for years but the steely indifference of their shop staff, coupled with the siren song of T-Mobile's Web'n'Walk, lured me over. This part of the conversation in the Vodafone shop catches my attention, a year on:

When I say the phone cost seems to be a bit steep, Yasar calls in a senior employee, who is clearly feeling a bit brash and starts barking away with Vodafone's advantages over T-Mobile. The one he returns to is Vodafone's superior network coverage. "But I'm not going to spend that much time in the Shetlands," I protest. "No need to be flippant," he barks.

If I'd remembered that little one-liner when I was on the island of Barra back in May, unable to get a T-Mobile signal with Vodafone coverage almost grotesque in its abundance, I'd have berated myself thoroughly.

But I'm happy to report that overall, T-Mobile have been nothing short of sensational as a provider. The N95 does everything I could ever need it to do, it does it quickly, and has yet to 'fess up to any annoying idiosyncracies or daft limitations. The Web'n'Walk facility works like a charm, it connects to my PC with not a whisker of complaint, every service I have ever needed has been up and running immediately.

I'd like to think the phone has been pretty happy with its year, too - aside from a week in the Highlands acting as a glorified clock. The phone has filmed golfing expeditions, seen some of its photos rack up thousands of views on the BBC's Flickr account, and powered my laptop's internet connection throughout dozens of live ice hockey commentaries. (Which I think is very much my unique selling point to mobile phones - photos and video, fine, but not many phones get to connect ice hockey broadcasts to the world.)

At work, I've been spending time kitting out the Nokia N95s that are going to Beijing with some of our Olympics reporters. Three of them will be using their phones to contribute to our Olympics blog via Twitter, but that's now almost old-school since it's been done so many times before.

So I've put in some new software which uses the N95's built-in GPS, combined with Twitter, to add the reporter's location to every Twitter update they send back. Then our Olympics blog shows the Twitter post without the location data, and the Olympics map takes that data, pinpoints the right position in Beijing, and displays the Twitter post there.

If this works, it'll be fantastic. And if we were doing this in Britain, on a UK mobile phone network, there wouldn't be much of an "if" because it's all been tested here.

But we're not, we're doing it from Beijing, and whether the GPS, the phone network and Lord-knows-what-else will fail on us, who knows? So if it's all a bit quiet on the Twitter front when the Olympics is under way, you will know I'm barking instructions down the phone from London to technophobe journalists in China.

Right. A moment of honesty here.

Since it became my day job to put together beautifully crafted pieces of literature for the consumption of the world, I have come home every night thoroughly drained of the ability to do so here.

Gone are the days when I could string together a golden soliloquy based purely on people interrupting me while reading on a train. (And by God, that was nearly five years ago!)

Back then, I had bog all else to do except carry on reading or write twelve thousand words on the subject of monasteries. Understandably, weaving intricate weblog tales from the tiniest minutiae took precedence.

Interesting things still happen to me. (Shut up, the train thing was interesting.) I see a million things each day that, I swear, I could make sing on this blog if I hadn't expended all that creative juice finding out where Blanka Vlasic trains. (In an old factory premises in Croatia. Full profile forthcoming next week in The Other Place.)

So from this moment forth I'm swapping tactics. I'm not going to try to make every post a multimedia extravaganza, where each paragraph earns itself as much premeditation as an Elizabethan sonnet.

I'm just going to go for it, old-school stream-of-consciousness style. (With the occasional multimedia extravaganza. I have just bought a funky new tripod for my camcorder and I'm damned if you're not going to sit there and enjoy the consequences.) And I'm also putting bits of bold in so you can skip ahead when you get bored, and see what I'm going to yap on about next.

Here we go then. For starters I've just eaten the toughest steak since the dawn of time, and I refuse to accept the blame for that. Granted, my steak-cooking ability is still in its infancy, but there was some gristle going on back there which nigh on prematurely removed my wisdom teeth.

How do you spot a steak that's going to do that in the shops? I just see a steak, and it looks like a lovely steak, and in the trolley it goes. Supermarkets, strangely, don't flag up the gristly ones, yet I'm increasingly suspicious as to why this one was alone on the shelf when I picked it up. Clearly, everybody else knew something I didn't. I am going to have to mug up on steak and properly survey the scene next time. A steak-out, if you will.

Meanwhile, it is becoming increasingly difficult to actually get into the BBC. And I don't mean jobs-wise, although I must at this point applaud one of my friends for some delightfully helpful work on Facebook earlier.

A former colleague changed their status message to suggest they had just left the BBC. Naturally I was intrigued and wanted to know more, but I'd feel incredibly unkind rocking up and plainly asking: "So, were you sacked?"

Happily, my good Dutch friend - who matches blow for blow the subtlety and tact of Desktop Keeley - not only chose to ask the question (in slightly more polite fashion, granted), but chose to ask it on the good man's wall.

He responded on hers, and now the full chain of events is out there for all their mutual friends to see. Mystery solved! Great work Dutch lady.

Where was I? (I'm enjoying this new approach already, even if you're not.) Ah yes, getting into the BBC. Try getting into Television Centre while you can, because every day it's becoming more difficult to find a way in.

On Wednesday one of the two turnstiles I usually use was cordoned off. By Thursday, the other one had gone as well, with a sign inviting me to use main reception instead.

Now the revolving door outside main reception has given up the ghost - so the side doors are being pressed into use. A door a day is failing at the home of the Beeb. At this rate, by the middle of the Olympics I'll be scaling the walls of the multi-storey car park just to reach my desk.

And I'll probably be doing it in the dark, because we are switching to full Olympics mode now. There is a special rota which kicks in on Monday, notable because yours truly finds himself with the novelty of night shifts.

Next week I am eased in gently with 6am starts but, come the first weekend of the Games, I will be found arriving in the office (covered in grazes from the perimeter fence, no doubt) at midnight, and not departing til 10am.

I'm not complaining, I hasten to add. Let us not lose sight of the fact that I am being paid to document an Olympic Games, which is about as nice as it gets. But I've no idea how to handle my sleep patterns.

I am given two days between day shifts and night shifts. For example, I might finish at 4pm on Thursday, and be leaving the house to go to work at 11pm on Friday night. When do I sleep?! If I sleep at the normal hour, I'll be leaving the house just as I'm expecting to head to bed. The best suggestion I can see is to head straight home on Thursday and try to sleep immediately, wake up at about 3am, stay awake until 5pm Friday, grab another six hours, and hope for the best.

Who needs Beijing for Olympic jet lag?

PS Hello to Nuttycow, who very kindly linked here earlier, promising things like "new" and "interesting". Frank feedback about my attempts to hit either of those targets can be directed to the comments. Nuttycow, you may like to know, is as good with cupcakes as I am with steak.

This means to reflect, apparently. A tagalong adverb. I won't tell you in which language (because that would give away who's expression it is) but anyway. It's funny, I've been back for five months now - how is it August now, everyone, btw? - and I think I'm just about settled. Life straight, life good, life sorted. Perhaps need to be around in London a little more, but that occur over time.

Anyway, on thought and reflection, I've received Oxford's latest alumni campaign. "Oxford Thinking". A very swish, but readable, brochure advertises the need for Oxford to obtain funds in order to "carry on thinking" in order to secure the investment of future generations. I can't agree more - and I think I shall be digging deep in my pocket to support the cause. It's an inspiring brochure; I confess I haven't thought much about what it means to have been at Oxford over the past few years but now, four three years on and about to qualify and enter the real world (not sure what the last three years have been about) I'm grateful for the start that it gave me in life. I've been doing some work with a student who has just studied for her GCSEs, supporting her in her future choices (one of which is Oxbridge) and it has made me realise that we do have a duty to path the way ahead for the future scholars etc.

Another random thought: I only found out at the weekend - after visitng Chartwell, home of Winston Churchill (awful house, beautiful gardens and views) that he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The things you learn.