I've found a couple of mighty fine websites - first off there's Yatta which is the most bizarre thing I've seen in a long time. I don't understand it, but it's strangely compelling. Someone actually sent me an explanation of what it's all about - if anyone's interested I may put it up on this site.

Then there's EarthViewer which is definitely worth a look if you have an NVidia 3D gfx card and a broadband connection. I was disappointed about the lack of coverage outside the USA, but looking around at what is there is addictive. Managed to find the Statue of Liberty, had a look at Portland, Oregon (had a meeting with 2 guys from there today) and was even able to count the cars on the interstate! What is interesting is that if you look at the extent of the coverage you'll see they don't have many cities outside the U.S covered, but Baghdad is one of them. (Hmmmm...) I've mailed them and asked how much I would have to pay to get a better look at London, or the whole of the UK. If it's not stupidly expensive I wouldn't mind getting it.

The whole thing reminds me of the (decidedly low-tech in comparison) Microsoft Terraserver. The data is a lot older and coverage is no better, but at least it's free, I suppose.

On the subject of cool 3D toys - Milkdrop is a plugin for Winamp. (I know it's been out for six months, but I haven't had a powerful enough machine to run it until now. That's my excuse anyway) Anyway, it's dead cool.

Our car insurance is up for renewal at the end of the month. Just by doing a bit of shopping around we managed to save in the region of �250! So that was worth doing! It was interesting how egg, Privilege and Direct Line all have the same 'look & feel' (in fact the interfaces are identical). Oh, and their quotes were very similar too.

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I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next man, but this has to be the scariest story I've read in a long time. "Reading air travellers minds and identifying suspicious thoughts"? Why stop there?!

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We had a works outing to Jongleurs on Friday. There were about 30 of us, so it was quite a good crowd. I must say, the quality of the comedians was very good (maybe because they've just recently opened?) and afterwards the club turned into a disco. The DJ was some geezer (Ollie) from the local radio, 2-ten FM (errr.... blank page?) who should have been shot for owning such an offensive record collection. I mean, Vanilla Ice wasn't ever cool, was he? It really was a case of "stick any old shit on, they're all pissed." Even in my drunken stupor I decided enough was enough when ABC by The Jacksons came on. He was just lucky there was no food lying around...

I got my new Pioneer DV-454 DVD player at the weekend. What a great DVD player! It's cheap as chips and has got loads of features (DTS, RGB, optical) but the best bit is the razor-sharp picture. Mmmmm. Can't wait until I upgrade my speaker system to 5.1 to go with the Denon AV amp.

Received a CDR this morning from Focus - it's a replacement disc 3 for Myst III Exile. A load of European users have been experiencing problems but it looks like Focus are willing to sort them out quickly. Respeck

Last night I rebuilt my old Toshiba Portege 7020CT (photo). I'm seriously considering selling it on ebay.co.uk. I saw an IBM Thinkpad 600E on there today for �350, which is more than it's worth, IMO. Thing is, the seller had put it up for �1 No Reserve. It's a gamble... Watch this space.

Almost forgot the flying car link!

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