All of this week and last week I'm working at a client's office in west London. So I've been away from the sanctuary of our office now for a while. At my usual office I have bought some nice Twinings Earl Grey tea bags. Definitely a favorite of mine.

When I started working at this office last week I had to resort to a difference tea that tastes less good. The first couple of cups were all a disappointment but addiction to caffeine probably pulled me back into the kitchen for more cups as the days got on. I drink about 4-5 cups per day and at this stage I don't even remember what good tea tastes like. I actually enjoy this cheap tea just as well.

Because one drinks such vast amounts of tea the taste just becomes what it is and it's only when you change from a quality tea to a cheap tea that you notice the difference. The question is then, as long as you stick to the same tea does it really matter if you drink fancy Earl Grey or cheap industrial tea? Surely the health factor is negligible but the price difference isn't thus going for a cheaper tea would be smarter? And by drinking cheap tea, when you a precious afternoon tea at the Ritz you're going to enjoy the tea even more.

Or should I be stoned and lynched for wasting thinking time on this?

This just arrived in my inbox:

 From: Carmen <tkunpgdng@jumpy.it>
 Subject: metting you

 Hi there lovely,
 This kind of oppcortunity comes ones in a life. I don't want
 to miss it. Do you? I am coming to your palace in few days
 and I though may be we can meet each other. If you don't mind
 I ccan send you my picture. I am a girl.
 You can correspond with me using my email eh@freemailserv.com

If that's just plain spam, how does the spammer intend to benefit from this? They're not going to sell any porn or dodgy medicine on an email address are they?

If the evil spammer intends to catch horny idiots who reply and so keep a list of people interested, aren't there easier ways than having to do it this way?

Or is this just a weird girl who tries to make contact. If so, I'm afraid that I don't live in a palace. I live in a flatshare in Shoreditch.

Here at Fry-IT we use timesheets, like so many other companies, to track the time we spend on each client project. Despite being a very "web modern" company we still don't use a web application to do this. What we use is a python script that I wrote that uses raw_input() to get the details in on the command line. The script then saves all data in a big semicolon separated CSV file and is stored in cvs. This works quite well for us. It's in fact all we need in terms of actually entering our times which is usually very easy to forget.

But, here's an idea for a timesheet tracker that will not guarantee but will really help in not forgetting to fill in your timesheets. The idea is that you have a web application of some sort that is able to send out emails to registered individuals. These emails will be sent at (a configurable time) the end of the work day when you're about to leave for the day. You might have seen this before on other timesheet tracker applications; it's not new. What is new is that the email would contain lots of intelligent URLs that when clicked fills in your timesheets for that day.

It's possibly a bit late for a new years resolution but I have had to think about it and here are my new year resolutions for 2006:

• Computers Redo my whole personal website in Zope3
• Work Increase my income by a third

Wish me luck! :)

I stumbled across this at work the yesterday and I'm still not sure what it should be. This is how I found it written by our Britain-born client:

If your e-mail address or mobile number have changed since the last time, please let us know.

Does that sound right? Or more important, is it correct even if it doesn't sound right? How about:

If your e-mail address or mobile number has changed since the last time, please let us know.

It could be that both e-mail address and mobile number are now different. Therefore both of these things have changed. However, it's unlikely in general that either change. It's then also extremely unlikely that both have changed. In most cases, if there is a change, there is only one change.

Have you ever searched Google for something obvious like "news", "software" or "internet"? I have, but doing it felt very original.

Before reading on (unless it's too late) to guess what you'd find on the top spot of a Google search if you search for "news".

Ok, here are the results.

I turn 25 today. Wahoo for me! If you feel extra generous there's always my Amazon wish list

Those who know me well know that I have a problem remembering birthdays. I still don't know why this part of my brain is not functioning but it's often an embarrassing problem. Now here's an attempt to solve that problem:

http://www.BirthdayAlarm.com/dob/23390136a996018394b362

Clicking the link should ask you for your name and birthday. That way you'll automatically be added on my birthday reminder calendar. Thank you.

Here are some things I want to buy. It's all reasonable prices and all from my favourite online shop ebuyer.

Asus 4x DVD DUAL /R/RW IDE BURNER - OEM (Pioneer DVR-106)
Price: £71.67 inc VAT
A 4X DVD writer with 11 5-star reviews

Fuji A205S 2mp CCD 3x Zoom Digital Camera
Price: £93.99 inc VAT
Only a 2 megapixel camera but also under £100. (I can get the "3.2Mp model" for an extra £40) 4 5-star reviews

Maxtor MaXLine Plus II 250gb 7200rpm 8mb Cache IDE-Ultra/133 OEM
Price: £169.01 inc VAT
250Gb and 8MB cache as a secondary disk. I've already filled my 160Gb disk less 20Gb. 7 5-start reviews Worth noting that I can get Western Digital disk with same specs from Redstar.co.uk for £35 less.

Buying this DVD-writer might mean that I won't be able to burn CDs. But the purpose of getting a DVD-writer is to be able to make backups of films I download. I would also to throw out my existing DVD-reader/CD-RW.

Today I took a little nap after breakfast. Actually I lied down to read and fell asleep. The interesting thing is that I got trapped in my own dream. Twice!

I woke up, walked to the kitchen, met the cleaning lady who comes in once every two weeks. Had a quick chat with her but she didn't at all look like Maureen. Ah well, I thought, I'm still dreaming. Cute.

Then I got up and switched of the music on my computer by stopping on WinAmp, but nothing happened! So I turned down the volume completely on the loudspeaker, still nothing happened!

Now I got worried. I'm still dreaming and I don't want to do so. How do I get out? I started slapping my face with both hands and shake my head and shortly I felt my consciousness taking over again. When I woke up I was hyped with fear and odd thoughts of what had happened.

This has never happened before, so it's worth writing about on my website :)