The amount of revenue generated by my Google ads (below, right) is woefully unspectacular. Based on the average revenue generated each day, it would take me 21,074 years and 297 days to become a millionaire if I were relying on AdSense. And that's just a dollar millionaire; if I wanted to be a Sterling millionaire, it would take just under 67,000 years.

Ah well, with the state of pensions in this country... *digs in ribs, waggles eyebrows suggestively*

Those of you wedded to the joys of XML (viz, "phwoar, look at the tags on that") will be delighted to know that Receding Hairline's RSS feed now behaves itself, embedded photos and everything. You'll find the link to the feed below the ads in the right-hand column. Suffice to say that the issue was all down to User Error, but many thanks to RapidWeaver's developer, Daniel Counsell, for diagnosing and solving the problem without me even asking him.

(If anyone wants the vector RSS logo above, use the Contact link at the right to send me an email; I'll do an orange XML one too when I get a chance.)

The young lady and I spent a large chunk of Saturday afternoon walking around a blustery Greenwich park, cardboard cup of hot chocolate in hand. The low sun was gorgeous, and gave every surface a burnished metallic gleam. From the hill of the observatory, you can see a big loop of the Thames as it curves around the Isle of Dogs, and the upthrusting of the Canary Wharf complex looks like something from a 50s science fiction illustration. A few more photos from the park on my Flickr page.

Hands up who remembers the iBook G3 logic board problem? You can't see it, but my hand is up. That's partly because the first laptop I bought was an iBook G3. With that problem.

As was the one my brother bought.

Ditto my parents.

Ditto Nik.

Ditto many, many others.

The problem was this: Apple manufactured a batch of iBooks which later developed problems in their logic boards which caused them to fail. The affected computers suffered from:

• Scrambled or distorted video
• 
  
• Appearance of unexpected lines on the screen
• 
  
• Intermittent video image
• 
  
• Video freeze
• 
  
• Computer starts up to blank screen

How do I remember so clearly? Because Apple did finally admit the problem, and the FAQ about the logic board exchange problem – wherein, after interminable wrangling, the company will replace the faulty components in affected iBooks – and the information about the programme, which needed to be extended to deal with all the faulty models, is still online, here.

All well and good, you might say. But no.

Today, sick of all the interoperability problems around showing Mac-authored presentations on Windows computers, my wife took her iBook G4 (that's G4, mind, the next generation of iBooks) into work with her to present.

I got a panicked phone call this morning from her: “My Mac isn't working; the screen is just showing weird colours and lines.” I tried a few things – remote troubleshooting is always tricky – but it sounded ominously hardware-related. And tonight, when I examined the laptop, I was struck by the similarity of symptoms with the good old iBook G3 issue. I saw the scrambled video; I saw the computer starting up to a blank screen.

And what do I find with a little research on the problem? It's all happening all over again. (Also, see here)

The similarities are just too strong. The symptoms are identical, with a new addition; as with my wife's laptop, many users are reporting that on startup, there are no chimes, and the fans run at full. Pressing down on the left of the unit – something to do with the graphics card, apparently – can obviate the problem; many users are now running their 'portables' successfully by clamping it to the desk to apply this pressure. Go figure.

Consequently, and with a wry smile or irony, I currently have my PC sitting on top of her laptop – on the floor – as I make a backup of the information on the hard disk using FireWire Target Disk Mode.

But so what, right? If the logic board problem was fixed for the iBook G3s, Apple will do it for the G4s, right? Wrong. Apple has not yet admitted that there is an endemic problem, despite much evidence to the contrary.

In our house, this isn't disastrous. I have a few iterations of backups for my main Mac and her's, and computers are numerous enough that she will get work done without too much inconvenience. But what of the pleasure her iBook brings brought? Internet radio, blogging from the sofa, doing the weekly shop in bed on a Sunday morning; all this is denied her by an apparent intrinsic flaw in a piece of technology she invested in, in good faith.

But dammit, even that's not the point. Speaking not as a journalist but as a customer of Apple's, I find it fantastical both that it can continue to manufacture products with apparent inherent flaws and that when such mistakes are made, not immediately and with no fuss do everything to rectify the problem and placate its customers.

After all, my own main computer is the same model – 12in 800MHz G4 – implicated in user reports, and it's surely only a matter of time before it too fails.

It's late, I have a hundred and one other things to do, and the last damned thing I need is for technology to fail. It's not fair on me, and it sure as hell ain't fair on my wife.

Over Christmas, and with absolutely no prior warning or apparent reason, my iPod died. I was quite proud of it. I bought it not long after the launch of the third-gen model, and was inordinately proud of its slinky shape and then-vast 20GB storage capacity. Over the years it acquired a distinct patina, and as I wrote in the magazine recently, I discovered that attacking the metal back plate with a sanding block gave it a lovely brushed aluminium effect which completely disguised the scratches.

But now it is no more. I just went to switch it on and the hard disk made the most gut-wrenching scraping sound. While I could technically have replaced the hard disk, the iPod was BER – beyond economical repair; a new iPod could cost less. So today it shuffled off this mortal coil in style: by being dissected. Above you see a quick camphone shot from the inside of the front casing showing the plethora of capacitive sensors which determine where on the scroll wheel your finger is.

It will be immortalised on the printed page in due course laid out with all the reverence of a pharaoh, but it the meantime I am sans iPod. I could in theory afford to buy a new one, but I can't quite justify the expenditure so close to Christmas. I may have to wait till March for my birthday, but that does mean three months without my music collection, In Our Time podcast and audiobooks. :'(

My folks sent me some photos of my cat as she eagerly eyes up the excess fat on the dripping tray of a George Foreman-esque grill. Apparently she was taking surreptitious swipes at it with her paw, and licking off the tasty meat extracts. Beats Whiskas any day of the week. Click here for more of the pictures.

Happy 2006 to all!