Hot on the heels of the Panic boys' discovery that their graphics were being purloined and used on other sites without their permission comes my discovery that the Donate via PayPal button graphic you'll find on this site's Tutorials page has been nicked by a Mac consultancy company which shall for the moment remain nameless. (I ain't stopping you Googling the text shown above, mind you.)

I just happened across the site randomly – the graphic isn't being referenced from my servers – and sent the company a little note congratulating them on their support for the Mac community, but pointing out that nicking a graphic I created without asking permission is at best a little unprofessional. I have yet to receive a reply – I'd hate to be a customer in urgent need of assistance.

If they'd asked me, I'd have said go right ahead, with my blessing, but I hadn't released the graphic under Creative Commons or any other GNU licence, and it's a little cheeky just to lift it verbatim. Am I being too much of a Western-capitalist-consumery square?

In other news, having been paid on Friday, the young lady and I breakfasted at Carluccio's this morning – mmm! – and I bought myself a new wallet to replace the one which had been inadvertently chucking in the bin alongside the remains of a sweet and sour king prawn. We wandered around the deserted and very pretty marina complex at Canary Wharf, taking some photographs, before ducking into the UGC there to watch X-Men 3.

Finally, if you're looking to waste a little more time on the web, check out the highest viaduct ever built; details on designing information systems to keep people away from nuclear dump sites; a design for a dog bowl to stop your mutt from, pardon the pun, wolfing down his food; what happens to salt grains when you vibrate the table they're on at various frequencies; the review of a restaurant recommended to me by Ruth; and finally, this most adorable picture on a cat on an iBook, taken from the Cats love Macs Flickr pool.

I love to cook almost as much as I like to eat. Above, for your visual delight, is today's lunch: roast chicken with lemon zest and parma ham, served with peperonata – potatoes, peppers, onion and garlic, roasted with rosemary. Damn, it was fine. It may be some time before I rise from this sofa, mind you. Medic!

I could have sworn I'd stepped onto a 453 on my way home from work today, but at one point I looked up from my book to discover I was cruising through an unfamiliar urban landscape. I thought we were just on diversion, but it gradually dawned on me that I was actually riding a number 12, en route to Dulwich.

I hopped off and started walking through Burgess Park; every day I pass by what now turns out to be a minute corner of the park on my commute, so thought I'd be minutes away from my normal route.

Burgess Park is huge – 113 acres, apparently. Unusually, it was created by actually clearing away housing, industry and transport infrastructure following its proposal in 1943, and it's a genuinely lovely, beautifully-landscaped bit of land. Right in the middle – or, more likely, just on the periphery, since I don't think I have yet quite absorbed the size of the park – you come across the above structure. It's a kiln, built to provide mortar – by converting lime to quick lime – for a housing boom in London, and was still in use up to the 60s according to information panels embedded in the pavement. Who knew?

My journey from there took me through Southwark, Peckham, Nunhead and, finally, Lewisham and New Cross. Some very lovely houses and mini-parks – Southwark in particular was very picturesque. If only I could be bothered moving...

The BBC inadvertently mistook a cabbie at the studio there to collect technology expert Guy Kewney for technology expert Guy Kewney, and interviewed him live about the recent Apple vs Apple court case.

You know that dream you have sometimes when you're on stage but can't remember your lines? That's what it felt like for this guy. I know that for sure because of his expression as he is introduced. Kewney himself was watching the monitors in reception.
You can imagine how it happened, though – some runner walks out into the holding area, calls "Guy Kewney?" and the cabbie there to collect him understandably answers. I wonder if he went through makeup? He is wearing a lapel mic – you might think that would have given the game away, but in television folks are always bustling around you, pinning something here, pressing something into your hand there, hustling you through this doorway or other.

Play it again. There must be seven different expressions flit across his face as he's introduced.

The BBC covered the story itself in News Watch; for more, watch this video.

ETA: Oh bugger: turns out the real story isn't quite as entertaining. Ah well, I shall just chose to disregard this new evidence.

In my current embarrassed financial condition, I'm on a diet of noodles and treats scrounged from the ever-replenished stocks of junk over on the art and production desk. To add insult to injury, I keep seeing fun things I'd like to buy.

Top of the list are these rather lovely, if a little overtly whimsical, shadow oil lamps called Lumen. Very pretty. Then there's the invisible bookshelves which just look super groovy. I don't actually want one of the new three-wheeled Piaggio scooters, but they look interesting. Me, I'd have one of the proper retro ones.

But if you're in the mood for gift-giving, please don't trouble me with these mere bagatelles. I want a yacht. But not any yacht. I want one that looks like any other yacht, but which is actually a submarine. Luckily, such things do exist. Scrap all my ambitions hitherto; from now on, I dedicate my life to captaining one of these little beauties. (Have a look at the PDF; you can buy one too and we'll, like, race along the mid-Atlantic trench, OK?)

According to the census from 1898-99, the flat in which we currently live was occupied by folks classified on the social spectrum as 'Mixed; some comfortable, others poor.' Plus ça change, eh? Londoners will probably find their houses on there too with a bit of clicking around. Go away now, I have to work...

Hands up who wants to hear a litany of woe? Are you sitting comfortably...

It rained heavily yesterday. Me like sun, me no like rain.

Mrs Receding Hairline* and I both came down with a bout of minor food poisoning and spent the day within easy reach of the khazi.

Due to some spectacularly bad financial management, I'm currently over my overdraft limit. It's 19 days till pay-day. I came away from the reluctant cash machine thinking some rotter must have fraudulated me, guv, but no, apparently I really am this bad with money. Worst of all, Bank of Scotland are the very devil when it comes to bank charges. I did try get in touch to plead for leniency in this regard, but the very nice Scottish wifey calmly refused. Some people would say that threatening to make her life and the life of anyone she has ever cared about a waking nightmare might have been taking things too far, but I disagree. You can't be too nice to these people. Violence and intimidation is the only language they understand. And, in some cases, Urdu.†

My beloved iBook is definitely on its last legs. It crashed twice today – unheard of – taking large chunks of unsaved data with it each time. 'Inconvenient' doesn't begin to describe this. 'Really, really piss-titty-hellhole infuriating' just about begins to describe it, but doesn't quite have the requisite sense of throbbing, homocidal bile to it that I'm feeling right now.

Go to bed, everyone – what are you doing up at this time?


* ...who has a full head of shiny, manageable hair, I'm contractually-obliged to point out.
† This is, I realise, very close to being your actual racism. I edited it out and typed it in again several times over. Let history judge me, I say.

When the weather gets fine, you'll generally find me switching to one of two Summer tipples: Pimms or cider. Here I am clutching a pint of the golden nectar (remember, Coke is the brown nectar) at Thursday's inaugural computer division quiz night.

Now, while the idea of a bunch of computer journalists answering general knowledge questions while swilling beer and eating finger food may sound both repellant and tragic, it was actually a fantastic evening, and I can't wait for the next one. Ironically, the one round in which I think we did least well was the technology round. The questions had been set by some sadist who thought we'd all be well versed in the maximum theoretical refresh rate for DVI-D, and the data throughput of fibre channel. We, um, weren't.

More pictures courtesy of Nik here.

My good lady has a slightly disconcerting habit of rousing herself in the middle of the night – waking me in the process – and calmly uttering 24 carat nonsense. I always forget these gems of insensibility by the morning, so the other night I grabbed my mobile and repeated what she'd just said. Are you ready?

"It's a shame we have to lean against the hurty pain of the doormat"

If anyone would care to hazard a guess as to exactly what might have precipitated this statement – she herself remembers saying it, but has no idea why – we'd be interested to hear. As would the shrink.

In other news, I think my new ambition is to live in Winchester. We visited on Saturday with the wife's endearingly eccentric relatives, and despite having been once before, that first visit was brief and limited to the still pretty main street. This time, however, we wandered much more extensively. The architecture is just fabulous; London has seen such extensive rebuilding, particularly after the great fire, that few ancient buildings remain, but in Winchester – the 10th and 11th Century capital of England – you do feel like you've stepped into a time warp.



Better than this, though, are all the streams, channels and rivers that run through the centre of the town. I find the sound of running water particularly relaxing – Pisces is a water sign, after all, and I can never quite dismiss this whole zodiac bunfight – and the presence of ducklings, no bigger than a baby's fist, valiantly bobbing around in some strong currents, made the scene even more idyllic. More photos from the trip here.