Been to my sister's for my birthday. Got some cheap CDs (3 for £5) from “That's Entertainment” in Eldon Square, just off Northumberland Street. Highly recommended!

Been supporting my key worker. She was running a course at University so I attended two days so her students could ask someone with experience of mental health problems how things are. The students liked it. And I had to get out of bed at an impossibly early hour.

HMV is closing down. I will miss it – need to find a new place to buy new music. Amazon perhaps?

iPod is getting full. Have found that by using RhythmBox to convert CDs into ogg files instead of mp3 files saves about 10% of disc space. The version of RhythmBox I'm running at the moment is a bit cranky – sometimes it fails to get track names from the Internet – and it crashed today as well. I really wish there was a native iTunes for Linux.

Been refurbishing some computers for use in Contact and the community. Am trying to help local Windows experts to learn Linux. And I also want to learn how to fix Ethernet cables.

Am currently reading the first part of “C++ GUI Programming with Qt 4 (2e)” when I can find time – there always seems to be plenty to do so I'm not making as much progress as I would have liked. Hope to have the basics learnt before the 4th edition of “The C++ Programming Language” is published.

I also need to find time to resume GMing my Traveller campaign sometime soon.

Have started having salad everyday. And a banana. And have started reading the Good Housekeeping “Bumper Student Cookbook”. We'll see what happens:)