From the Cardiacs website:

As some of you have no doubt become aware, Tim Smith, the stalwart front man of your beloved CARDIACS has fallen foul of ill health.

In order to quash any rumours and idle tittle-tattle amongst the faithful we find it appropriate at this time to furnish you with the necessary information to perhaps remove the worried furrows from the brows of the more hysterical amongst you..

On 25th June Tim collapsed and found himself the unfortunate victim of, ironically, a cardiac arrest. Thanks to the skill and dedication of those heroes of the streets, the paramedic service he was speedily ensconced within the caring hands of the National Health Service where he was treated by expert medical staff and thankfully he is now making a recovery. There is no longer any danger to his life and he is improving every day though we must caution that there is a long road ahead.

Needless to say we are sure you all wish him a speedy recovery and in keeping with our reputation as the caring concern, THE ALPHABET BUSINESS CONCERN will soon be facilitating a method of sending him your personal messages of goodwill on our Web site www.cardiacs.com which is sure to cheer both him and his fellow CARDIACS no end.

Needless to say, all further information will be generously furnished by THE ALPHABET BUSINESS CONCERN as and when we see fit and we hasten to add that YOUR LOYALTY DEMANDS the utmost respect for his nearest and dearest and that no attempts to gather any more information be made of them during this most fretful of times.

With respect

THE ALPHABET BUSINESS CONCERN

Blimey, poor Tim.

"Actress Patsy Kensit has said she was so upset to find her grandfather was a criminal on TV show Who Do You Think You Are? she stopped washing her hair."

Right.

Adriana and Alec at Alan's birthday party in Swansea. She's got a whole head full of brains and some very interesting ideas, which are now wedged in my head too. Damn her.

"Careful now!"

"Down with this sort of thing!"

Also reminded of a parochial character from (I think) something by Le Guin, who, when asked what the People From Over There were really like, replied with a line along the lines of "They are black and evil! I have never seen one!"

"Hey, she looks just like Zoe Wanamaker!"

"So does that make [Ian's face-customiser software] a Zoe Wanamakermaker?"

If only I had a brain. I was up here till 5 this morning, fixing bugs but mainly sitting around waiting for builds to be done. Our current project has enough data to cheerfully fill a DVD, so builds take some time. Waking up this afternoon I turned on the TV news to find that I seemed to have slipped into an alternate reality - the top stories were:

• Karadzic found and arrested (surely his whereabouts were more or less an open secret in Serbia, just no-one had the inclination or guts to go after him?)
• Major breakthrough against prostate cancer
• Fuel prices actually going down
• Mugabe and Tsvangirai shaking hands and signing stuff

In other words, all Good News. When was the last time that happened? Things seem to be back to normal now.

And we saw:

• KotoGo - Japanese koto playing in a jazz idiom, but to be honest we could have done with less of the guitar.
• Brigyn - lovely little gig, and an awesome version of Cohen's Hallelueia in Welsh.
• Cowbois Rhos Botwnnog - good, but better last year - Mrs Glaw works better at speed.. Odd to see Gwyneth Glyn rocking out with them.
• Ember - lovely many-tinted folk from this Welsh/American duo and their Dutch percussionist.
• 9Bach - bloody excellent daring interpretations of classic melancholy Welsh ballads, fronted by the ethereally lovely Lisa Jên Brown.
• Johnny Dickinson - fine slide guitar blues from Northumbria

As usual, we didn't spend much time on the Marian itself.

if(mFOVMul != mFOVMul)
{
mFOVMul = 1.0f;
}

In other words, if a variable isn't equal to itself, set it to 1. Bet that doesn't happen often. UPDATE: Sean, weirdly I think you're absolutely right. It's a bit revolting though, why not just initialise the value?

Yes, I have been playing with the Flickr API. Why do you ask?

Right, let's see if:

• Russell T presses the Reset Button and it all turns out to be an alternate reality, timeline or dream or something
• Donna Noble (Noble Lady?) turns out to be Timelordy and somehow sacrifices herself to become the next regeneration (while hopefully leaving it Tennant)
• The Doctor's Hand-in-a-Jar saves the day

Somehow I still think it's going to be Tennant. As Lawrence Miles points out, Big Russ would never let "It's starting!" be Tennant's last words, and regenerations have traditionally always been different - this one's so far identical to Ecclestone.

UPDATE: well, 2 and 3 pretty much, but some nice twists. Have to admit that Tennant does the 'tragic figure doomed to travel space the time' rather well, and Donna's apotheosis and exit was well done. But Rose getting the cheap knockoff Doctor for her very own was a bit much, and for God's sake don't put Martha and Mickey in Torchwood. Please.

Blimey, the Tabernacle in Mill Street (you know - huge disused chapel near Trefechan Bridge, rather ominous looking) has been gutted by fire! Looks like it might have to come down. Probably someone squatting there lit a candle; and there's a lot of wood there..

Been listening to quite a bit of stuff from the 80's lately, and I'd just like to mention that the following albums are all excellent:

• Infected, The The
• Oil and Gold, Shriekback
• English Settlement, XTC
• The Flat Earth, Thomas Dolby

This story's got legs, hasn't it? If you haven't heard it, the Welsh Assembly Culture Minister announced the wrong winner at the Wales Book of the Year awards ceremony on Tuesday night, despite reading it off a piece of paper - Tom Bullough, who thought he'd won, got as far as the stage before he was told it was actually Dannie Abse. Mind you, Bullough's blog has now exceeded its bandwidth, so maybe he's got some useful publicity out of this. Probably not enough to make up for the public humiliation, mind.

I was at this ceremony last year, as our friend Robin was one of the contenders, and I remember thinking it was unusual in being one of the few awards left where the winners didn't know in advance. I had no idea that not even the presenter knew either - I'm sure that'll change now.

But what on earth did that card say? "The winner isn't TOM BULLOUGH! He's one of the runners-up along with Nia Wyn. The actual winner is Dannie Abse."

Wish I had my proper camera with me...