This apparently means that the 24th of January will be the most depressing day of the year,

Where W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January’s pay day - and T is the time since Christmas. Q is the period since the failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action and do something about it.

I think it’s flawed, what about, DH days till holiday, and TM number of cups of tea made ?

Now Mr Alsop doesn’t have the best of reputations in these parts, not after he tried and failed to build huge blob on the waterfront, but now, he seems to think that people will work in hull and commute to Liverpool to work, in his super city of the north, quite a lot of buildings on sticks here I spot a theme. He truly is a man who thinks out side his box.

It’s finally getting to me, ever morning while making breakfast I often find my self singing the silliest songs (copacabana, ding dong the witch is dead), which I consider to be not to bad, although Ruth does despair when I make the words up. This morning however was a sign, the song I found my self singing, and still can’t get out of my head…..

Fimbles, Fimbles, we’re the Fimbles……

We started Daisy on solid food over the weekend.

the World health organization, and now the government, say you should wait until at least 6 months before starting a baby on solids, but most midwives and health visitors…Will not tell you this is stupid, but agree if you tell them you thinks it’s silly. Besides, Daisy is definitely ready, the reduced sleep and the increased feeding were sure signs.

In general we don’t like the contented little baby book. It’s all the rage, but most first time mums Ruth talks to think it’s scary, and far too regimented. It does give a good guide to what you should do about starting solids, so we are sort of following that.

So far Daisy, has had sweet potato, at first she just looked at us, as if to say “what are you doing?, I was just having some milk?”, but on Sunday she new what was coming, and started lunging for the spoon. Yesterday Ruth went to for lunch with her sister, and Daisy, was trying to get hold of her lunch, I think she’s caught on to this food lark quite quickly.

I’m going through quite a serious bought of gadget envy at the moment, I think it’s just that time of year, especially with all the gadget shows currently on in the US. The news is full of cool things that you must simply have now. The thing is I know, that almost without exception all the things I want wouldn’t actually improve my life by any great strides and would probably in the long run end up gathering dust, so in an effort to just clear the air, and get gadgets out of my head. Here’s the list

• Mac Mini [http://www.apple.com/macmini/]
• Why: What can you say ? Cute isn’t it, You see mac’s have always been pricey, and once you’ve added on a keyboard, mouse and monitor, this still isn’t the cheapest way to get a computer, but it’s sexy, and it comes with iLife, which is it’s biggest selling point, windows has nothing near iLife. It has all the bits (adobe elements, Windows Media player. Dance eJay, Nero), but buying them would cost closer to the price of the Mac mini, and they won’t work as well together as the alive programs.
• Why Not: because it’s a Mac, and I work for a university who primarily have Microsoft all over the place. We have the odd Mac, and we look at the people who use them oddly too. The reality is, I know Windows, I earn a living from Windows, it would drive me mad, if I had to learn all the new stuff, just to play freecell, (does it even have freecell), oh and I don’t need a new computer, my laptop is fine, and we already have three servers.
• DVD Writer
• Why: because DVD is fantastic quality, no more dud VHS tapes, and the newer DVD writers come with DV in so I can archive my Camcorder tapes straight to DVD, oh and they look nice.
• Why Not: we don’t currently, use the Video Recorder, why are we going to suddenly start taping stuff we never watch, just because the picture quality is better? And we only record about two hours of video a year on the camcorder, so it’s no real faf to capture it on the laptop now and again.
• Digital Camera
• Why: aren’t the current batch of digital camera’s tiny and sexy, they look very pretty.
• Why Not: we have a perfectly functional digital camera
• Digital Camcorder
• Why: See digital camera
• Why Not: See digital camera, and we don’t use the one we’ve got!!!

You see it’s all silly, but I’m taken in by people with shiny new toys telling me how great my life would be if I just had cool product X. When in reality, cool product X won’t add anything to my life, except a cool looking box and more packaging to throw away.

Of course all this costs money, and money, is something I would rather spend on food, and fixing the big hole that appeared the roof last night (the insurance company sorting it out!).

So, Daisy has been having trouble getting to sleep, or more precisely, we have had trouble persuading her that she needs to sleep, so last night, during the part where I had give up getting her to sleep, we played with the computer, and Daisy is a natural.

Now being her farther I of course am going to say, that she got the link between pressing the keys on the keyboard and the bit 8-inch letters (Ruth has a big monitor) flashing up on the screen, but that’s only the half of it, so impressed was I with last nights performance, that I decided to show Ruth today, what a wizz daisy is.

sitting Daisy infront of the keyboard, I set up word with a massive font and 500% view, and Daisy takes some but not as much interest as yesterday, and starts hitting random keys, then she locks the PC!, now I have to say, IT professional that I am, it still took me a few minutes to figure out exactly what she was doing, even when she did it again, so Daisy IT Tip number one:

Continuting, on the nerdy theme:

Music to code by; big headphones and it’s great for keeping you in the zone.