It has been my intention for a while to tidy up my site a bit. One thing I wanted was to have some content at the top level of my domain, i.e. bagofspoons.net. Well now there is something there. It will act as my actual homepage that says something about me. It will also hold some less visible data for use by various semantic services. So have a look and let me know what needs improving.

It was pointed out to me this week that some of my internal links do not work, particularly when you view a post on its own page. I tried using relative links, but that obviously has issues. I may not update those posts as Pyblosxom will consider them to be new if I do, but I will be more careful in future.

I've finally written a few notes for my Green page. I hope to add to it in time. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

Over on the booklist I have just added my review of a book on the mind and music.

Elsewhere I have posted my review of Sweeney Todd and notes about my audio collection. I could do those here, but they would not reach their intended audiences as well. Only a few of my contacts subscribe to the feed from this site. I need to educate others in the benefits of RSS.

Malc gave myself and Rob a lift down to Stevenage through the fog. Lots of folk there. Interesting stuff was Mike's EPOS that James helped to get Ubuntu running on and David demonstrated some apps that he's been writing. One was a sort of remote-controlled presentation system that looks promising, but played up on the demo. I keep meaning to post my little Python scripts that I've written on this site in case they are of use to anyone.

I'll just include a few links to things that I brought up:

• Better than free - Interesting article on what people will pay for when copies of music/software/etc are free
• Chicken Chicken Chicken - silly video
• Local News TV - A community news service for Bedfordshire. I'm in one of their videos at a singing workshop.

You can find my bookmarks at del.icio.us. If you join then feel free to subscribe to my feed and I may well do likewise with yours. I find it a great way to discover interesting stuff. I'm into social sites that are actually useful and not too invasive. I did get a few people to join the Herts LUG Mugshot Group, but there's not much happening there are only a couple of us have active feeds. I may have another go at the Wordpress site that Dave set up. I may try and replicate the exiting site so we can see if it's worth migrating. Let me know if you want to play with it.

A while back I started having problems with the windscreen washers on my Zafira. Something was blocking it. I found that I could pull the pipe off the washer and blow down it. That sometimes cleared it, but not permanently. Then one time I went to do this and snapped a bit off the nozzle. I just got a new one that cost all of UKP2.30, but fitting it was not easy. Basically you have to destroy the old one by hacking bits off it as it pushes into a hole, but will not come back out. I couldn't find any details of this on-line, so perhaps this information will help someone else.

I'm guessing that the blockage was due to something in the reservoir, but that is fairly inaccessible in the wing of the car. I thought I would fix that by siphoning it out. I managed to get some lovely bright green screenwash in my gob, but managed using a bit of hosepipe. I did it a few times for good measure and, fingers crossed, it seems to be okay now. So it cost me a couple of quid, a chunk of my time and the skin of a couple of knuckles. I just don't have the time and money to take it to a mechanic.

I don't think too much of interest has been going on in my life lately. I have had some use of the Wii wireless to send things back and forth to our friends. My computer audio problems persist. I think I will have to reinstall Kubuntu and accept that I will have to set a load of stuff up again, but at least most user settings survive as my home partition will still be there. The problem tends to be finding a spare few hours to do it all.

5 points if you can name the comedy song the title is from, minus 10 is you have to Google it.

I have finally entered the wireless networking age. Although I ran CAT5 cable throughout my house when I built it four years ago I have yet to make use of it. All my computers have been in the study and within reach of my router. My old router was playing up a bit and I needed a way to get the Wii on-line. A good friend had a spare Linksys WRT54GS that he has passed on to me. These seem to be highly rated, partly because you can replace the firmware. I have looked at some of the alternatives, but I don't see any reason to change it just yet. My networking needs are fairly basic. It has the usual web-based set-up screens with loads of options. I made the essential changes to the passwords and it seems to be working, including the Wii which is in the next room. This configuration will also give me more options for where I use my work laptop when I have it here.

I know I could open up my network for others to use, but I'm not sure that there would be much demand. The neighbouring houses are not too close and those who need internet probably already have it. I would have to be very sure of not compromising my own network security before taking such steps.

Getting the Wii on-line was just a matter of finding the router and setting the password. This now gives me the following possibilities:

• Linking to friends. This is the main reason as we have friends with Wiis. We can send them messages and move our Mii characters across.
• Shopping channel. Nintendo allow you to buy various games from older platforms to download using Wii Points. You can buy these or you get some when you register products. I have a few, but they are not showing up after I logged in via the Wii. How do I get my points and what should I buy? I could get the Opera browser for 500, but some more games might be welcome.
• Forecasts and news. Fairly basic weather and news pages with some fancy graphics. We can get more information via the Freeview text service. The problem with these if that they seem to need the Wiiconnect24 service to be running in standby mode, but I can't see why they should. I don't really want it on all the time as it will use more power and there may be a small risk of overheating. I don't plan on leaving the router on all the time anyway.
• Network games. Thos ought to be something big, but there do not seem to be many games that allow for network games. A few can swap scores and levels, but that's not too exciting. There's a new chess game, but I find it hard to get worked up about that.

The other recent networking change is that I now have 20Mb broadband instead of 4Mb, but am not noticing much difference. My rare big downloads may be quicker, but general internet seems much the same. A reason for changing was that I also get more free landline calls that may actually save me some money on the phone bill.

I just heard a newsreader refer to the 'Information Superhighway'. Does anyone say that apart from newsreaders and politicians?