Steve Litchfield

If you wondered why this blog had gone quiet, it's because our family moved house . And, like everyone else who's not a habitual house mover, we underestimated the task. How two adults and one child can accumulate 120 cartons of 'stuff', in addition to furniture, bikes and the rest, is beyond me. We thought we had our belongings fairly well pruned down, but it seems not! Anyway, we moved on Wednesday and are about 60% through the unpacking process. There goes Christmas! Tip no. 1: Don't move house. Ever. Tip no. 2: If you absolutely have to, throw out your junk before you move. And then go through your stuff again and give away all the charity shop items before , etc. Repeat and rinse! You won't regret it come moving day...

OK, so £250 (or $350 in the USA) is a huge amount to spend on a toy, but Pleo is halfway from toy to pet. And a pet that won't moult, poo or cost a fortune down the vets. Or eat you out of house and home. Pleo is a robotic dinsoaur and I present my Pleo review here . Summary, cute, moderately cuddly and not that great a walker. 8-)

Ever wanted to actually 'see' atoms? Well, now you can, thanks to the world's first "Transmission Electron Aberration-corrected Microscope" . Below, you're looking at Germanium atoms. Wow. Just wow.

Apparently, YouTube video ads are now linked in through Google AdSense. I'm really not sure if I can get my head round what will be served up, so consider this an experiment. Here we go.... Watch the latest videos on YouTube.com Hmm... no videos found? Maybe it's still early days. I think the idea of video ads is OK, but I'm a little sceptical about how much page space the player is going to take up - web pages should be about their primary content, not the ads!

What have Star Wars, the Apple iPhone and Brain Training for the Nintendo DS got in common? They all buck the rule that sequels suck. Star Wars 2 (or 5 if you're counting George Lucas style) - "The Empire Strikes Back" was arguably the best of the Star Wars movies, while the Apple iPhone v2 has yet to be formally announced but you can bet your last cotton-pickin' dollar that it's going to be vastly better featured than the original. And now we have More Brain Training on the Nintendo DS and it's not just better than the original, it's light years better. To have gone from average to outstanding in one version jump is very impressive. Maybe they should have called it 'Much Much More Brain Training'?

Now this is what I like to see - it's midwinter in the UK and, after weeks of rain and wind, we get this as the week's forecast: Who cares about the cold, it's THE SUN, BABY!