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!

So many reasons why Google are so great. Superb web searching and general time saving. Great online tools that save you having to worry about local apps. Free spam-free email with unlimited storage, the list goes on and on. But THIS is why Google are so great. Using their might to help save the earth. http://blogs.business2.com/greenwombat/2007/11/googles-green-p.html Investing 100s of millions of dollars, etc. I know they're not the only green company out here, but this sure is one more reason why I love Google!

Maybe it's the fact that there's simply no competition, but TV's X Factor is again a one horse race, and it's been obvious since show 2 of the 10 live finals. Opera-trained Rhydian has been quite stunning, with stage craft, a perfect voice and (seemingly) a humble (yet confident) personality. Add it all up and you get something like this: Quite mesmerising, considering that this was his second performance on a live TV stage ever.

Who does the UK government think it's kidding with the name VAT? Yes, I know it's been around for years, but the name VAT stands for 'Value Added Tax'. Err... adding value on things I buy by making them more expensive? Sounds like a lot worse value to me... At least the Americans and many other countries have the honesty to call it what it is: a sales tax . Now, why on earth did I think of this criticism of the UK government when there's the whole juicy missing 25 million personal Id records saga? Can't think.

This is just so incredibly cool/awesome. The Japanese have stuck a satellite in orbit around the moon, and have released video showing Earth rise and Earth set. The mission arrived at the Moon on 18 October, when it was inserted into orbit at an altitude of roughly 100km. You can watch the Earth rise here , and set here . And yes, the little blue dot in the centre of the screen is OUR ENTIRE PLANET! Very humbling in every respect, physical and spiritual....

Now a really decent portable DAB radio has been something my wife and I have been after for ages. The existing hardware was either too big and heavy or had too small a battery life - but the PURE Move hits the sweet spot in many ways. DAB radios are essentially portable computers and thus are real battery drainers. But PURE have solved the issue by including an internal rechargeable battery, phone style, so no more buying packs of AAA cells and no more lugging around huge mains DAB units. And life on a single charge is excellent, many hours, so this is the best of both worlds. Build quality on the move is great, with a brushed aluminium faceplate and a rubberised back, with a fold out plastic stand to keep the unit at the right playing angle. There are no surprises in the main controls, which look tacky and plasticky but which work very well. DAB reception's very good as well, better than on some mains radios and our biggest complaint by far was the audio quality over the built in ...

I'm fascinated by the process of cell replication gone wrong, that is cancer. And I'm convinced that the human body should be able to work better than it does in avoiding malignant growths of rogue cells. And one of my theories has to do with sleep, when I figure that much of the body's repair and reproductive work goes on. So I was fascinated to read this article from 2003, including the following paras: "The first involves a hormone called melatonin, which the brain churns out during sleep. Melatonin belongs to a class of compounds called anti-oxidants that mop up damaging free-radical compounds. With a disrupted circadian rhythm, the body produces less melatonin and the cell's DNA may be more prone to cancer-causing mutations. The second link lies with a hormone called cortisol, which normally reaches peak levels at dawn then declines throughout the day. Cortisol is one of many hormones that help regulate immune system activity, including the activity of a grou...

Wow. I can't believe I'm up to programme 47 of my Smartphones Show . Viewings per month peaked during the summer at around 90,000, which I'm over the moon about. And, since I'm curious as to how well it'll embed in a blog post here:

Prompted to go back and revisit the Matrix trilogy of films on DVD, I'm still in awe of the special effects in the final movie, Revolutions. Yes, the story could have done with a little pruning in places, but the sheer scale of the battle scenes is ENORMOUS. With hundreds of sentinels, a giant drill and thousands of humans (both real and CGI) all on screen at once and all mixed in with explosions and dirt and grit and dust and all looking incredibly real, I just can't conceive of how they managed to create it, even with the fastest computers in the world and the best programmers. Amazing. Ditto for some of the machine city scenes near the end of the film. If you've never watched the Matrix trilogy then where have you been? Go rent or buy it now!