They sky was really dramaticly coloured this morning. I managed to take these quick snaps before jumping in the car to go to work.

Woah, what a day it was on Tuesday. I went to London (hence the title of this post) to meet with a new media development and design agency called Outside Line. They do some pretty intresting things on websites for major music artists as well as other corporate media websites.

After that was all over I met up with Jamie and Gabriele who happened to be having a day off work. Sometimes coincidences like that are worth wile. We grabbed a subway and then headed down to Victoria to see if there were any tickets left for the musical Wicked. Jamie managed to get us some seats and then we had a few hours to kill before the show started.

We headed over to Harrods and got a Krispy Kreme donut from the food court before wanding around in the electrical and toy departments.

Jamie and Gabs left some funny pictures on the computers and mobiles that were on display.

We got back to the theatre at 6.30 and headed off to find our seats.

The theatre was fairly empty when we got inside but by the time the show started it was full. The show was really good. It tells the story of the Wizard of Oz from the perspective of the good witch of the north (Glinda) and the wicked witch of the west (Elphaba).

I got the late train back from Paddington, arriving back in Bristol at 1.30am.

Over the weekend I followed the North Bristol Artists trail with Dave, Becky and Rosie. The idea of the trail was that members of North Bristol Artists would open up their houses for the weekend and let the general public in to view the work of talented locals. This included paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, jewlery and many other items.

Becky and Rosie’s mum was exhibiting watercolours at one of the houses. Apparently she was rather chuffed that she had managed to sell a number of pieces. Becky bought a print of a jar of marmite and Rosie bought a small oil painting of a sea at night.

One of the intresting things was nosing around peoples houses. The houses were generally very large with huge bay windows. Some had spectacular views over Bristol with one in St Andrews having a view stretching as far as the Seven bridge.

Finally got my Apple Powerbook back from the repair centre a few weeks ago after several months of repairs. It still have a few issues with it but I had decided to ignore them . They were:

• Two dead pixels on the new screen
• Lid latch still not keeping the lid closed properly
• Laptop no longer sat level on a level surface, it would wobble as you type
• Two inch long scratch on the plastic surrounding the screen

However this weekend I discovered a far more annoying issue with the thing. Basically if you try and plug it into a network using a network cable it wouldn’t stay connected to the network. It would keep losing connectivity unless you wiggled the plug around. I tried different cables, different networks, everything.

So I rang up Apple this week and they have agreed to give me a brand new laptop. Not only are they replacing it, they are upgrading me to their MacBook Pro line of laptops with a 15″ screen, double the hard disk space, double the memory and a faster processor.

The technician asked me if going from a 12″ screen to a 15″ screen would be a problem. Not at all Mr man from Apple, not at all!

My old laptop is being collected later today. Hopefully sometime in the next two weeks I should receive my new one!

You may have already read about my car accident a few months ago. The latest development is that my Uninsured Loss Recovery Company have written to me to tell me that the third party insurance company is now admitting liability for the accident! YES!

This was after I had to draw a diagram of the accident.

However they are disputing the fact that my vehicle had to be written off because the third party driver made a statement to say that they couldn’t see any damage to either car.

This isn’t suprising as I couldn’t see any damage at the time either – it was only after when I got the car home that I realised that, after having opened the boot, I couldn’t shut the boot.

So it is just possible that I might stand a chance of getting my £150 excess back and also retaining my three year no claims bonus.

In reality the no claims bonus is more important as it will make next years insurance renewal less painful. However the £150 will pay for getting an ipod adaptor fitted which would be nice. I miss listening to the ipod in the car.

About a month ago Becky suggested that we all go to a concert featuring the music from Doctor Who as performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales and the BBC National Chorus of Wales. Doctor Who, and the spin-off series Torchwood, are filmed in Cardiff which also played host to the concert at the impressive Cardiff Millennium Centre.

Tickets for the concert sold out within two hours of going on sale. Becky was lucky to get us tickets at all. We ended up sitting at the back of the upper circle, as high up as you can possibly get. However we did have a very good view of the whole stage. Unfortunately a representative of some sort of Doctor Who fan club was seated next to James. The fan then proceeded to chat incessantly with James about the cast, crew, and all the various writers who were wandering about, expecting James to know everything about everybody.

The show was compered by the current Doctor, David Tennant, and included live performances by some of the Doctor’s many enemies from the last two series. This included cybermen and a dalek. Each piece of music was accompanied by video clips from the TV show shown on a giant screen. We also got to see a preview of the Christmas episode which is due to be broadcast on Christmas day.

After the show Becky insisted on having her photo taken on top of the ‘Torchwood elevator’.

I took a half day off work on Friday so that I could drive Dave and Becky down to Exeter in time to see a Queen tribute band called Ga Ga. They were playing at St George’s hall which is almost opposite where James and Roz live. We met up with Trina, Wayne, James, Roz and Jen outside the venue and a little later on Fairy and her boyfriend Kev found us.

The show itself started fairly poorly but warmed up toward the end of the first half. Not exactly the best tribute band I have ever seen but it was still a good night.

After the show we all went to the Wetherspoon’s pub round the corner for a few drinks before heading off to James and Roz’s flat for bed.

A lady studying for a postgrad at Manchester University is doing a survey into the provacy attitudes and expectations of bloggers. The survey takes only about five minutes to complete and is pretty easy. I am sure she would find it useful if you fill out her survey:

http://www.ccsr.ac.uk/privacysurvey/

Fog fog and more fog on the roads today. Sat on the M32 for an hour while three accidents were cleared off the road. The fog got worse throughout the day and by the time I was driving home it was a pea-souper all the way back to Bristol.

Things that annoyed me:

• People driving along without fully working tail-lights
• People driving along without their fog lights turned on
• A cyclist riding toward me on the wrong side of the road
• A cyclist without any lights or reflectors on his bike

Do these people have a death wish?