Mike's birthday celebrations were highly amusing, exciting, destructive and hazy. This morning Swan and I reminisced over the night before while Mike pulled his mattress out of the guttering, back through the velux window and into his room. Not that it was the only item that had been placed outside. Mike's shoes were somewhere in the garden too.

Last night was enjoyable. Due to an administrative error, we had ended up buying more alcohol than was required for such an event, and so after meeting Mike's Grantham mates, we ended playing Ring of Fire to some odd northern rules. Was still very funny and this entertained the house while guests came and went including Jono, Noel, Nature, Caz, Lauren and a few other familiars. Mike has made 'party bags' for us too, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed to find they only contained a jammy dodger.

Because of the rain we took taxis onto campus and Swan and myself managed to blag our way in on our old student cards. Almost instantly I ran into Dylan, the first of a handful of ex-coursemates I've not seen in over a year, including Cat and Justin. Sean and Tongy were both about too and the night disappeared fairly quickly over a few doubles. Swanny tells me.

The night ended with dancing and talking biscuits to alot of people.

After decorating Mike's room this morning and abusing his computer including his Facebook account, he eventually let his other friends go home (after demanding they stayed another day and hiding their train tickets) and we whiled a few hours away watching Family Guy, Futurama and ripping Mike quite a lot. Ah, the good old days.

I needed to be in the Lloyds bar on Broad Street in Brum at 2pm, so took the crammed train via Leicester. I ran into Paul on the platform and we ended up standing for the rest of the journey. After thinking the venue might have been changed for about five minutes, everyone else turned up and there were some fantastic discussions regarding 'interesting' alternatives to captchca with Ross and Gaz. We eventually moved on to get a 'handmade burger' at Brindley Place and then into the James Brindley (Multipack's private bar) for some pool. After making it perfectly clear how completely I have lost my ability on the table, the remaining stragglers bought one last pint at the Sports Cafe before heading home. Another good little meet up.

At Moor Street I ended up sitting next to an 80 year old lady who called me "a gentleman" after I put her on the right train. If only more elderly people had decent manners these days. We ended up discussing the Blitz and family history after I decided that, despite her owning a computer, she didn't have much to say on the topics of XSLT and captchca.

I have a large number of photos I need to sort out.

I phoned the Apple Store yesterday to enquire as to the status of my Macbook and was quickly transferred to a very apologetic technician who explained that someone should have told me that "when [they] took the case apart [they] found that the back of the unit was also faulty and needed replacing." So despite thinking/being told it would be ready by last Monday, they are now "waiting on parts", so it looks like it will be next Monday. Not ideal, but thankfully I am in no rush until Monday.

Multipack is meeting on Broad Street in Birmingham this weekend. I will be doing some precision travelling starting on Friday in order to get from The 'Bridge to Mike's in Lufbra, then the next morning into central Brum. Swan is being rubbish and mopey but he will be attending Mike's, whatever he says.

I went to see History Boys last night, maybe the beginning of a marathon movie run what with Casino Royale, Borat and a couple of others that look like worth seeing in the next couple of weeks. It wasn't quite what I had expected, and I definitely don't think the audience is a mainstream one. Funnily, it doesn't lose the sense that it was originally a play and on the whole the performances were strong, but I wouldn't necessarily bill it as an outright comedy film which is sort of the impression I had got from the TV build up.

Not that US policy making is my favourite topic, but I'm glad to see the back of Rumsfeld and that both houses are now Democrat. I think this maybe one of the most productive/balanced phases of power for a long time; holding Bush on a leash and before the Democrats have a chance to embroil themselves in their own political messes before and if they get elected in 2008.

According to the letter in front of me, it turns out that my mobile phone company didn't mean to send me a cheque for eighty quid. Oh well, it's not like they gave me long enough to spend it anyway.

I've got a nasty crick in my neck. I have no idea where it came from, but it's making everything a misery. I would like to report on some fantastic discovery I've made, but there isn't one. I'd like to talk about all the exciting current events, but US midterm elections have dominated the news for two days and it's just not adrenalin pumping stuff.

Instead, I am simply going to leave you with the impression that I am not in a particularly good mood this evening.

Not content with sitting around at home this weekend I took off to Bath again. Ollie and Katherine were going down to visit James, so I jumped in the car at Solihull and we headed down yesterday morning in time to catch the Bath v London Irish game at the Rec. Unfortunately for Bath it was another defeat. Most of Davies' friends blame him for their unlucky streak (he's never seen them win at home). I however feel it probably has more to do with them being the weaker side, and although things did look bright until after half time, it was only a matter of time before The Exiles pulled it back and scored the winning try.

There were pre-match and post-match drinks; starting in The Rummer and then with food in 'Spoons, we then headed up onto campus for the firework display, but having arrived well in advance of the display we (strangely enough) ended up in another bar. Here we met with the rest of James' house/crew again and we hung around together until the fireworks finished.

We headed into town for a bit of a pubby-type evening. Oli and I wiped the floor as team fussball extraordinaire before chasing some shapes in the upstairs of The Huntsman. Another great night.

This morning nothing started to move until about 10am, unfortunate for me as I couldn't get back to sleep once I was up at 7am. Eventually I was able to grab a bacon butty and a shower (not simultaneously) before getting back in the car and heading back to Solihull.

I dropped my MacBook in at the Apple Store (the replacement fascia parts have now arrived) and took the train home. And then I slept for a month (two hours).

I was very pleased to get out of the house this weekend. It's Mike's birthday next weekend, so there is a chance of getting up to Lufbra again on Friday night. On the subject of birthdays - happy birthday Jono! Sorry me and Swanny were not around to celebrate it with you this time (first time in three years) but I'll hopefully see you at the end of the week for some Zeppelin-related fun :)

Yes, it is unlike me to post twice in one evening, some would even say frivolous, but after scaring everyone who doesn't know what the hell the last post was about, I figured I should make-a-mends.

Some interesting developments. Firstly, an observation. When did mainstream television news companies start sourcing their video libraries from YouTube? Tonight apparently. On Channel 4 News at 7pm, they used some archive clips of University Challenge, cited in a little purple box as coming from the lair of the copyright infringement monster. It wouldn't have mattered so much if YouTube provided HD quality video and if Channel 4 News couldn't afford to pay the royalty to the BBC, but it just seemed ridiculous that they would even bother using a clip if it wasn't visually or audially up to scratch. Odd.

Secondly, I have my MacBook back and it's fixed. Unfortunately the hard drive had totally died as I assumed, but they swapped it straight out for me under warranty. At the same time corrected my mistake of believing my serial number wasn't in the batch of Macs that had a problem with yellowing on the keyboard deck. They couldn't do anything about it in the shop yesterday, but they've ordered in the parts for me, and by this time next week, most of my Mac will be brand new again.

Microsoft's Zune site is now online and looking a little strange to me. I don't know who decided brown would be a great colour, but my main bug-bare is that they don't seem to have meticulously designed it , like you would if you were say, trying to create an 'iPod killer'. Is it just me or is the home link and the date in the top left corner looking a little redundant? Also, who put them all in grey with the search box wedged up against the page margin? I do quite like the dull montage at the bottom rather than the usual plain gradient, but I do feel the whole site lacks impact? Why do I crave a little Flash here? Some pizazz or something? Anything?

I've just spotted a few more anomalies like bullets appearing on lines of their own and imbalanced boxes. Who's been designing just for Microsoft products again? I've got nothing against Zune, I want to try one, but I can't help thinking that they just threw all their marketing together ten minutes before clocking off last Friday.

I was looking to style a definition list in a two-column table format yesterday and in the process I found this great little resource at MaxDesign (scroll down the page). Anyway, after looking at the Styling a definition list to look like a table, I decided the article was missing a trick. You'll note that if you try and alternate the background colour of the list, blotches of colour are left out if the definition text runs to two lines or more.

My solution is as follows:

I have used class names on each alternate <dd> tag, however with a bit of ingenuity, I'm sure it can be achieved otherwise. Note you don't need to apply the odd-row classes to the corresponding <dt> tags.

The CSS required is as follows:

The final result is scalable and works in Safari, Internet Explorer 5+ (Win), Firefox and Opera. Click here to view the finished stripy definition list 'table'.

Additional things to try are adding a .odd-row:hover class to provide some focus, but the only 'hit' area will be the <dd> block, and so hovering on the <dt>'s won't trigger it.

One of the key achievements in life that I have yet to conquer is getting my license and on the road. Thankfully, as of today, I am one step closer. Four and a bit years after I became eligible to drive, I took my theory test and passed first time. Not that this is a particularly big achievement; I have yet to find anyone who has managed to fail it. It wouldn't matter anyway, as any elation from the result was soon dispelled as I had to spend the next hour in Dudley town centre waiting for a lift home (the irony).

Sunday and Monday were fully spent rolling around in wall insulation and wearing as much cobweb and dead bug as possible while climbing around the rafters of our 1950's house. Really a bit disgusting, but necessary to get the broadband wired up the way we want it. My grand scheme seems to have worked and now all the computers in the house have an internet connection, except perhaps my macbook which is looking even sadder since the guy at the Apple store last night confirmed there is something seriously wrong with it. I'm going back in an hour to have a Genius look at it properly.

The culmination of all this has meant the past two days have been little but slow and no progress has been made on things I should have been concentrating on. If this has affected you in someway, I am sorry and I'll be fully back on track tomorrow.

In the meanwhile, I have a train to catch.