Today one of those little miracles occurred that only happen when the moon is blue and the wind it blowing in the right direction. That’s right, you’ve guessed it…. I got my inbox down to less than 20 emails (if you guessed that, you probably think too much and really need to get out more).

Not that this is any reflection on the amount of work coming through, but for some reason the past few days have allowed a considerable purge of useless flagged and pending messages awaiting follow ups. I love it when I don’t have to scroll.

Other than exciting snippets of office joy like the last one, everything is just ‘just’. That’s not to say things aren’t good though. Very early this morning and then after some sleep I managed to plug the remaining holes in one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve been working on recently, and so we’re edging very close to launch now. Can’t wait to flip that switch.

Also, I am looking forward to Friday. It’s Nature’s birthday and Devito is back from Spain, so we’re off to Loughborough for a couple of nights of the student life. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve seen the others so it’ll be good to catch up, as always.

So here’s a plan. You want to monitor what traffic is coming through your sites, and you want to do it for free. Google Analytics is the obvious choice.

But what if you wanted to go all Web 2.0 and get your site hits, keywords and referrers without having to wade through all your stats? What if you wanted just the essentials wrapped up and delivered in a manageable daily RSS feed?

Well it’s not the future anymore…

PulseRSS is a great little free, hosted service which you tag onto your pages and keeps you posted on the most essential statistics for an unlimited number sites.

It means rather than having to manually check your ‘vitals’ in an overblown interface, you can now be fed them regularly; keeping an eye on your site’s pulse rather than doing a full and time-consuming “please cough, sir” style inspection.

This isn’t a replacement for full featured statistics package, but instead a daily supplement, adding some great functionality which is missing from the big guns’ offerings.

Yesterday was a little unusual. Not unusual in the sense I cut down a tree or my driving test got cancelled again, but unusual in the way that some important descisions suddenly needed to be made. These descisions involve design, travel and creativity, three of my favourite things.

My horoscope in the Metro was oddly foretelling (not that I ever pay the blindest to them normally) but, “As of today, things will start moving again. You won’t keep encountering glitches and it will be possible to to get a sentence out. The big thing you’ve been rethinking is ready to rock. You’ll still be livid at the DSA.”

OK, well the last bit was my own addition, but the first part feels true enough. Talking to Currin the night before got me thinking about the bigger picture. His adventures in the USA never cease to amaze me. Last week for example, he went to meet some fella called Dean Kamen. Heard of him? Probably not. Know what he invented? Yes, probably… the Segway and few other bits an pieces along the way. Anyway, because Kamen didn’t think he’d be exciting enough to talk to on his own, he brought along a couple of guys who manage Google, and the people who own Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Another extraordinary day.

As predicted in my horoscope (we’ll strictly not predicted as I didn’t read it until after these things had happened) stuff has started moving again. The day before yesterday’s shake-up was part of a much wider disruption regarding going forward on a number of fronts (hence my unprecedented level of angst) and so yesterday I approached as much as I could with a clear head.

During a meeting in the afternoon, I was presented with some unexpected opportunities. There are some very interesting routes lying open ahead of me now, and it may well be that I have to start making some life-decisions a little earlier than expected.

After finishing up there, I headed back to Birmingham and then onto Moseley for a couple of impromptu drinks with Gwyth. We ended up taking part in the pub quiz, and stormed into joint last place. Admittedly there were just the two of us, the questions were targetted at the over 40s and some of the other teams (which were 8-10 strong) sat around their tables looking like the next descision they were about to make was whether to press The Red Button, when in fact they were really trying to remember which well known actress was sent down in 1982 for tax evasion.

It was a funny night, although ultimately with no sense of victory.

Despite this, I feel charged; a good feeling.

I am an unusually non-violent person. I tend to let spiders out of doors and open windows for flies. But today I could have killed an entire government department, or at least given someone a rather large smack in the face.

As I can’t attribute the blame to any particular person, an imaginary knuckle sandwich will be applied to the entire DSA, or as you may more likely know it, the people who organise your driving licence.

With Friday being my driving test, I have made sure that I’ve taken plenty of lessons and gotten to know the test area over the past few weeks – Lower Gornal. In fact, I’ve spent a few hundred pounds doing so.

So you might imagine my delight when I peeled open an envelope this morning to find that the nice people at the DSA, with two days to spare, have ‘cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances’ and rebooked me in for 16th April.

Their wisdom prevails three-fold. Firstly, the new date is over a month away. Hurrah for thinking when I got on the beginning of the waiting list after Christmas that I might have to only wait 6 weeks for a slot, but alas I now discover once you get to your point in the queue, they don’t mind sending you to the back.

Their second masterful stroke was reorganising it for slap-bang in the middle of my India trip. Now, I’m usually optimistic, but getting back from Kathmandu to complete a driving test on a Monday morning is pushing at the realms what is physically possibility in my opinion.

Finally, I was angling that I might have is the ability to take up someone else’s cancellation. After checking all the available times, I found that there are no available time slots before I go travelling, and the test centre aren’t in the habit of letting you know when one becomes available. Therefore I am overwhelmingly pleased to announce that I can’t even get a test at the original test centre, and now to make sure I have a stab before I go, I will be doing my run in Kidderminster. A few hundred more pounds to get to know a new area and will everything will eventually be sorted.

I vented some of my frustration today by cutting down a 40ft tree in the garden. If you work at the DSA, I suggest you stay at arms length from me for the next two weeks until I have had enough time to calm down properly.

I’m not one of those people who usually rushes outside at the thought of seeing something celestial. I think I once peered through the window when someone mentioned there was a comet, and I have been known to stop and stare at the heavens on drunken nights walking home, but I’ve never seen The Sky At Night or an eclipse.

Well that was until last night. I didn’t realise there was one even going on until I was told, and I thought it would be an appropriate moment to fish out the new lens. I managed to get a few really good photos, much better than I ever thought you could using a standard lens.

Anyway, this one is my favourite.

Exposure: 3.6 seconds
F/6.3
ISO: 1600
Metering: Pattern
Focus Length: 200mm

(No correction or anything, just cropped).

At the moment the following things are making me tick:

Skins

E4’s fantastic teen drama/comedy that is like a younger, edgier version of Hollyoaks and with (on the whole) a pretty good cast. There are a couple of interesting names involved in the project, namely Josie Long (if.comeddies award winner for best newcomer 2006) and Simon Amstell . If you’ve not already found the free online mini episodes, check out E4’s Unseen Skins .

Never Mind The Buzzcocks

A fairly recent convert to Buzzcocks, I’ve loved this programme since Mark Lamar left the chair. Amstell’s witty performance and inexorable guest-degradation is on tap making it the best panel game on TV at the moment.

Little Yellow Spider, Devendra Banhart

Soundtrack to that Orange advert where a people in a park move around to reveal and hide other people. A fantastic acoustic song with no deep meaning just amusing lyrics and a great tune.

Standing In The Way of Control, The Gossip

Another great track at the opposite end of the spectrum. Punchy, punkish, political and outspoken, I really want to hear some more of their album.

Jeff Buckley

I knew the name, but it wasn’t until I heard his name mentioned in Badly Drawn Boy track that I decided to wiki it. I found some of his stuff on some old compilation albums and ever since been really impressed with the music/annoyed that I’d overlooked it before.

Ruby, Kaiser Chiefs

I couldn’t stand this song when I first heard it but it’s since grown on me and ended up on my playlist.

—

You may or may not know I am a big comedy fan spanning all mediums, and my most regular dose comes from the radio. On average I listen to six or seven shows a week ranging from stand up to panel stuff. There are rich pickings on the BBC Listen Again feature and it gives a good chance to catch up with shows that I’d normally miss.

Favourites include Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation (a series of ‘lectures’ recorded in 1993), People Like Us (Chris Langham’s brilliant hapless Roy Mallard as interviewer in this ‘mockumentary’), The Smith Lectures (Arthur Smith’s clippings of radio and stand up routines), Mark Watson Makes The World Substantially better (stand up, if.commedies winner and more recently panellist on Mock The Week), The News Quiz (weekly topical panel game which was the original radio format for Have I Got News For You), The Masterson Inheritance (improv featuring Josie Lawrence and Paul Merton), Yes Minister and Just A Minute.

I think some people miscomprehend radio humour as being dull, but I would hotly contest that the quality is considerably higher than most of what you get on TV. Admittedly, Have I Got News For You is more entertaining than The News Quiz, but I think a lot of our best comedians fare better on radio than they do on the screen.

I would list Jeremy Hardy, Paul Merton, Tony Hawkes, Sue Perkins, the late Linda Smith and Marcus Brigstocke amongst my favourite comedians, but most of them unknown to mainstream audiences. Mark Watson and Russell Howard are breaking into popular culture but I feel their live stand up far out performs their contributions on TV.

The reason I got sidetracked onto all of that was that I’ve managed to get hold of four very elusive tickets to see a recording of my favourite of all the shows, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. Tickets usually sell out within minutes, but so determined I was this time that I sat on the website from 10am until 11am repeatedly trying to place an order until finally the overloaded server picked itself up and took my money.

I’ve ended up with some very decent seats. Guests on the programme before have included most of the well known names above, Bill Bailey, Rob Brydon, Jack Dee, Ross Noble and Phil Jupitus. With only six recordings a year and an already 86-year-old chairman there really is slimmer and slimmer chance of getting to one in future, so I thought I’d seize the opportunity while it was still there.

Should be a really good night.

In other news, I got frustrated with Halifax this week when I tried to order a new debit card to renew the expiry date. It’s likely my old card will expire while I’m travelling, so I order to pre empty it I explained the situation to the bank who replaced the card. It was only at the point I noticed the expiry date hadn’t changed, just the issue number. I phoned them up again (actually I got them to call me back) only to find the first person I had spoken to had been misinformed. It seems you can’t change the expiry date which is really frustrating. More graft required to get my finances in a workable order before I go away.

On Thursday night I met up with Gareth and Ross for a few beverages and curry in Lye. I love hype and discussion.

Aside from all this, the sun is shining and the weekend is not even half way through. It’s a great day.