For all the years of cheap lager drinking that went on at university, I have always preferred a pint of something with some flavour and body to it, so I’m a little surprised that I’d not made it to a beer festival before, but then again I didn’t really know anyone who was interested.

It’s become apparent in recent months that George is a very big fan of proper beer, as is Tom, and they both are fully paid up CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) members, and I jumped at the idea that a Saturday afternoon could be spent in a tent in the middle of Worcester Racecourse surrounded by a silly amount of good quality alcohol.

It turns out it was a bit of a washout outside (though not as bad as last years complete submerging of the festival in the floods) so most of the time was spent hopping between the occasional bit of hard flooring over the mud, clutching at the ever-precious sampling glass.

I really don’t know how many barrels were in the place, but there were a lot - and a massive choice of bitters, milds, porters, ciders, perries, pilsners etc etc. I’m not exactly sure how much we got through in the four hours we were there, but needless to say we didn’t have many tokens left between us and it certainly was very enjoyable. Strangely enough, I didn’t feel it at all this morning.

Might be tempted to do one of those again in the future.

So the weather wasn’t really ideal for Geek In The Park, but that didn’t stop the forty or so alcoholic web-types descending on Leamington for a bit of a social and some icon-making, microformat-implementing fun.

Big thanks must go to Trev for organising the whole things, and of course a tip of the hat to One Black Bear for sponsoring it all. Jon and Drew’s talks we’re really informative and great chance to quiz them about their methods.

Of note, I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many iPhones in one place in all my life.

The week since has been pretty intense work-wise for various reasons, and I’m looking forward to some respite - on Wednesday I jet to Spain with Sean to go and upset Devito for a week. Looking forward to it a lot.

Raj interviewed me for a radio production not too long ago and I’m interested to hear the final results sometime soon. I think I was just overwhelmed at how simple it is to get high quality audio using the very expensive stick mic he has. Nice toy.

I went and splashed out on a DualHead2Go last week, and for those not in the know (probably most people), it allows you to add another screen to your iMac or Macbook, that is, when you already have two. The result, three screens. It’s all powered by USB which is useful, but has the unfortunate downside that the two additional screens it allows must sit side by side, turning my dream setup of central iMac with two satellite screens into a total rearrangement of my office. Also, it’s best to attempt it with two monitors of the same shape and size, as my current setup is a little mind bending when it comes to following the cursor. I maybe in the business of buying a new monitor soon. It looks like I’m running the Matrix. Badly.

Today is a beer festival in Worcester, so it looks like I’ll be smashed enjoying it all afternoon.

Just a brief reminder, but Multipack’s free Geek In The Park event returns next weekend to beautiful Leamington Spa (easily accessible from the Midlands, t’up North and dairn Souf by train* or car).

Trev has secured a great line up of Jon Hicks and Drew McLellen to speak at the evening event (the web bit), so this is a great chance to see two highly regarded faces from the worlds of design and development sharing some of their knowledge, costing you nothing more than the price of a journey.

If you’d like to come along (and please feel welcome to bring your family and friends for a bit of a picnic during the afternoon should the weather be good) you can find details on the website, where you can also sign up for more details.

* Trains from London Marylebone cost approx £16 return (return is valid for 30 days!), but please bear in mind the last train is just before ten so you may miss the very last part of the evening event if you have to go back this way. Trains from Birmingham cost just £7 return and take about 40 minutes.

Adam was racing again last weekend, and so in the blazing sunshine Will, Henry, Alan and myself sat and watched a good full day of motorsport at Oulton Park (photos here). It couldn’t have been any better, with Adam clinching two further victories, and the excitement generated by eating two Magnums in one day. Yes, two.

After all of that, George, Tom and myself took ourselves out to a pub on a hill in the middle of nowhere (on the way out to Leominster) and discussed music until the sun was well and truly set. It was a good weekend.

And so far this weekend has followed suit. Mike and I took trains down for a night out for Swan’s birthday in London last night - quite a few familiar faces, including some I’d not seen for a while. Duff, Jono, Richie and the rest. I think I went to some effort to convince quite a lot of girls I was a helicopter pilot, but it all got a bit hazy later on, so I’ve no idea if anyone believed me.

This morning after a well-deserved fry up I got back on that train and now find myself back in the ‘Bridge and hoping for some sunshine tomorrow.

The past couple of weeks have been pretty intense - with a number of larger projects on the boil its been a case of buckling in and getting into some serious coding - something I don’t spend a lot of my time doing, but generally ends up being more enjoyable than I would imagine.

Because of this, I unintentionally and yet completely skipped any mention of the last Multipack meet. I also haven’t mentioned any of the social activity that’s been going on, or reviewed any of the new music I’ve been listening too (however I now have a last.fm account after a bit of pressure). Nor have I mentioned that I spent all of yesterday in meetings in London, and that my phone broke and I spent half a day doing the maths on how to best break out of my contract early (unfortunately my optimism has been dashed. I haven’t even had the opportunity to mention that another friend of mine is to become a Dad (congratulations Dan!).

Things don’t look like they are going to be quietening down either. The next few weeks are likely to be busy too, although I’m hoping I’ve found a solution (at least in part) and ultimately I’ve got a week away in Spain to be looking forward too. That said, I’m still pining for something slightly more exotic, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t make some rash travel arrangements before the year is out.

I’m really looking forward to seeing The Dark Knight.

Here’s another tip.

If you didn’t know already, you can now combine multiple Hotmail / Live email accounts into a single account (or pretty close to) - which means you only have to log in using one account to check the mail in all of the others.

For someone like me who rarely uses my Hotmail accounts these days, it’s handy to speed up the process by merging my hotmail.co.uk and hotmail.com addresses.

You can do this by:

1. Logging into Hotmail as usual
2. Click on your email address in the top right hand corner of the page (right above the Sign Out text link)
3. From the drop down, select Link other accounts
4. Follow the instructions to tie in your Microsoft Passport/Hotmail/Windows Live Mail

You will be asked to enter your password and email address for the other account, then once the process is complete, you will be able to click on the same menu as in step 2, and change to your other email account inboxes on-the-fly.

Maybe I’d missed this before, but I’ve just discovered a fantastic little app (that runs on Windows, Mac and ‘Nix) that allows you to watch all the UK channels for free, live.

Zattoo just requires an email address, and the funky little program allows you to watch the following useful and semi-useful channels:

• BBC One
• BBC Two
• BBC Three
• BBC Four
• ITV 1
• Channel 4
• five
• BBC News
• BBC Paliament
• Al Jazeera
• CBBC
• CBebbies

According to the website, it’s completely legal and I’ve been really impressed with the quality so far. It comes with an inbuilt schedule too.

My advice? Go try it.