Winter has returned to New York. It's bloomin' freezing again! This is potentially bad for all New Yorkers as Halloween is once again here and most people's costumes aren't known for their warmth providing capabilities. So we can expect to see plenty of girls in sexy nurses outfits wearing thermal undies - nice. And plenty of boys in thin superhero costumes wishing they had hired the bear costume they thought would be too warm.

As for me - I'm currently sans costume ideas (much like last year). Went to a Halloween party on Friday without a costume and ended up wearing cats ears and tail (thanks Rachel). As a boy not really sure how to deal with those particular accessories - so I'm sure the pictures will be highly embaressing. The night was topped off by a trip to the Turkish/Arabic restaurant/club underneath the party (on Atlantic between Hoyt and Douglass). Here everyone was smoking hookahs and clapping away to stereotypically arabic music (played by one guy on three keyboards) as the belly dancer did her belly dancing thing. Occaisionally the entire room would be filled with dancing or the throwing of dollar bills. The school disco style lights added to the sense of fun. It truely has to be seen to be believed and everyone had a great time. I also managed to surprise an Arabic hen party who accosted me saying "You're scared of a bit of Arabic, eh" to which I responded with my one Arabic phrase - "shukran". I wandered away from the surprised faces wondering if that really did mean "thank you" and not something more rude..

Last night was a bit more subdued. Went to the cinema and saw Almost Famous which was great fun and highly recommended. I sense this may be the beginning of more regular forays into the world of mainstream cinema as almost every trailer (there were about ten) seemed to offer an excellent film - many with the opportunity to see more of Sandra Bullock.

Another thrill packed week draws merrily to a close. The Yankees are winning the World Championship - named because Canada also plays not simply because America thinks it alone is the world. Emotions are running high and for some reason my subway was unusually packed this morning. But it's Friday and the weekend beckons so who cares.

Got to see David Holmes on Saturday. He was playing at Centro-Fly as part of the CMJ festival. Managed to lose all of my possee so decided to go on my own even though I was feeling a bit under the weather. Arrived early - not like me at all (yeah right) - and sat around chatting to some nice folks from Rare Media. Eventually he came on and played... trancey house! Where were the classic Holmes re-mixes of 50s/60s soul and funk? Where were his trademake hip hop blends? For f*cks sake - he was pandering to the New Yorkers already overfed on bland Sasha and Digweed at Twilo. Outraged I was forced to dance anyway since it was actually better than S&D.

My penance for this false worship? I'm now feeling quite ill. Of course this coincides with needing to get our month and a half late Sun Solaris box installed at work. Sun's iFarce program - 70% off cost and 70% onto delivery delays. Nice.

Tim went along to Moby last night and said he was so pissed off that I was right about him being crap live. This was quite amusing and gratifying. Also found out that someone in the office knows one of Moby's other 17 year old blonde girlfriends since she has a friend in the business and this girl was going to go on tour with Moby to learn the business. Methinks it might not have been the music business.

Anyways - this week's band is going to be Arabstrap. They are playing at the Bowery again and Tim knows one of the techie guys. Might get to hang out with the band afterwards so watch this space. Another quiet night in that didn't happen...

Halfway through an amusing, urban myth spouting bbq last night someone mentioned that Moby is playing 3 dates in New York this week and would I be interested in going? I replied that I'd seen him at Glastonbury and had been very disappointed with both his set and his current ego size. At this point she went very quiet so I assumed she was a bit of a fan.

Later she left, at which point her sister and my friend started laughing. It transpired she's currently seeing Moby... oopsy. So of course I'll take the free tickets if they come up. Well - he might have got better! Oh, and the urban myth thing, another of the bbq attendees said they'd been at dinner with a neurosurgeon friend of theirs on Friday when their beeper had gone off... so of course they ended up holding some guys head while his friend drilled in to relieve pressure. Nice...

The New York weather has done the requisite fall flip flop. At the start of this week it was rapidly approaching zero degrees. Today it is a balmy 20c. Go figure. So, in celebration of this gorgeous weather, i spent the day shopping for furniture. As a result Conran is about to seperate me from excessive amounts of money in the cause of a dining room table and possibly chairs. And shelves. And strange combination seats/tables. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just a design whore or whether my life is significantly better (by at least 5%) for the presence of cute things.

Radiohead came off without a hitch. Things just fell into place. Although the lines stretched around the block for picking up tickets me and Tim just walked to the front and in without any trouble. Then we sat and propped up a bar watching the smiley happy punters walk in. TicketMaster should get completely sued over the amount of crap they put everyone through - they cancelled some friends tickets for 'computer failure' reasons. Right - even though he had a confirmation. Nice bit of un-transactionally safe programming.

The concert was amazing though. Ended up chatting to the assistant managers of Virgin Times Square and Union Square and they'd known about the gig for three weeks. Sounds like they're people to keep in with! Radiohead played a mix of new and old - only one missing was Creep but Paranoid Android was beautiful. And now back to my hangover...

Lucked out and managed to get some Radiohead tickets for tonight's gig at Roseland. Guess some people had over-ordered at Ticketmaster and their tickets got put back into the pool. Feel very bad for the people who queued all night and didn't get tickets. That's gotta suck.

Ken Livingstone, the most amusing mayor to hit London since Dick Whittington and his mog, has brought in a yank to run the Tube. If anything is going to entice me back to London it would be this. The potential of a well run, cheap and 24 hour transport system to turn London into the place to be in the world is huge. Plus we already have those cool readouts to tell you when the next tube is coming - the only thing NYC's subway lacks. Go Red Ken!

New York winter has hit with it's usual cold punch to the lungs. Of course the heating in my building has reverted to the 'ineffectual' setting as opposed to the 'hot day in hell' setting it had during last weeks balmy fall days. Though having bought a cyclonic vacuum cleaner on sunday i can now walk around my apartment without getting black feet which is a nice change.

I've also set up some photos on zing - check them out. At some point I'll do a proper site of my own with them on but meanwhiles Zing! does the biz.

Bob's book is out - buy it now. Having read it I think I might let him get away without a major law suit. It is so strange reading about things you already know about and have more background for. Makes it hard for me to critique the book properly - although it does seem to lack some description and a strong storyline.. That said it is quite funny in places.

For those of you that are interested - here's my guide to the characters I know and who they really were. Note that not all of the incidents are real, some were amalgamated/extended from a number of situations:

• Nat => me
• Trevor => Kevin Wensley
• Fiona => Clare Sutton
• Ricky => Pablo Bawdekar (in description, although the actual activity that it refers to was James Arali Kabana)
• Jill => Liz Powell
• Ellie => Erin Pryor (my first NYC love, ironically from Miami as the book says)
• Tina => Dana (and she was from goldenbooks publishing)
• Sal => Carol Creighton
• Rose => Heather, Carol's friend

Bob's currently writing his sequel - an expose of love, London and the Internet. I think this is making people a bit more circumspect around him. I've also suggested to Bob that he watches Deconstructing Harry by Woody Allen. Meanwhile I'll go back to watching the magnificent sunsets we've been getting over Williamsburg these days. Yesterday I walked over the bridge around 6pm and the light was amazing, burning down the World Trade towers and Empire States building. Beautiful - and me stuck with a black and white film in my camera again!

Elastica were superb last night at the Bowery Ballroom. Had a luverley night and am now exhausted having stayed out till 3.30am. Luckily I got to lie in till 7.30am when my friend StJohn arrived to look round my apartment for a potential film shoot. Apparently my apartment isn't right for the part but it is now starring in a dog food commercial.

Finally got to buying a scanner for home. Got an HP ScanJet 5370C which goes up to 1200 x 2400 DPI and has a fun light for scanning negatives and slides. So my Monday evening was a joy of going through some recent photos and putting them onto Zing! which lets you store as many photos as you like and create albums. I'll put links to some albums on here as soon as I've got around to setting them up. Zing! has a very effective upload mechanism that sends previews from your local machine, so even if you have a 2Mb photo the thumbnail is only 2Kb on the screen. Very neat.

The weekend consisted mostly of work even though it was a gorgeously sunny New York fall day. Sigh. Got a lot done though and reduced my inbox from 450 to 30 mails (if only I could lose my spare tire so easily). Friday night ended up at Organic Grooves having had wonderful pizza at Lombardi's and a quick drink in nearby Sweet and Vicious where I said a quick hello to Hakkan. Saturday I celebrated my fourth year at Quidnunc with a meal at Penang in the Village. And Sunday was capped off with an excellent meal at Canton on Division St. All the Chinatown residents were in their best Sunday clothes wandering slowly down th street past restaurants with no English anywhere on their facade - whereas Canton was full of caucasians with the decor reminiscent of the cheaper curry houses in Selly Oak, Birmingham. Food was wonderful though.