Just finished watching It's a Wonderful Life for the first time. Lovely, moving film. Feel all Christmassy now. In fact, since I've got back to the UK I've done nothing much apart from catch up on quality TV. Having just spent a happy few hours watching 'I [heart] Xmas' - a retrospective on 70s christmases hosted by John Noakes, Valerie Singleton and Peter Purves (yes, they are all still alive! it's just Shep that died..). Fond memories.... Oh, and without any adverts.

'Tis the season to be jolly and Neiman Marcus seem to doing particularly well today. First up is a special gift that would be perfect for the man who has everything - yes, your very own luxury submarine. To top this off, why not suggest he try a new perfume? Complete with its own celebrity lawsuit. Metallica, bad!

In a shock move BT are now sueing people over the use of the hyperlink. I expect to hear from their lawyers shortly about that last patent infringement...

Well - still have a few shopping days left (now an easier calculation since pretty much everything is open 24x7 in New York) but it feels like Christmas now 'cos I bought my tree last night. Umm-ed and ahh-ed a little bit and forked out for the bigger tree that only just fits into my stand. Well it fitted after I'd hacked off a few more bits with the infamous screwdriver/hammer tree trimming kit. Now all I need is some tinsel, lights and hangy things to put on it. I did have a lot of lights but they're now all wrapped around the sprinklers on the ceiling...

Slight update to the site. Added some 'useful' links to the side bar to sweeten your day. Any further suggestions to the usual address. I might also throw up a message book as well if my fragile ego can deal with the lack of visitors!

An interesting article in New Scientist (which I can't be bothered to link to) claims that in a survey, people who drank to moderation were more intelligent than those who didn't drink. Doesn't shed any light on the causality of that - whether drinking makes you clever or clever people drink (to be less clever).

Meanwhile New York's chilliness continues unabated as I relive my childhood listening to the Stone Temple Pilots. The cold weather is accompanied by a pruning of jobs at all our major competitors - Viant, Scient, Razorfish et al. I don't think we'll be as sweeping as they've been thankfully. We hadn't grown as quickly funded by VC money.

A very scary article about under 16 curfews in the news today. It appears that 'yob culture' has taken things a bit too far. If only Chris Evans, father of bloke/yob culture and someone I have widely regarded to be the anti-Christ for many years, had had the foresight to see where he was taking everyone...

Meanwhile, New York's weather has gone down another notch. The phrase 'brass monkeys' seems to be heard around the office a lot, although my landlord insists that the relative chilliness of my apartment is to do with a badly sealed a/c and nothing to do with the lack of warmth coming from the heater. Sigh. They seem to forget that 10 months ago - when it was last cold - my apartment was so hot I had to open windows and regular scaldings occurred from the tap water.