The hideously named Barclays Cycle Hire scheme – also known as borisbikes, kencycles, bankerbikes and so on – has been running for a few weeks now, and after a slow start I've finally had time to try it a few times. So is it any good? Well sort of. Ish. Maybe. From the perspective of a pedestrian who'd like to cycle far more than he does – no room for a bike at home – here's how it works out at the moment.

Wheely good

There's a lot to like about the scheme. First of all, it's good that we finally have a cycle hire scheme in London – god knows it's taken long enough, and other cities in Europe have had one up and running for ages. Secondly, there are lots of bikes. Loads of them. Also, plenty of stands – as long as you're within the covered area, you shouldn't be too far from one or two docking stations.

The key system for members, which allows you to release a bike in about ten seconds, is convenient, and the pricing system – although ridiculously complicated – isn't ridiculously costly. The scheme provides an API that allows developers to create handy apps showing where docks are located, and how many slots are free: Cycle Hire Widget, for Android, is brilliant.

And when the scheme works, it's great: on Wednesday I had to get across town to a press conference in 15 minutes – not long enough to walk it. A month ago I would have jumped on the tube, but this time I got on a bike, scooted over there and docked it just around the corner. Perfect.

Crap cycling

But then there are the problems. Putting aside the hideous Barclays sponsorship – you're riding around on a billboard for a bank that operated in South Africa under apartheid, loans money to Robert Mugabe and invests in arms manufacturers – there are quite a few issues that need ironing out.

First, the bikes. I've ridden, so far, just one bike that worked properly. Every other one has had problems: one had dodgy brakes, but the most common issue is knackered, slipping gears. The bikes have three gears – reasonable, low, and so stupidly low you could probably cycle up K2 – and many have a tendency to slip out of the higher gear, so you can be cycling along when your foot will suddenly fly down without resistance as the bike drops into lor or crazy-low. This makes the bike wobble – eek – and there's often no way to shift back up without braking hard first. The bikes are currently almost new, and only accessible to members – I dread to think how they'll be in six months.

Next, the docks. These have a three-light system that's simple but unhelpful: fine when you get the green light, but no help when they randomly reject the bikes. Surely an LCD display wouldn't have cost too much to add – or even just a few labelled error lights? The pricing has the opposite problem: it's pointlessly overcomplicated, with two charges applicable to every journey. And it doesn't work with Oyster.

Then there's the distribution problem. If I could pick up a bike from near Charing Cross and cycle to work every day, that'd be great – but of course other people have the same idea. Bikes move in droves, leaving some docking stations almost permanently full, so often this journey is sometimes impossible. Serco does try to move bikes around by van, but what's needed – as people have suggested online – is an incentive for people to move the bikes themselves: cheap, free or paid journeys if you move the bike in an unpopular direction could help.

Finally, the computer system behind the scheme is clearly very flaky. Having made one perfect journey on Wednesday, I picked up a bike for the return trip, cycled back across town and docked it. Randomly, though, the dock rejected the bike. I tried again, and it locked in place. According to the Serco systems, this journey never took place – it's not listed, shown on their computers or billed. It appears that you can, if you're (un)lucky, move bikes around without the computer's knowledge. Other people have reported the opposite issue: their accounts show journeys they've never made. I've spoken to at least one keen cyclist whose account was hit by several phantom journeys and eventually suspended. That's one customer gone.

Fix the wheels?

I'm still hopeful that the system can be made to work. The bikes could – should – be fixed, and hopefully they can upgrade the gear system to something less prone to uselessness. A change to the pricing could help keep the distribution of bikes more even as well as simplifying the costs (ditch the access fees for casual users and it's instantly easier to understand). Oh, and Serco should be able to fix the sodding billing computer. As for Barclays, they've signed up for five years. Hopefully when the time comes to renew the deal we'll have a Mayor of London who's more inclined to find alternative funding. As it stands, will I fork out for the annual membership? No, but I'll hang onto the key for occasional use.

Photo by Sweens308, used under Creative Commons license.

A couple of years ago I woke up on a plane, too early, half-way across the Atlantic. After a failed attempt to switch my brain back off again I flicked through the in-flight system, past a whole truckload of tedious shit, and settled upon one of the few Japanese programmes – an animated film about some homeless people, it said. That should kill an hour, or at least lull me asleep again. I fiddled with the headphone socket and sat back, glassy-eyed.

And then, much to my surprise, spent the following 90 minutes completely glued to the screen.

Laughed out loud.

Didn't care.

Totally absorbed.

That film was Satoshi Kon's Tokyo Godfathers, and I scribbled both those names on a my ticket stub so that I could seek them out later. Since then I sought out his other films – Paprika and Perfect Blue are also remarkable – and his television series, Paranoia Agent (pictured, above), which is just exceptional: Sanrio meets Twin Peaks.

Last week, Satoshi Kon died at just 47. He is survived by his wife and parents, who he thanked in a farewell message posted online. English-language obituaries have been published in the Guardian and the New York Times.

From a personal perspective – that of merely a fan – it's hard to explain exactly how great a loss this is to fans of anime, animated cinema and perhaps even cinema in general. In a genre sadly dominated by the mediocre, Kon's work stood head and shoulders above a landscape scattered with commercial dross and fanservice: beautiful, intelligent and original. As the news broke last week, one message in particular was picked up and retweeted by hundreds of fans online: "It's not that anime will never be the same with Satoshi Kon gone. It's now much more likely that anime will always be the same." And they're quite right.

Satoshi Kon, 1963-2010, rest in peace. And thanks.

Thanks to Clay Harris for scanning this and posting it online. And here's the response from the News Shopper this morning (read from the bottom up):

I'm not going to go into detail as this has all been covered more comprehensively elsewhere, but there is one thing: I know how to edit a "your letters" section. I looked after one, in a national publication with a significant circulation, for years, so I think I have the qualifications to say that the News Shopper's justification here looks like nonsense.

Publishing a letter because, although you don't agree with it, it'll stimulate debate, is one thing. Fine. Publishing a bigoted letter? I'm not entirely sure that there would never be a circumstance where this would be reasonable, given enough of a caveat stating that it's not the opinion of the publication and some kind of editorial context for the discussion, but I'd want to think very long and hard about it first, and in most cases these should be consigned to the bin. Combining the two – publishing a bigoted letter simply to provoke a response – seems to me clearly inappropriate.

But here the letter hasn't just been published: it's the "Star Letter". Publishing something as a Star Letter" clearly implies some degree of endorsement. The clue's in the word "star" – if the aim was to merely highlight this as a point for discussion (not that I'm suggesting that this would be appropriate here, but still), then there are plenty of formats for that: "Debate of the week", "Your Say", "Have Your Say" and so on.

The Star, on the other hand, is the foremost, the best, the brightest of all. Star of the show. Movie star. Star columnist. Star letter. You get the idea. It's not just the place for any old talking point – and here, it even wins a prize (whose sponsor has issued a statement here*).

I'd hope that the News Shopper will realise that it has made a serious error of judgement here and do the right thing – I'd say a simple apology from the Editor would go some way. As it stands, though, it's just another depressing stage in what appears to be a protracted vault over the proverbial shark (see also the amply-chested lady on Page 3 of one edition and the whole Hitchcockamamie Attack Crow saga, for starters) and into the mire. A great shame, as with council cuts looming large a strong local press could be of great importance.

* And the pen shop is quite correct – I would never expect a Star Letter sponsor to have prior knowledge of the content of each prize letter. There's a certain amount of trust involved in this kind of relationship.

UPDATE

Later on yesterday one of my local councillors wrote this on the subject, and I got rather annoyed. Brockley Central reported it here, where I added the following comment:

As a Lewisham resident and Labour voter I find Councillor Harris's comments extremely depressing. And as such this is a long comment. Apologies.

As I've pointed out elsewhere (http://bit.ly/bLVozz), choosing a letter as the "Star" is a tacit endorsement. I know this not only because I know what "star" means in the non-celestial sense, but also because I'm an editor and sorting out letters pages was, for years, part of my job. As another editor (@adambanksdotcom) succinctly put it on Twitter today, "That's what it means".

By making this letter the Star Letter – not a "Have Your Say", or any such content – the NS has implied endorsement for it. And yes, I do believe that the perceived endorsement of bigoted views by the media gives support to those who share them. Any homophobes reading this letter, and seeing the award of a prize and the Star Letter tag, could be forgiven for believing that the paper supports their opinion. Will a reply from another reader lost on its website, or buried in the letters page next week, change that? I'm not sure it will.

But the councillor's original comment on Twitter didn't concern the Star Letter, it concerned whether it should be published at all ("The idea that my local paper the @NewsShopper should not publish a letter because it's bigoted, is far more offensive than the letter itself").

As I noted on my blog, I don't believe in a total no platform policy for offensive views – I can see occasions where publishing such a thing could be justified. One that springs to mind is to provide an opposing viewpoint to editorial content.

But that's not to say that I think that justification necessarily applies here. The News Shopper cover last week was hardly a positive piece about gay culture – rather a ridiculously sensationalist story about a cottaging website, presumably dug up via a Google Alert for "Lewisham" (and note that the version online of the story now appears to have been changed since the print copy). Not exactly the kind of glowing piece that might justify the publication of a "right of reply" letter from those with a bitter, miscellaneous grudge against gay people.

Instead, the NS's only justification seems to be that it's generated an online debate. With this conducted out of view of many of the paper's readers, I'm not sure that cuts it. Put this letter side by side with another of an opposing view – perhaps one bemoaning that ridiculous cover story – and it might have been fair.

Moreover, as anyone who's ever had to dig through the kind of garbage that's bulk-mailed to media outlets alongside genuine reader letters will know, the idea that choosing *not* to publish any letter because it's offensive is some sort of act of malicious censorship is just daft.

Newspapers, magazines and other publications attract offensive letters – often sent by email, en-masse to many publications, none of which the sender reads. Many are libellous, while some items might even count as criminal under incitement laws. Should editors be obliged to publish them all? Or perhaps a representative sample of racists and homophobes every week, month, or year?

Of course not.

Choosing which letters to print, and which to discard is not censorship: it's professional, ethical journalism. I think most people here agree that the News Shopper hasn't done terribly well on that score here.

Techno-savvy Londoners are abandoning their worldy (sic) possessions and instead living their lives out of a laptop. The digital minimalist is able instantly to access their music, photos and film collection from any computer in the world – and to move house (and country) at the drop of a hat.

The obvious question is, of course, "How many Londoners?", but regardless: the article is built around two interviews – one with Hermione Way, who runs some online video websites from a members' club in Covent Garden and from a range of Apple gadgets, and one with Paul Carr (of The Friday Thing, which I used to like very much). Carr has been living in hotels for some time, while Way "is in the final stages of transferring her life online and selling her possessions".

Which is fine, as is the fact that I'm sure neither gives a fuck about my thoughts on their choice of living arrangement. Nor should they. The reasons why I wouldn't want to try it myself, though – despite, I'm pretty sure, qualifying as one of those "Techno-savvy Londoners" – are several.

How do you eat?

Some are pretty obvious. For example, how the fuck do you cook – or, for that matter, eat? You could probably fry an egg on a Macbook if you thrash the processor with Handbrake and slice just about anything with a Palm Pre, but other than that – no fixed abode, no posessions and being ready to move at a drop of a hat means no kitchen, and that means no cooking. And no plates or cutlery.

Or maybe you're supposed to use disposable ones? Are you allowed to carry a small set of kitchen implements and ingredients? And more importantly still, does the iLife make provision for cats? Even if a cat doesn't count as a "physical possession", I bet his or her litter tray does. No way I'm abandoning that. Urgh.

But even if the "iLife" thing is really more narrowly defined – not owning what can be digitised – though, there's one big, fat problem. I noted it – perhaps not terribly well (seriously seriously?) – here:

to which Mark Prigg, the author of the piece, responded:

To which the answer is yes, they do count, but there just aren't enough of them. This is not because I don't like the concept of storing media in a digital form: I had all my music, in MP3, on a custom-built streaming server, the moment the first UPnP players came out, I've since re-ripped the whole collection many times to increase quality as storage became cheaper and I now own a lot that was purchased in high-bitrate MP3.

My iPod is full of ripped DVDs for time spent on planes, I have more photos stored on my Flickr account than I will ever be bothered to look through and all my documents and work files are mirrored in a cloud storage service and on my own server. Put simply, I'm no Luddite. My problem is the abundance of books and lack of ebooks.

Book-keeping

I own a lot of books, as does my wife, to the point where it causes problems. We're out of storage space, and have been for some time. The bookshelves are crowded and bowing under the weight. I'd love to have the whole lot stored away in some secure, backed-up, format that I could access from an iPad or Kindle, and put the originals in storage or pass them on. The problem is that many – maybe even "most" of our books just cannot be purchased in a digital format.

Even the most cursory survey reveals that the range of ebook stores is staggeringly narrow. Of my favourite novels I could pick up a copy of The Great Gatsby, sure, but no Strong Motion, no White Noise, no Girlfriend in a Coma (or even Generation X). These are not obscure or ancient books. From a quick survey of Helen's books that I can remember off the top of my head there's no The File by Timothy Garton Ash (this is a must-read, btw), and you can forget about a Kindle copy of the hulking great Mitrokhin Archive.

Of course the range of digital music available to buy has expanded remarkably over the past decade, and the same is likely to happen to ebooks, but with music and video we've been supported by a great safety net: if your obscure record or film isn't available, you can simply rip it to digital in minutes. With books that's not an option – hence my "awesome scanner" comment. I can't ever envisage an easy, hands-free way to "rip" a book: the problem is mechanical more than one of computing. Someone has to turn hundreds of pages. I'm not doing it.

Hence my comment, and why I can't see myself – or anyone who reads – ever living "the iLife". The CDs, DVDs and physical format games might go, but we'll keep lugging the books behind us. Oh, and the cats too, of course.

And a response..

Paul Carr saw this post and dropped me a line, pointing out that the problem with the whole iLife thing and books isn't so much reading them as hanging on to them afterwards:

"I like print. In fact I used to be a publisher. The problem is not buying [books] , or reading them; it's owning them. My solution then is to buy them (sometimes new, often second hand) and then to release them into the wild after I've read them a la book-crossing. I've left books in airports, in hotel rooms, in parks and subway stations and even in the back of cabs – always with a note in the front, to the finder, saying that I hope they enjoy the book and inviting them to email me if they do. Which sometimes they do. If it's a book I don't want to leave behind then that's when I look at either investing in a digital edition, or simply long-term loaning itto a friend until I'm next in town. Works like a dream."

Which is a good point, and one I hadn't even considered – I suppose I'm more of  hoarder than I might have imagined. There are quite a few books in our collection that would be very hard or impossible to replace, and many have notes, etc, in them, but then the majority could be picked up again if needed. So, should we all dump all the paperbacks and hit the road with a laptop? Well, maybe not – apparently cooking is, indeed, a problem: "Fortunately, I'm not a big fan of cooking and there are no shortage of affordable restaurants in the world. For others that wouldn't be such fun".

Also, comments were being held for moderation because I forgot to reset the options after getting back to the UK – that's now fixed, so if you've commented before yours should now appear immediately.

Is Kefalonia overrun by tourists yet?

Yes. Yes it is. Italians come in on the ferry that docks in Skala, many in campervans. At least four flights arrive from the UK, twice a week, in August. The airport is at maximum capacity and then some. Some of the towns – particulary the area around Lassi, south of Argostoli – are very resort-y.

I am a horrible person, and I don't like most other people. Can I avoid them?

Yes. Yes you can. Pick the right place and, even in August, you won't be overrun by drunks eating chips. Also, just head to the beach in the morning and it'll be deserted. Here's Mounda beach at 10am or so (from a snapshot camera):

Yeah. Packed. Also, and bizarrely, it seems that most British people don't go to the beach. The place we stayed had a pool that would, every day and all day, even through the midday sun, be surrounded by a few British families. On the beach, in the early morning or late afternoon, you could find two very pale Londoners (us) and approximately half the population of Italy.

Should I rent a car?

As long as you're a confident driver – the roads are narrow, windy, occasionally perilous and frequently terribly surfaced – then yes. This is particularly important if not staying in one of the big resorts, as the transfer buses have to go and drop loads of people off there first – jump in a car and you can head straight off (see "avoiding people", above). Oh, but two things: do not rent a Hyundai Getz – I'll explain in a minute – and for the love of all that is holy do buy a road map. A big one. You'll need it.

As for the Getz: it's a cheap metal box on wheels. This is fine. Our cheap metal box on wheels, however, had one of the worst gearboxes I've ever attempted to drive. At one point, while climbing out from a steep hill onto a main road, it leapt out of first gear and seized entirely, leaving us in an immobile metal box blocking two lanes of traffic on a mountain road. It took quite some brute force, and half a set of clutch plates judging by the smell, to free it. Amazing. Rent a Fiat Panda instead (not anything with a smaller engine – you need to climb steep hills).

But anyhow: renting a car makes it easier to get to the out-of-town beaches (Mounda, above, but Kamina and Kata Katelois are also nice), and you can also bumble inland to see things like the Monastery of Agios Gerasimos:

there's also the castle and some caves, which we visited last time we were on the island a few years back, and the Robola wine co-operative, or you could drive into Argostoli. Last time we went there and saw a turtle. I like turtles.

Katelios, then. What's it like?

Katelios is in a bay, with a small breakwater, and was probably a fishing village before the tourists came. The town is tiny, with a bakery, two car rental places, two grocery shops, three bar-like places. One long road extends out along the coast to the West, which is covered in tavernas – ten or so. These range from pretty average to really good – try the marvellously signed Captain Jerry's for fish, or "Ostria" (right down the end) for traditional stuff done well. In the other direction the road goes onto the beach, and most of the time you can drive along the sand until you hit the dirt road behind Kata Katelios beach. There's an easier way to reach this beach, though, via a dirt track from the road between Katelios and Skala, just outside Katelios.

For a huge panorama image of Katelios, click here (warning: huge photo).

For accommodation there's a range of small studios for rent, a few standard holiday hotels (the Mythos has a pool bar, Sky Sports etc etc, so either run to book now or avoid like the plague depending on your taste), while the whopping great, modestly named and brand new Utopia Hotel has just opened out on the other side of town, and looks very posh by the standards of the island. We stayed at a place called Hara Studios, which was inland, surrounded by fruit groves. It had a pool, but no Sky Sports, no bar, nothing. Just quiet. Oh, and kittens!

It seems that a tribe of semi-feral cats has lived there, fed and watered by the owner, for years. The latest batch spent most of its time asleep on our balcony. Very, very cute. Accommodation tips: take a torch.

Is there anything that, as a sane person, I am likely to really hate?

Just the airport, really. Recipe for Kefalonia airport on a Sunday: put about a thousand people in a facility designed to handle one hundred, close passport control for a few hours for no reason, make no attempt to manage the crowds or display any useful information, then leave to stew. Fortunately a handful of Thompson staff, in posession of uniforms and a look of horror at the whole mess, attempted with some success to organise it. Take a book, water, and patience. Or some kind of sedative. That might help.

So. Worth visiting?

For the culture and sightseeing? Not really – an earthquake wracked Kefalonia in the 50s, so there's not much by the way of history*. For a week in the middle of nowhere, snorkeling in the sea, reading a book and avoiding anything to do with computers and the internet? Yes. Definitely.

* This is pretty dumb on my part – as well as the monastery there's the caves, the castle and Fiskardo, for starters, all of which I visited on previous trips. See Dan's comment below.

Last week, on a whim, I made a little website called www.teaandkittens.co.uk. As it turns out, people like tea and kittens. Quite a lot. And some of them even visited the website to see some photos.

In the few days since launch it's served up over 13,000 pageviews to just under 2,000 unique visitors – something of a shock to my poor server. It also took off somewhat on Twitter, where the reaction was huge and overwhelmingly positive. I received a few emails of thanks, and even some kitten photo submissions. Nobody has yet submitted a photo of a cup of tea, but there's still time.

I hadn't really planned anything for the site but it seems a shame to waste this kind of interest, so I've put an RSPCA donation link up on the page (there's another one here!). If I get some time I'll also add a tool for photo submissions. In the meantime, thanks to everyone for spreading the word, and please keep enjoying the kittens – caffeine and furballs FTW.

1. Go here and install the Stylish Firefox extension. Restart when prompted.
2. Click tools, then Add-ons.
3. Click the new User Styles tab
4. Click "Write new style"
5. Give it the name Twitter_WTF, tag it Twitter
6. In the main box, enter this: #recommended_users{display:none;}
7. Click Save
8. If there's an Enable button, click it
9. Close the Add-ons box
10. Rejoice

Here's how the new style should look:

You can enable and disable the style by right-clicking the Stylish icon in the bottom-right corner of Firefox and (un)ticking it. Thanks to @Yuuichi for posting the style rule last week.

After having considered at least five different models and reading dozens of (sometimes useless) reviews, I chose a Garmin Forerunner 405CX*. Here's what I've found since buying it that I wish I'd known beforehand.

One caveat: I don't think it's possible to properly review a device such as this without having used it for a few months, and preferably through winter. When buying a GPS watch there were several questions that I wanted the answers to, however, so I think it's worth putting that information online now for anyone else in the same situation. I'll update this a few months down the line.

What you get

It isn't entirely clear what you get in the box with the 405CX before you buy, particularly as some Forerunner watches are sold with and without heart rate monitors. So, here it is: the standard 405CX package I bought includes the watch on a rubber strap, a heart rate chest strap, a small USB antenna for PC transfers, two velcro straps, a strap changing tool, a charger (it's USB, with a USB mains adapter) and a quick start guide. The heart rate sensor is much the same size as the Polar T31, but has a battery that can be changed without the use of a stanley knife. The chest strap seems to be a little larger than a medium-sized Polar one.

What you don't get

A manual, and god knows you'll need one because the quick start guide covers just that: the start. Download the full manual in PDF here. Also, there are no instructions on how to change the strap – see the video here, but beware that it's a far fiddlier process than the presenters make out. There's no software CD, either – instead this must be downloaded from here.

Why so many wriststraps?

The 405CX looks more like a watch than some older Garmin models, but this is accomplished by building the GPS receiver into the top of the lower strap. It's a clever design, as the receiver always points up when you run, but it makes the watch huge. If you have small wrists, like me, then the standard strap is uncomfortable, so switching to the velcro one is a must. Apparently these straps are not included with the cheaper 405 (non -CX) model. Here's the watch on the small strap on my puny wrist – GPS receiver side facing the camera.

Using the watch

The 405CX has two buttons: one to start and stop, and one to lap. All other controls are on the "touch bezel" – the silver ring around the bezel that works rater like an iPod controller. Tapping and holding one of the four quadrants opens that function, scrolling a finger around adjusts values and single-tapping selects. It takes a few minutes to get the hang of, but works well. The bezel can be locked by pushing both physical buttons at once – I've heard that this is a must if running in the rain, but it's no problem to lock every time.

GPS reception is impressive. It takes about a minute to position at the start of a run – go out, stretch, and it'll be ready – and kept its grip on the satellites even in parts of my run that are under some fairly heavy tree cover.

The options available are numerous. At its simplest, you can run until you want to stop and the watch will track your time, pace, distance and heart rate. It's simple to combine this with the Virtual Partner – set this to run at, say, 4:30 per km and it'll track your progress against that standard through each kilometer. When running on streets rather than a track it's handy to switch on the auto lap function that adds a lap marker every kilometer, mile or whatever – the watch beeps at each marker, and displays your pace through the previous lap.

More usefully for me, you can set the device to monitor you through a fixed run – for 45 minutes, say, or 10km – and alert you when it's done. There are also modes for heart rate zone training and intervals (run, rest, run, rest, and so on). The Advanced workout option allows for even more complicated settings, but cannot be set up on the watch itself – these must be set on the PC and transferred.

By default the watch will show two screens of information when running: one for your heart rate, and another showing the pace and so on. Enabling the virtual partner adds a third. You switch between them by tapping the bezel when running, which isn't as easy as pressing the physical buttons on my Polar, but there's also an option to automatically cycle them at various speeds. It's possible to completely customise what's shown, too: there are three main screens available, each holding three variables, plus the heart rate screen, so you could have up to twelve figures on display should you wish. I've set it up with just one screen for time, distance and pace, and disabled the heart rate screen entirely (it's still logged).

The watch is charged using a clip-on adapter, which is simple enough to use. At the moment it seems to lose approximately 10% of its charge per half-hour of running, so I'd bank on charging it once per week.

Oh, and it has a light. Thank god.

Viewing the data

After running you need to hold the reset button for two seconds to end the session and commit it to memory. Garmin offers two ways to track your runs: Garmin Training Center, which is PC-based, and Garmin Connect, which is online. I've only used Garmin Connect.

Synchronising the watch with the website is simple enough: plug in the USB stick and place the watch nearby and the two will detect and transfer the last run. Once transferred it'll appear on Garmin Connect when you next log in. Here's a snap of the main run screen (map obfuscated to hide my home address):

As you can see it plots a Google Map (with surprising accuracy – you can see which side of a narrow road you ran on, for instance), with pace, elevation and heart rate graphs below. Lap times and paces are shown to the left, along with lots of average data. Click Player and you get this screen:

.. which allows you to replay the run, or check out where you were when any strange peaks or troughs appear on the charts (hint: waiting to cross roads). It can only graph two variables at a time, though, so you can't have pace versus elevation versus heart rate here. A report option allows you to tally data for a period (the last month, say), and you can set goals. These aren't very sophisticated, so you're limited to "run two hours this week" rather than "get back to 15km per run within two months".

Verdict

As I said earlier, time will tell. For the moment, though, the 405CX does everything I wanted it to, and a whole lot more that may or may not be useful in future, and the Garmin Connect website is particularly nifty. I'll update this review in the depths of winter once I know how it copes with the cold and pouring rain. If you fancy buying one, please click here* – it's £250 from Amazon, or about £300-350 elsewhere.

Update: Rain

One concern I had was whether the 405CX – and the bezel in particular – would cope with rain, as I'd read reports of it causing accidentally activating in the wet. Tonight I took it out for a run in some truly awful British weather, though – rain, wind, yuck – and it was fine. I left the bezel unlocked while it got a fix, with no problems, then locked it during the run. I got soaked, so did the watch, but it kept working with no problems.

* These are affiliate links, so if you click one I'll get a small kickback to waste on comic books. The price you pay is the same, and Amazon is the cheapest place to buy (I shopped around quite a bit).

Having finished my Japanese verb learning tool, I thought I'd make something similar for anyone studying hiragana – the first alphabet anyone learns when studying Japanese.

Hiragana isn't particularly tricky – it has around 45 basic characters, but most are quite simple – but learning them for the first time does take a lot of practice. I used loads of paper flashcards, but those are fiddly to make or expensive to buy.

So with that in mind I've created a four-stage flashcard application for learning hiragana online. You can find it at www.learnhiragananow.com.