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On a note related to Si's thoughts on journalism, I came across this piece when attempting to find out who on earth the Taxpayers' Alliance might be or represent. From Paul Lashmar, a lecturer in journalism:

"What you see now is journalists who are grateful for news which is almost perfectly packaged to go into the paper with a ready top line. In that sense, journalism is becoming very passive. It is a processor of other people's information rather than being engaged in actively seeking out and determining what the truth of a situation is in an energetic and inquisitive way."

And more, from one of the Alliance's founders:

"What we've tried to do since 2004 is understand how the media works, so we've tried to give news stories to journalists on a plate. Journalists have 101 things to do in their day and don't often have time to read long and dry reports from think-thanks. So we use the Freedom of Information Act and a team of researchers to get fresh figures from government and local councils, which we package up into brief, media-friendly research papers, complete with eye-catching headline figures to give reporters a ready-made top line".

It's both an interesting and disturbing read: how a relatively small organisation (no figures given on site, but the BBC says 18,000 members) with private funding from "generous people we know" (Telegraph) can generate huge amounts of coverage, much in the broadsheets, by spoonfeeding research. One wonders how often, and how, thoroughly said research is checked.

You have to wonder also how much the pressure of an online publishing environment has an effect on this - I've just spent the best part of five days trying to pull together a story but many would, I imagine, be glad of so much time. And poor reporting from one outlet also makes it harder for everyone else: it's going to be hard to check, for example, FOI data in time if there's another, lazier writer happy to take the release, rewrite it without checking, hit the top of Google News first and watch the clicks roll in.

Also, it should be said: loathsome as you may or may not consider its aims, the TPA has a great name; one that screams "you pay tax, so we represent you" rather than "we want flat rate tax that'll entail a massive cut in in the public services that you, but not I, rely on, peasant". It also, when scanned in a newspaper, gives absolutely no clue as to the organisation's political allegiance (check the founders' employment histories). After all, people of all political persuasions pay tax - unless they're right wing enough to want to, and rich enough to be able to, practice tax avoidance.

And, credit where it's due, they do get the apostrophe in the right place (Taxpayers'). I suppose that counts for something.

.. but still, "mushrooms trigger jet emergency" is the finest Evening Standard board headline in ages. Side note: it seems that planes make uneventful journeys, but jets get involved in calamities.

Three days away from work, so obviously I thought I'd get away from technological matters by breaking a computer. Er, I mean, "upgrading" it.

About two years ago I built a Media Center PC for the flat. For anyone unfamiliar, Windows XP Media Center was a special version of Windows designed to be used as a TV recorder. Instead of a monitor, mouse and keyboard you use a TV and remote control, and a set of big blue menus allow you to watch and record TV, view photos, listen to music or view any video files that you might have acquired that may or may not contain US television programmes not yet shown in the UK. Like Sky+ it can record a series of shows at the touch of the button, making it, when it works, a fantastic thing.

But that's only when it's in a good mood. XP Media Center proved more than a little cranky, and to compound matters I built the PC using odds and ends that I had lying around rather than the best parts for the job. Slightly iffy software combined with hardware of dubious provenance combined to produce a PC that worked fantastically well most of the time, but which spent days on end stubbornly refusing to do anything.  Eventually, persuaded by a colleague, I decided to try to fix it by installing the new version of Media Center, now a part of Windows Vista.

Should take an hour or two, I thought - something to do while waiting for the washing machine and before going out to get a newspaper. Did it take an hour or two? Did it bollocks.

Vista and the old system might have got along famously had the motherboard manufacturer ever bothered to publish any drivers of any kind, or indeed any information about what parts it used, on the web. Sadly it hadn't, but in London you're never more than an hour or two away from even the most esoteric product, including computer parts. One quick trip into town later and I'd picked up a cheapo processor (Celeron E1200, £30) and motherboard (Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H, £40). Rip out the old stuff, stick the new bits in the case, wrestle with Intel's completely stupid "push it until you're certain you'll break something" heatsink design, and voila:

.. a Media Center that actually works. The old one had an ancient integrated graphics chip that struggled heroically with the menus but would often mess them up, but the new one shows Vista's newer, spanglier Media Center in all its fanciness. The old one ran at alarming temperatures, but the new one sits idle at less than 30 degrees and runs to just 36 going full tilt. The old one had to hibernate when not in use - and that required extra software - but the new one slips into S3 standby. Better yet, it found all the Freeview channels first time and compiled the programme guide automatically.

In short, it's bound to break down spectacularly in the next seven days, probably taking the TV and/or our central heating system with it. Watch this space.

From the "rather old but worth reading" file comes this New Yorker piece on the Golden Gate Bridge and the people who jump from it. It's a macabre subject, but one that's treated respectfully, documenting the sad stories of those who leap - like the fourteen year-old who took a taxi from school directly to the bridge - as well as those who are persuaded not to and, most amazingly of all, those who jump but survive. This quote in particular, from one Ken Baldwin just glows on the page; it's almost perfect in its context:

"I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable—except for having just jumped."

Tangentally, this article was apparently the inspiration for the song "Jumpers" on Sleater-Kinney's album The Woods. First track (brilliantly described here as a "deterrent for weak-eared listeners") aside, I'd wholeheartedly recommend a listen - it sounds rather like an all-female Led Zeppelin tribute band that are mad as hell about being trapped in an echoey shed. And that's a compliment.

A very quick plea for information: can anyone recommend a double glazing company?

We have a load of knackered Victorian windows that desperately need replacing, but finding someone trustworthy to do the job is proving somewhat tricky. If anyone has any experience of any local companies, I'd love to hear it - thanks.

Due disclosure: as a student I once worked, briefly, for a large double glazing company. My job was to phone people up and ask if they'd like to purchase windows, soffits (no idea) or fascias (ditto), which was in itself pretty loathsome. What made it even more hateful was that I was supposed to be doing so during the World Cup, when many people were less than pleased to be called to the phone and away from the little people kicking a ball inside the television. I'd like to point out in mitigation that I lasted barely two weeks and failed to sell a single product, largely through lack of trying, but I can't shake the feeling that our current glazing predicament may well be some form of karmic revenge.

We took Hunter and Ralph to the vet for their 12 month / 730 meal service this week. This is always somewhat traumatic as, cloistered house cats that they are, they find the noise and bustle of the outside world rather terrifying. Both started doing that honking emergency call that scared kittens do (it's horrible - like a feline air raid siren) and Ralph hid himself under a blanket, peeking out only when he spotted Hunter in the other cat carrier.

Fortunately both are doing fine and Ralph, who was a bit porky last time, has shed a whole Kilogram, putting him back at his ideal weight. Hunter looks bigger but, as the vet put it, that's just the fluff - he's actually a size zero.

What can you do when you get a rare few days off work - climb a mountain? Hike through the wilderness? Travel to far flung and exotic lands and immerse yourself in an alien culture? All wonderful choices, of course, but with one common problem: none of them necessarily involves a random visit to the Lego Store.

Today we went to Bluewater. Or was it Lakeside? Not sure - either way it was a shopping centre somewhere on the outskirts of London, roughly the size of Luxembourg and alarmingly sterile in that way that big shopping centres tend to be. We wandered around a bit, conspicuously failing to buy anything of much value, but then we found the Lego store. Now, Lego and I go some way back - we had lots of it as kids and, when building little houses lost some of its technical challenge, I spent what must have been entire years constructing things out of Lego Technic - the fancy Lego with cogs and gears and electric motors and pneumatic doodads and all that good stuff. In fact, I got surprisingly good at creating completely tiny, and pointless, things like miniature Lego gearboxes for slightly larger Lego cars - looking back, I suppose my progression onto adult geekhood wasn't a huge shock to anyone. [Even geekier sidenote - turns out that today's Technic bricks don't have lumps on - they've gone all odd and rounded. I'm not sure if this is progress or heresy.]

Anyhow, in a fit of nostalgia I spent a tenner on a big box of bricks: not fancy Technic ones, just the classic primary-colours-with-lumps-on type. And they're great: having got home I spent a good hour mashing them together, all the while grinning like an ourang-outang who has just discovered not one banana but a whole Chiquita shipment all to himself. And, in honour of the Olympics (it's hard to craft a model of Georgia using perma-happy minifigs right now), I created the masterpiece you'll see above: a Lego diving contest. I thought it was quite good, until I looked on Flickr and found this:

So, that'd be the Olympic Stadium in Lego, then. Bloody hell. And they didn't stop at the one building, either - behold the entire Olympic Village, crafted in plastic bricks. Watch this space to see if I go slightly crazy, sell the car, fill the bedroom full of tiny plastic bricks and attempt to recreate the entirety of Western Europe in full, glorious, detail, before I have to return to work.

From this day forth, should anyone ever criticise my choice of home town (and yes, this does happen, with depressing regularity), I shall simply point out that nowhere outside of Lewisham have I ever seen a drive-thru* German sausage stall. Nowhere else can one purchase several varieties of wurst without having to step outside of one's automobile. Nowhere. Take that, Manhattan.

* Whatever happened to the "o" and "gh" in drive through? Were they quietly murdered, and the bodies dropped in the mid-Atlantic?

Despite writing about computers from 10am to 6pm five days a week, and occasionally on weekends just for the hell of it (that and the money), I'm not a very keen computer purchaser. In fact, I've bought just one computer in the last six years and that - despite my working on a magazine called Computer Shopper, which specialised in hardware reviews, at the time - was purchased using the highly scientific "that one's very cheap, we can afford it and it'll suffice" method. Incidentally, it broke down completely about a year later, so I'd heartily recommend that everyone else should do as much research as possible, preferably using magazines that employ me. Ahem.

Lately, though, I've been mostly writing about netbooks - tiny little notebooks that use cheapo processors, and which are ideal for surfing the web and writing documents, if not much else. Ever since the first one (the Asus Eee PC 701) loomed on the horizon I've been a fan of the idea, particularly given that I've lugged some comically large notebooks in flight hand luggage. A little notebook that weighs nothing, takes up little room and won't cost the earth to replace if (OK, when) I drop it would be great. Attempting to be the savvy buyer, though, I held off buying one for some time until I could find a netbook with both a low price and a really good keyboard.

Eventually, along came the Acer Aspire One. I was really rather taken - as Google will testify - by its low price and lovely keyboard, and after much faffing I forked out £200 (which, interestingly, I'd earned by reviewing netbooks) at Play.com, getting in just before the price rose by another £30. So, I've purchased a perfect little computer at a bargain price using the power of research, for once. Clever, clever me, eh?

Well, er, no. Acer has been having trouble with the supply of the Aspire One, so it arrived a month late. And, when it did arrive, it was completely, utterly, inexplicably dead. Pushing the power button produced about half a second of life before it stuttered and died, and the battery (which I think is probably the cause of the problem) wouldn't charge at all. So, after months of deliberation and plotting I've ended up with a £200 plastic paperweight. Not so clever.

A courier will hopefully take the One back to Play.com at some point today, and with luck I might have a working one next week. In the meantime, I've learnt the error of my ways: my next laptop for travelling will be a notepad and biro.

When BT rang up and invited me to come along to Cowes Week - it's rather involved in sailing sponsorship, what with the Extreme 40s, sponsoring Ellen MacArthur, and all that - the weather in London was sunny, hot, and  with no wind to speak of. So, in all honesty, I expected Sunday to be a rather dull affair, drifting slowly around a racing course watching the sails flap idly in the breeze. It didn't really turn out that way.

Instead, Sunday morning was grey and a bit ominous, and by the time my boat hit the water with an intrepid crew comprising of one skipper, one BT employee and five journalists, the wind was blowing up impressively. Within a minute of getting the mainsail up I was wrestling with the helm, which seemed determined to pull away onto a reach with the sails too far in, and the boat was tipped over at least 45 degrees going close hauled. I've spent enough time sailing to find this interesting rather than alarming, but I'm not sure it'd be so much fun on your first time out and with barely a few minutes' briefing, as it was for some of the crew.

We missed the start of our race spectacularly due to unfortunate scheduling - the ten minute signal went when we were barely off the jetty and half an hour from the start line - but things were kept interesting by a fender flying off over the stern and some increasingly drastic efforts to get it back. After four passes, a couple of breakneck turns and a few very soggy crew members, myself included, we admitted defeat. Short of getting the sails in and resorting to the motor, the plastic balloon's bid for freedom was bound to succeed.

As the afternoon went on the weather got a little rougher, with the wind gusting to around 25 knots and the tide (I assume) creating some deep, choppy waves down by the coast. As we came back, wind behind us, into Cowes alongside the main racing fleet boats were broaching wildly, a few had lost spinnakers, one appeared to have lost his forestay and was hastily re-rigging the mast with the stays pulled forward, and another was completely dismasted, floating just off the course as its crew attempted to pull the rigging up out of the water. We didn't even attempt to fly the spinnaker - with the wind veering a little behind us on a very broad reach I was getting seriously nervous about the possibility of an unplanned gybe that would send the boom hurtling over the cockpit.

Fortunately we made it back entirely in one piece and managed to get the sails down, despite the best efforts of the red line ferry which appeared looming behind us as I attempted to hold the boat head to wind and out of the way of the other yachts. And speaking of other yachts: I've never seen so many. Coming into the town all you could see both ahead and behind was a mess of spinnakers and mainsails, ranging from tiny twenty-something footers hastily attempting to reattach their outboard motors to enormous racing craft built like giant dinghies hurtling along behind asymmetric kites. The whole thing really was amazing to behold.

Despite a few hairy moments the whole thing was incredibly enjoyable, and I'd certainly go back for another shot given the chance. In fact, yesterday served as a reminder of why I used to enjoy sailing in small yachts - you don't quite get the breakneck feeling of speed that comes from hanging out of a dinghy with your head inches from the water, but there's something very satisfying about it. Oh, and you get coffee making facilities on board, too. What more could you want.

Photos here, slideshow here.