Oops

So I just inadvertently locked the Cambodian ambassor out of his embassy. They wouldn't turn down my visa application for that, would they? Would they?

A big plus

They've finally started selling Freeview PVRs under the Freeview+ brand. This is very smart: Sky has spent millions telling us what a PVR is, to flog Sky+. Now Freeview's hitching a (nearly) free ride on the plus train (as, less flauntily, is Virgin).

There's talk, too, of PVRs with the iPlayer built in - presumably they've waited until now to let the BBC iron out the iPlayer's kinks.

Now, stick in a decent hard drive (500 gigs at least - why mess with less?) and a Bittorrent client, and you're getting close to beating Scott's Mac Mini, or a fully tricked-out PS3 (which, of course, has Blu-Ray, too).

Oooh, shiny

Scott, the aforementioned geek, is using a Mac Mini as his home entertainment hub. I am very jealous.

Acers high

As I said, my Mac died a couple of weeks ago. It may still be fixable - but it'll take at least a day of scary screwdriver stuff and lots of waiting for things to install and reboot, and install and reboot. Not to mention dropping £100 or so on a new hard drive.

So to tide me over, I got a netbook - an Acer Aspire One. I'd been eyeing one anyway - I'm off to Vietnam next month, and the idea of having a super-tiny laptop out there appeals. And although £180 ain't exactly disposable, seeing it fall down a ravine (does Vietnam have ravines?), or trampled by an angry goat in the back of a minibus would be less painful than watching the same happen to an actual MacBook.

Colour aside - I got the blue one, purely because the shop didn't have shiny white - there are two basic flavours: £180 gets you 512 megs of memory and an 8 gig solid state 'drive', while an extra £40 buys a whole (oooh!) gig of RAM and a 120 gig standard hard drive. Oh, and Windows.

I went for the cheap one. I've had an awful lot of hard drives die on me over the years (it's all Bittorrent's fault), including the one in said MacBook, so I liked the idea of a laptop with just one moving part (the fan). I figured that since it was really only going to be fit for browsing and wordprocessing, 8 gigs would be plenty. OK, not plenty. Enough.

Plus, I'm a touch allergic to Windows. I've had to use it at work, and nothing about it pleases me. Beyond that, I figured the low, low specs of the AA1 would play more nicely with what I guessed to be the lower overheads of Linux. Yeah, baby: Linux.

Two weeks ago, I knew not very much about Linux. I knew it was open source. I knew it came in an unfathomable number of isotopes. I knew it was broadly similar to Unix, which lurks somewhere in the geeky heart of OS X. But Macs do a thorough job of hiding it. I think the only reason I've ever used the terminal on a Mac was because I read it had a hidden Tetris game. Beyond that, I knew that Linux gave my hardcore geek friend Scott a spontaneous woody. I'd never dared ask why.

So Linux posed, to put it mildly, a challenge.

Plink, plink

Aren't there a lot of hangover cure ads in December, though?

Ad hoc

A few things have changed in the last little while. I got laid off, my Mac died, and I'm flatsitting and haven't figured out - through sheer laziness - the PVR here. All of which means I've been watching a lot more TV ads than I usually do. And as the economy heads off the plank, the ads have been an interesting pointer to who's feeling the heat.

Boots have the most visible campaign. They're carpet-bombing - at least one, often two spots per break, on what seems to be every channel going. They're good, too - there can't be anyone left who doesn't think Boots when 'Here Come The Girls' plays. It's a smart choice of song - I imagine it's doing sterling service in the nation's office parties, reinforcing the brand every time.

Beyond that, Boots have a great proposition this Christmas. They sell useful stuff that doesn't feel needlessly opulent - nicer versions of the stuff you'd buy anyway. Which, if you're feeling squeezed, is exactly the sort of present you want to give and receive.

(Oh, and - ITV are running, pretty heavily, a promo with the same music. I wonder if Boots are paying them. If not, why not? And if so, is that allowed?)

Unlike every perfume manufacturer. Perfume's big at Christmas, of course, but there's a topnote of desperation this year.

Carling know it's important to check their barley themselves. And there was me, thinking grain was a freely traded commodity, on the grounds of it all being exactly the fucking same. If I'm feeling energetic tomorrow, I may check out how Carling source their barley.

UPDATE: It's all British, apparently. Phew.

A new national treasure?

Graham Norton is to replace Sir Tel on Eurovision.

I suspect this is a mistake. Eurovision is so camp in and of itself that the straight - if wry, and increasingly well-refreshed - foil of Wogan's commentary was an essential element.

Even as he took the piss out of the acts, and especially out of the ludicrous national video inserts, Wogan's tone was entirely serious. If you didn't speak English, it didn't sound so different from a royal wedding.

I'm not sure Norton has the same range. I haven't seen his show for a while, but his earlier stuff was one-note camp. Nothing wrong with Eurovision as a big gay night out - on the red button, perhaps - but the joke is so obvious it's better left unsaid.

Still, if he pulls it off and manages the same longevity, the knighthood must surely follow. Unless some naughty person happens to send King Chaz a video of Carnal Knowledge.