Great as in really good and great as in just enormous, fitted quite a lot in. Clare was out in London Friday night, and had got a hotel so I was planning to meet her later and we'd stay over so as to have a nice Saturday there too. Work is busy as ever and I was not intending to leave early, but the trains worked out that way so I snuck out at half four. Not sure what it is about the trains to and from work, if I miss my regular train in there is a 90 minute gap in service, and if I'd not got this 5pm from Westenhanger to London there would be a similar sort of wait. Planned to meet Camilla (of Popbitch) at 7.30 at The Lord Nelson and then maybe try and find Kosso somewhere, I knew he was at the FOWA conference in the day. Pleasant ride up, the train did get busy, I watched and listened to podcasts and things all the way, catching up on Collings and Herrin and Diggnation. Love the Richard Herring and Andrew Collings one, chaotic and interesting and probably most importantly British so I feel I can relate to it. I don't like the Diggnation one at all, but there is something compelling about it, I can see why it is popular. Anyway as I was watching it, they mentioned the FOWA conference and said they'd be doing a live broadcast from there, come along, free drinks for all etc, it was actually on that Friday at 7.30. Had made plans for that time and did not go, but it made me wish I'd investigated what was going on in town before that point...

Had a great evening, met Camilla in the Lord Nelson in Southwark. Looks like a frightening estate pub, very close to where I used to live on Nicholson Street. I never went in there then, and don't think I would have now if it weren't prearranged, but it's great inside. Real ale, cocktails, food probably, cool, really very nice. Interesting mix of people too. The owners were people I'd met before, we were plied with their cocktails, including an interesting Frangelica and lemon concoction and a home made Fox's Glacier Mint shooter. Plus the beer there was good, which I'd not have guessed from outside, Black Sheep.

Leaving there I stopped in at Gordon's Wine Bar for one to see what it was like now, I remember it being very smokey before. It's a cellar bar near Charing Cross, a proper wine bar too, though they seem to concentrate mostly on sherry and port now. Nice, but I was on my own so didn't hang about. Instead of trying to meet Clare with her friends for last orders I headed back to our hotel, the Radison Hampshire on Leicester Square. Yes, five star luxury, get us! Hard to beat that location for the kind of things we like to do in London. Small room, but fully equipped, and the view was amazing. If only Clare hadn't lost the camera (she says it was me) I'd have some great pictures of the view, not sure the phone pic will come out.

Saturday was a good day too, a reasonably early start with a view to having an early lunch so we could try to do the double - each time we're in London for the day we think we're going to have lunch out and dinner out, but tend to fill up at the first sitting and go home before we've managed two meals out. We shopped a bit and went to The National Gallery, which I really like. So much to see and all for a voluntary contribution. Not sure of the order of the rest of the day, but we also fed squirrels in St James' Park and had lunch in Covent Garden Wagamama. The park was heaving, nice sunny day, the squirrels were friendly, but oddly different on either side of the park. Over the East side where we went in they were mad for the monkey nuts we'd brought but on the West side they were very fussy, makes you wonder if there are different tribes of squirrels or something.

More shopping in the afternoon, thought about buying a new coat, maybe one of these but dawdled about it and now can't find the one I liked online. Spent quite a while in selfridges.com/Selfridges which is always interesting, and then stopped for a break in the Pontefract Castle. England vs Kazakhstan was on but we sat down in the cellar bar. I've mentioned it before, it's a nice relaxing spot for being so close to Oxford Street. We regrouped for a while then finally headed back to the hotel to pick up our bags, nice to not have to lug them about all day but also not have to pay a mint to leave them in left luggage. I could have probably managed with mine, I travel fairly light, but I wouldn't fancy carrying Clare's makeup bag around all day (just seeing if she's reading down this far).

We really planned to head to the Punjab but Pizza Express was nearer and we could get home an hour earlier by going there so it won out.

Train back was busy but bearable. Great weekend, like I already said.

Oh at some point we saw Michael Gambon, think it must have been in the morning. I am in trouble with the nephews for not getting his autograph, they are going autograph crazy at the moment, and with him being in the Harry Potter films now it would have been a good one, gah.

AC/DC are touring, first time in eight years apparently, though it's certainly not that long since we saw them at Hammersmith Odeon, guess that really was a special one off tour.

Tue 14-Apr-09 AC/DC London The O2 On Sale From 10:00 17-Oct-08

Tue 21-Apr-09 AC/DC Manchester Evening News Arena On Sale From 10:00 17-Oct-08

Thu 23-Apr-09 AC/DC Birmingham LG Arena (Formerly NEC) On Sale From 10:00 17-Oct-08

Sounds like more than one date at the O2 to me, could be wrong though maybe they just need time to recover between shows...

I didn't go and see KISS when they came here last and I'm not sure I'm going to go to this, I'm a bit old these days, but not quite old enough to be looking forward to it through a misty rose tinted rear view mirror. I know how expensive these things can be these days, and can picture the hassle of getting home and that, but maybe it will be my gig of the year. Can't see it right now though. Can't even earn anything pimping AC/DC tickets on ebay these days, they've not reinstated my affilliate account :-(

Get it here, not heard it yet, but I think I'd urge people to vote Obama anyway. I'm not sitting on the fence like KISS. It's obviously not my call, but how often has the Conservative candidate been the better choice?

That link courtesy of billy squier off popbitch. Also while I'm here Popbitch book only 8.99, good christmas present! I'm not in it myself, but the toy white tiger we bought in Las Vegas does feature.

Meeting a friend here after work before meeting Clare later, and staying in a hotel, how decadent. Tomorrow, lunching and shopping.

Camera update: it just sent me an email, the first in days. Always a bit nervy receiving a mail saying "motion detected IN YOUR HOUSE WHEN YOU'RE NOT THERE", but it's sensitive, was probably a seagull flying past the window. I checked in, it's silent and still and the telly's still there so I think we're OK.

Work update: still absolutely chocka, too busy to write much.

I had a burst of five emails in a row from the camera, not sure if it's when I'd tweaked with the settings or not so no idea if it's working or not. Might try turning off the video attachment see if that's any easier on the email. Found lots of stuff here, stuff that I wish I'd seen before choosing this camera really.

Poor Clare is stuck on a train back from London, they're stopped at Tonbridge, this page is predicting she'll only be ten minutes late in (ten minutes later than the train she's on is meant to be in, which is later than normal because she missed her normal train) but that's probably rubbish.

Ah it is rubbish, she got off at Tonbridge to find out what was going on, people at Tonbridge station have been told there are no trains going anywhere and busses are on the way, but they weren't announcing it on the trains yet so as not to cause a crush. Her folks are going to drive to Tonbridge and pick her up. On the plus side she is working from home tomorrow, and she will go sit in the pub and wait for her folks, but we'd both rather she was home. Time to stop working in London monkey!

Outgoing mail server is mail.btinternet.com, and username is just the username, not the email address. I authorised another email address on my own clarkeology.com domain to send from my btbroadband in the end, but don't think I really needed to do that. At least if I reply to one of these messages, or Clare does, the mail will come back to me and not some unchecked yahoo / btinternet account.

Now all I want is for someone to burgle my flat!

Looks like this might be the modern equivalent of my camera.

UPDATE: and it's gone again, sent one mail and now it's back to erroring again. The mail did arrive, seemingly from my own domain so I know that bit worked. Once. What on earth did I do to get it working?

Dug out my wireless camera, to see if it could be used as a web cam - it's good quality, with sound, but more for security monitoring than sitting in front of the screen and talking. Don't think it can, but it's good to have it up and running again after about a year... It seems a little slow to respond when setting it up, like changes take a few minutes to take effect so it seems like it's not working correctly occasionally, but I got there. Even my old dyndns account was still running so hopefully I'll be able to use the camera from work today, and maybe give the address out so you can monitor my home security for me.

Only really had problems with one bit of it, and that's the "send an email on motion detect", one of the main features of this camera (pointless still linking to it, I don't think you can buy it any more). You need an smtp server for your outgoing mails, your ISP certainly provides one. I hoped to use gmail, as I use it for all my mail and have never used the email address that came with BT Broadband, but smtp.gmail.com insists on some encryption and an alternative port number that the camera can't cope with, so no go. In the end, some messing about changing settings and trying things it seems that at some point since I last used this BT made changes to not let you set your "from" address in your emails without authenticating that you really own that address. Definitely reasonable and I guessed this so I was already trying to send the emails from what I thought was my real bt broadband address, and what had been my real email address when I registered, let's say it's foo@btinternet.com. I logged on to my btinternet.com address and worked out it had been changed to foo@ btopenworld.com. Oh and there was a mail waiting explaining what had gone on, I didn't need to google round the houses after all.

Urgent – emails you send from non–BT Yahoo! Mail addresses via our SMTP servers may be blocked

Dear Customer,

You've received an Error 553 message because we've upgraded your BT Yahoo! Mail security to help prevent identity fraud and spam.

These enhancements will help protect you from 'spoofing' – when people use alternate addresses to disguise an email's real sender, possibly to commit fraud.

Making the improvements work

For the security improvements to work, we need you to take a few minutes now to verify each of the alternate email addresses you use in BT Yahoo! Mail. This will confirm that these email addresses are genuine.

Please verify addresses now to avoid any further blocking of your outgoing emails.

Simply follow the step-by-step instructions at www.btyahoo.com/verify. You won't be asked for any personal information, but you'll need to log in to your account to make the changes.

UPDATE: I've got the theory of it anyway, but no emails sent as yet. If I suddenly get an email from the camera at work today, that will be a bad thing, as it means someone is moving about in the flat...