This week-end was really fine. Very calm, very easy-going. No stress, which I really, really needed. On Saturday, Frederic and John came by for dinner, wine and champagne. Micke, Mikaela's oldest brother, came by a little later in the evening and we had a nice, calm time. Mikaela (almost entirely by herself) made the pizza to the left, with loads of yummy ingredients. Frederic and John brought a stone tablet which we used to bake the pizza on, but we didn't pre-heat it enough, which made the crust of third pizza (yep, we made three tin-fuls of pizza) perfect, even though the previous ones weren't exactly suffering. All in all, great food.

Since all files created using the new default file-format in MS Office 2007 are sheer XML (embedded in a ZIP-container), Brian Jones shows us how to tweak it good. I like and fear the day I edit damaged MS Excel-files using MS Visual Studio rather than just restore them.

I wasn't aware that the Green River Killer was caught until Neko Case wrote a song about it.

John Cameron Mitchell ruled in "Hedwig And The Angry Inch", but rumors from Cannes say "Shortbus" will be better. He's not acting in it, just directing, but still. Writing on Cannes, Ken Loach has won the Palm d'Or with "The Wind that Shakes the Barley".

Kids who outsmart admins by installing proxies at home and surfing through them are interesting, but the real money is in scamming gullible white people through eBay. Shurrah.

This might be old, but I love the pictures of the so-called $100 laptop. Let the "under-developed" countries flourish!

I just picked up SlimStat, a great plugin for WordPress that shows me sweet stats for all you visitors, i.e. what you're searching for to have turned up here, when you have, what OS you're using, your favourite colour, how come your first name looks weird to Swedish people...and so forth.

Speaking of tech, whenever Thinkfree isn't up and running I use FiLO to keep my finances in check. You've got to check that one if you're prone to keep your numbers up-to-date to know how much you're spending. Also, take your time to check out MiLO for organising time, to-do-items and your notes. I keep them in the back-pocket of my little Moleskine notebook.

...but if you won't, just say no. Or watch interesting pictures of punks.

I want the new Basil Rathbone-based Sherlock Holmes DVD-collection. Bwaa.

And to finish off, I hereby quote myself, having written a review of The Pipettes' coming album for another site:

All of The Pipettes' earlier releases, i.e. from before the first "real" single off this album, were quite raw: guitar-led, with heavy drums and a so-and-so bass, there were only a few other instruments allowed to make a cloink or two, but then the sound of an organ was the most intrusive bit.

Things have radically changed.

Whereas their songs once bore sexual emotion, they now are whisked inside some half-assed Phil Spector-candy. Don't get me wrong, I love loads of Spector's productions, but this is not good for the band.

I mean, a track like "Pull Shapes" is made to sound Spector-ish, but what on Earth can anybody say about "ABC" or "Tell Me What You Want", which both were a lot more lewd and honest in their rockier, previous incarnation.

Lucky for some, the "old" 7" vinyls are transferred to MP3, which means more generations to come will get to absorb what is now a fairly good Phil Spector-rip-off.

All in all: the songs are quite strong, some very strong indeed, but trying to cover a sound like that never fares well if you only have one oar to paddle with.

I'll tell you what I want, alright, in the words of Michael Jackson: "I want you back".