I have been ill with the flu since Wednesday afternoon, which may explain why i've not been online lately … i could barely stay awake for more than a few hours at a time! I am on the mend now. Last night i woke up at about 11pm with my body about a trillion degrees, and i believe at that point the war was over. The virus died and now we're in the mop up phase where my lovely white blood cells go round and repair all the damage done by the virus over the last few days.

My body is most definitely made of WIN! :D

I have just watched Death of a School Friend on the iPlayer. It's a devastating and moving documentary about a teenage suicide and the impact of friends and family even 40 years later. I'm not ashamed to say that i cried throughout most of the programme.

I hope i might be able to go and see the Winchester Fireworks this evening. It's always a stunning display, and having stayed indoors for 3 days i feel i'd like to get out. Provided it is not raining, and i don't feel too tired, i will probably go. I am also hoping to get to church tomorrow morning. I missed it last week when i was away with my family.

Married life suits me well. In some ways everything feels pretty much exactly the same. We've lived together for 4 years, after all. But in my heart i just *know* something is different, and i like it a lot. We're not just friends who live together anymore; there is something more to it. Something that everyone can know and recognise and celebrate!

But at the moment my beloved it at a geography conference, and i'm at home for another boring night with meaningless Twittering and blog posting! I do apologise!

I had a very good day at work. I got a few tricky things done in the morning, and lots of little easy things done in the afternoon. So it was a productive day, and i was complimented on a few things i've done lately, which always makes me feel very good indeed!

Tonight i have become a 'beta' reader for a Harry Potter fanfic. I've never done this before, but i loved the start of the story and it's nice to get a sneak preview of the next chapters! My job is particularly to translate the dialogue into British English where necessary! This is fun and easy for me to do, because Americanisms in Harry Potter fanfics always stand out for me like numbers on a colour-blind test.

The author send me a Microsoft Word document with 'Track Changes' enabled. I was delighted to find that OpenOffice knows all about tracking changes. What's more, when i sent it back, my author was able to open it in MS Word again and see what i had changed. I love it when technology works! I was half expecting Word to throw all the toys out of the pram because i'd dared to look at it in a rival word processing application!

By the way, what colours do you see in the bubbles above? I see a 57, which is normal. Some people see a 35 instead. I used to love these tests whenever i went to the opticians when i was little! I thought they were so clever! I always got them right so there was no point in testing, but i thought it was such a fun game! :)

PS here is a very sweet video montage from my favourite film, "Beautiful Thing". I can see Ste saying "I'm gonna stink of mint!" The Body Shop still make Peppermint Foot Lotion; i got some as a free sample the other day! :)

I am very excited to learn that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be released in two parts. This is excellent news. The big difference about Deathly Hallows from the other books is it that virtually everything is essential to the plot of the books. No little subplots that you can easily take out or work around.

For me it means extending the magic of Harry Potter a little longer, and having another three movies to look forward to until Summer 2011. That is a very good thing, in my opinion, and i disagree with all the cynics who say WB are only doing it for the money. I am hoping that, with 2 movies to work with, they will really do an excellent job and do a great justice to the entire series.

The rest of this post is full of spoilers; my speculation of where they might split the two parts.

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Ohhh … we watched Artificial Intelligence on BBC Three last night. That is one of my favourite films of all, i have watched it several times and have it on video, but i had forgotten just how sad it is. It invariably has me snivelling and weeping by the end of it.

Interestingly, i watched it with my parents once and they didn't like it, seeing the film from the mother's perspective, they found it quite disturbing. I always see it from David's perspective – the artificial intelligence cyborg who desperately wants to become "a real boy". I find it heart-breaking. I think i understood the ending a little better last night than previous times i have watched the film.

After that we watched a bit of Creep, which i absolutely hate, but i watch it anyway just for the scenes of the underground! When i lived in London i developed quite a fascination for the underground, particularly disused stations and hidden areas. I have seen the end of the film before, so i watched until about half-way through until the part i have seen before, then i went to bed.

I have had a really wonderful day. Didn't do much, didn't even get dressed until 1pm! Just spent the day relaxing and taking things easy. A large proportion of it was spent fiddling with the new computer, but that is all good fun – especially when it works! :)

I watched the last Heaven and Earth this morning … was really quite upset that it's over. I always enjoyed the show. I do hope it comes back again. Must remember to email the BBC and tell them how much i'll miss it. I baked some cookies to take to work tomorrow, and made a lovely dinner of cheese strata, which turned out very well, with green beans and gravy! Oh, and i watched Billy Elliot this evening – i love that film. I should really get to see the theatre production of it someday.

Here is something brilliant: a very good Wordpress Flickr plugin. It enables a Flickr widget in the sidebar, a page for Flickr integration (see here) and, most usefully, a Photos tab, enabling me to quickly insert Flickr photos into posts. It uses the Flickr API. I wanted to upload a new picture of the nasturtiums, so here's an opportunity to try it out.

So first the nasturtiums looked like this (back left):

They quickly grew way too big for the little seed tray, so i transferred them to a big pot:

One week later, they are looking ever so much happier:

Hooray! :)

At Liam's request i have enabled the img tag in comments, so feel free to post your own cat macros in response! ;)

Today is a nice slow-going day. I have loads of chores to do, but don't much care. It's a long weekend – there's plenty of time! ;) I went out into town with my partner this morning, and spent a lovely time wandering around the charity shops, not buying anything!

My parents are about to come round and drive us up to the garden centre where we shall buy some potting soil for our nasturtiums which are growing at a ridiculously fast rate! Since we also have a £10 gift voucher we might treat ourselves to some other flowers to go on the balcony.

Oh, and i have heard some wonderful news: John Williams hopes to do the music for the final Harry Potter film! That makes me soooooo happy! John Williams is my favourite modern composer, and it will be lovely to return to John's themes for the last one. Not that i'm unhappy with Nicholas Hooper; i love the soundtrack to Order of the Phoenix and i'm looking forward to hearing what Nicholas does with Half-Blood Prince.

It was a great pleasure to see Daniel Brühl in The Bourne Ultimatum, from one of my very favourite movies, Good Bye Lenin! I recognised Daniel instantly – there is something very distinctive about this face:

I was very glad to see Daniel Brühl in such a high-profile film – hopefully this means more directors will be taking an interest in Daniel from now on! :) Okay, everyone else can drool over Matt Damon and Julia Stiles (who i admit, were very pretty!) but for me it was the brief appearance of Daniel Brühl that made my heart flutter the most! :)

Oooh, this post is a good test for the Unicode abilities of WordPress! ;) Imagine having three accents and an umlaut in your name!

I just came back from seeing the film – and i really really enjoyed it! I loved the first film but disliked the second, so i had no idea what to expect from this one. I really liked it. Plenty of action and excitement, the music was excellent, lots of on-location shots, which i always enjoy, plus the smattering of foreign languages which makes the linguist in me very happy. The 'inside the CIA' is always really exciting, though whether any of it's remotely true i have no idea!

I totally loved the scenes in Waterloo station, seeing the Eurostar and the South West Trains, hearing the train announcements that i hear so often, the shops that i know well, plus a bit of 'behind the scenes' which was nice to see! Whenever i go to London it is always via Waterloo, so it has a very special "I'm in London" feel to me!

There were also sufficient morals and trust/loyalty themes in me to keep me happy. I think i didn't like The Bourne Supremacy so much because it felt like too much unnecessary violence.

Today was a much better day at work for me, and tomorrow it is £2 Tuesday at Zest Juice Bar to look forward to! I'm going to try wheatgrass. I've heard it tastes disgusting, but it's really good for you so i'm going to give it a try! :)

Whilst i am in a geeky mood, i saw this on Lola's blog and found it absolutely wonderful – a movie about a font! Lola says the DVD is coming out at the end of September! :) :)

From Helvetica – A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit:

Helvetica is a feature-length independent film about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface (which is celebrating its 50th birthday this year) as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.

I love Helvetica; it is simple and elegant, one of my favourite fonts, along with Verdana and Trebuchet.