I am now having some difficulty with my news in the morning. For a long time I was quite happy using Plucker to download news from a number of sites in the morning - but particularly from The Guardian's pda site. This was a superb, simple summary of The Guardian good for reading on a Palm. I'd transfer the Plucker file first thing and then read it on the bus on the way into work.

All of a sudden, The Guardian seem to have stopped updating this part of the site. I'm now struggling to find an easy way of downloading and reading their news. I've emailed them to complain about the site being removed but no reply so far.

Dreadful time in IKEA over the weekend. For the first time in a while, we genuinely lost Alex. He could have been anywhere in the shop, having wandered off, and we had half the staff out looking for him. He was eventually found - after what seemed like some hours, but was probably no more than 20 minutes - playing on one of the beds. As I said to the staff at the time, the danger is that because of his autism he will not react like a 'normal' 8 year old who's lost his parents - crying and such like. He'll be 'invisible' among all the other families, just running around having fun. As well as the shock of losing him, it put his disability in sharp contrast. I think I probably lost about 7 years off my life, and gained a few grey hairs. Deb has had to deal with this sort of situation more often than me, and was therefore much calmer. She managed the staff and got the hunt going, without which he'd never have been found. He said he'd been hiding in a wardrobe, then got bored and started playing on the beds. We must have gone past him while he was in the wardrobe, and then not realised that he was behind us, not in front. It all worked out OK in the end, but there was a moment when I really thought we wouldn't find him.

The visit to IKEA finished with us driving home with a new mattress for Jessica perched on top of all our heads. It would have been funny if it wasn't so darned uncomfortable.

I'm playing around with OpenTTD at the moment. It's a clone of an original Transport Tycoon game, where you have to build a transport company taking goods and passengers using trains, trucks, planes, and ships, making as much money as possible. It's quite addictive, and Alex thinks watching all the trains is marvellous.

The officially released 0.5.3 runs quite happily on my FreeBSD 6.3 desktop system, but the betas of the 0.6 release haven't been ported yet. I've loaded them onto the dual booted Ubuntu Linux side of the desktop, and it's a huge improvement. It allows the use of improved graphics with different locomotives, industries, bridges etc. (including trams!) and allows for a lot variety.

As you can tell, it's quite addictive really. You spend ages trying to get your rail junctions and signalling just right so that everything runs smoothly without you having to watch it all the time, whilst the towns grow around you. My most successful company reached a bank balance of £165 million by the year 2030 (having started in 1950), but I've a long way to go yet. I'm still just learning how to built effective main line railways with proper junctions and signalling - rather than single use lines that just go to one town or industry and back again.

Anyway, if you're a frustrated model railway fan without the space (like me!) you might find it interesting. There are even versions for Windows.

Went to see the new Sweeney Todd film recently (starring Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter). It wouldn't have been my choice necessarily, but Deb wanted to see it, and we don't get to the cinema together very often these days, and I do generally like Tim Burton/Johnny Depp films (Sleepy Hollow is one of my favourite films of all time).

It was certainly gruesome. Lots of throat-cutting in vivid technicolour. The special effects weren't too obvious (except in the opening credits). The plot zipped along at a reasonable pace, only flagging slightly before the slicing and dicing started before picking up fairly rapidly.

For the acting, Helena Bonham Carter was probably better than Johnny Depp - I don't think it was his best performance. The supporting cast was good, with Alan Rickman as the evil judge, and Timothy Spall as his henchman - both of whom meet predictably bloody ends. Sacha Baron Cohen not so good, but then he just gets sliced like all the others.

The singing was a little unexpected but not too intrusive. You wouldn't give Johnny Depp an Oscar for it, but he wasn't dreadful. In contrast to Alan Rickman, who was obviously following the Rex Harrison precedent. There was only one really great song though, and that was in the middle of the film, comparing notes on who will make the best pie (!).

I saw the plot twist coming at the end, but it was not worse for that, and Helena Bonham Carter does meet a particularly gruesome end. Overall, a good film worth the price of admission. Deb will undoubtedly want the DVD of it. It won't go on my favourites list, but it was an enjoyable watch.

And now for something completel different (sorry, I don't do smooth links).

It was Alex's birthday on Friday, which was followed by a visit by my parents. So it was a hectic weekend.

Alex's birthday went fine. He went to a local indoor adventure playground with 5 friends and the had a whale of a time. It's the first time he's really shown an interest in inviting friends and having a party. So things have really moved on. We bought him Star Wars Lego, which is one of his favourite things along with trains and Scooby Doo. He seemed to have a really good time. I wasn't at the party as I had to wait at home for Jessica to come back from a sleepover at a friends house. Her social life is just getting more and more intense as time goes by. In the evening we went out to a nearby Indian restaurant which is pretty much our favourite. It's a nice atmosphere, the food is good, and the kids like the Chicken Korma - so everyone wins.

The next day, my parents came for a visit, arriving around lunchtime. I (hopefully) fixed the printing on their laptop, which they had brought with them. Later we went for a meal to the local pub. This was nice enough, but something caught Alex offguard and he was violently sick that night (3 times!). We don't know whether it was the food, or just the over excitement. Anyway it rather put the dampers on things the following day. We drove around Wirral a bit, took look at the waterfront, and the Dee coastline (which is beautiful).

So overall it was quite a successful visit. The children in particular enjoyed seeing my parents again.

Update: we now know that it was a bug Alex had picked up, as Jessica has had it too, being off school on Wednesday after having thrown up at school on Tuesday and having Deb take her home.

The latest computer challenge is how to download video from Youtube and convert to a format that will play on a domestic DVD player. There are some old films of music hall performers that Dad is interested in, but can't pull off Youtube himself, so I said I'd see what I could do. I'll let you know how I get on.