Ok so this one isn’t that inventive but I made it up on the spot so I think that is good enough.

Take one chicken breast and slice a pocket in it length-ways. Shove some slices of lemon into the pocket you created. Grill in a George with some slices of red pepper until the chicken is cooked all the way through. Discard the slices of lemon and place the entire chicken breast and peppers into a wholemeal pita-bread. Consume with a side salad.

You get a sweet flavour from the red pepper mixing with a very light lemon flavour that permiates the chicken breast. An easy quick weekday evening meal with minimal washing up.

I was born 10,000 days ago. Today is my 10,000th day birthday. I tried to reflect on this while driving to work but the enormity of it was too big. I bought a smoothie from Sainsbury’s to compensate. Here’s to another 10000 days of my life. Rosie, Becky and Dave are coming round for food tonight to celebrate - I have naughty ice cream for desert!

I am off to visit my parents this weekend - and meet up with an old school friend. My mother’s side of the family are all meeting up for the bank holiday because my aunt is coming over from Nepal, where she lives teaching English to the natives, for a short while. It will be nice to see everyone again.

Oh, my friend Chris sent me to this web page showing a kite in the shape of a mouse pointer. How cool?!

Wow, Vauxhall make it really difficult to fit a third party radio into one of their cars.

• Bit of wire to convert from the Vauxhall Quad Lock connector to the radio: £30
• Fascia adaptor: £20
• Cost of bits that I was sold but didn’t need and will be sending back: £50
• Listening to my ipod and getting some quality audio out of it: Priceless

Lots of effort but worth it in the end. I have lost the stalk controls (that would be another 60 quid) and also the speed dependant volume system but I think I can just about cope without them. Vauxhall also don’t provide a dimmer output in the standard wiring loom so that the radio doesn’t know the cars lights are on (which would normally cause the display to dim slightly). In their wisdom they also don’t provide an ignition wire which means I have had to wire the stereo directly to the battery cable - this means that as far as the stereo is concerned the car is always on. Apparently Vauxhall have moved these signals into a digital data bus and I can only have access to this by paying the £60 upgrade for the stalk controls.

After fitting all this into the car I went for a drive on Sunday, taking Norm off to Bristol Airport. When we were passing the new Broadmead extension I started to smell an acrid electrical burning. This is generally not good and I thought the car might be about to set on fire. I got Norm to start sniffing various bits of the car - although he had a cold so maybe this wasn’t the best approach. The smell turned out to be that bit of Bristol rather than that car… still quite worrying!

I was hoping that Bad Science would cover the Panorama debate about the safety of WiFi. As it happens they have, although not in amazing detail. Check out Bad Science’s article.

BBC News have also done a follow up article on the program.

Tonight the BBC documentary program Panorama are going to be broadcasting a half hour show investigating the claims that electronic smog and modern living can cause long-term health effects. Today’s papers have been gearing up for this by yet again getting themselves worked up about the safety of wireless data connections otherwise known as wifi and its use in schools.

Considering that I have two wifi access points in my flat along with a microwave oven and several cordless phones you might think I would be worried about this. However, I am not and neither do I think wifi should be banned in schools and colleges. I refer you to an article by Bill Thompson published on the BBC News website who sums up the arguments far more eloquently than I.

He concludes by saying that you can’t ever prove that wireless communications are safe, you can only aim disprove the supposed damaging effects on health.

I added some brain food to my diet on Saturday by cooking up some fish for dinner.

Take a salmon steak and place onto a sheet of lightly oiled tin-foil. Sprinkle on some thyme and add a knob of butter on top of the fish. Place two slices of fresh-cut lemon on the salmon and then wrap it up in the tin foil so as to keep the fish moist. Cook in the oven at 200′c for about 20 minutes.

I served it with mash potatoes and peas. It was delicious. Anyone want to come round for dinner some time?

Ahhhh I can’t get a song out of my head. You know sometimes you find a song that for some inexplicable reason you just can’t stop listening to? I have found one of those again. It is Kim Sozzi / Breakup (not the Cascada remix) that I discovered on the latest The Very Best of Euphoric Dance Breakdown. I think it is the slow gating they use about a third of the way into the track that does it for me.

Now that I have hooked up my car so that it can play music from my ipod I am looking forward to listen to it while zooming down the M4 tomorrow morning.

Vrrroooooom!

JamesOff posted this really cool youtube video:

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzU3NjDikY

The coming of the summer months, note how I didn’t say weather, is marked by another round of euro-ballad-pop-rock music from artists that no one has ever heard of. Eurovision has always been a night to take the mickey out of other countries as well as our own pitiful entries.

My Eurovision weekend was spent in the company of my good friends down in Exeter where Roz organised an exciting party in the house of Reagan, Dave B and Damo. I was allocated three countries that I had to support, as well as the UK, which were The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania and Belarus who did surprisingly well in the competition by coming sixth overall.

I think this year more than ever the political voting spoilt the competition. Eurovision has always been a bit susceptible to national bias with Greece and Cyprus being the main culprits over the years. However with the introduction of the Eastern Bloc and Balkan countries into the EBU it has become far more prevalent. It was laughably easily to predict the set of countries that were going to be gaining votes. I would be willing to bet that it will be these same set of countries that rank highly next year. Not that I am a sore looser or anything.

Our entry, a cross between Steps, 5ive and Eurotrash, with stunning chorography and deeply meaningful lyrics came a joint second to last with France. Not only that but it also managed to set Damo’s surround sound amplifier on fire with acrid smoke pouring out of it by the end of the performance.

Roz bought the most amazing burgers from some farm shop near her flat. They tasted gorgeous and I am very jealous that they have such a fine purveyor of burger goodness so close to them. I think at the weekend I will have to go to the delicatessen on the Gloucester road for meat treats.

It was also great to catch up with my friend John (Prom) who has been absent from my life for a good number of years now. He is coming to the end of a philosophy degree at Exeter so good luck to him in the coming months.

Oh, Serbia won Eurovision - much to Becky’s dismay as she had to drink from The Cup Of Europe (a bowl of sparkling alcoholic fruit punch) whenever they were given 12 points

Here’s to a great weekend, it was nice to catch up with everyone again.

The Bardo Museum in a suburb of Tunis really requires far more time than the hour we were given to look around. A former royal palace of the Bay and added to over many centuries the building is unremarkable from the outside apart from its imposing size. However the inside is filled with mosaics, wonderfully carved and painted ceilings, statues and tablets from the ancient world. You are filled with horror as you realise that you are standing on and walking over mosaics that are equally as intricate as the ones that are roped off or hanging on the walls.

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