For at least a couple of years, I have had a vague intention to read The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Unfortunately, I can be a lazy reader. Andrew Roberts' biography of Lord Salisbury - which is a very readable biography - has remained half-read for over six months, and Gibbon's work is a far-larger, multiple-volume work. I have thus decided to cheat and have started listening to the Gibbon on audio CD. In this format, it is abridged, but takes up a dozen CDs nevertheless.

When buying classical music, there is often a range of recordings to choose from. Some people always opt for the cheapest recording. Is this a good idea?

Naxos, the principal budget label, has a respectable market share in the UK, and its low-cost recordings probably do a lot to increase the number of people listening to classical music. This is great. And I think Naxos's audio books are superb.

On the other hand, classical recordings are not homogeneous. Budget CDs are generally not the best performed. If you are really into classical music, and want to build up a collection, it might well be more sensible to select primarily according to quality, rather than price. Various books rate competing CDs. I use Gramophone magazine's Classical Good CD Guide, though Penguin also does something similar. Before getting that book, I would sometimes listen to sound samples on Amazon so that I could compare recordings. I am a particular fan of Zadok the Priest (in Handel's Coronation Anthems), but find that it is often performed - how shall I say? - averagely. So I went on Amazon and chose the best recording according to the samples. As it turned out, Gramophone agrees with me about which is the best recording!

Some complain that Naxos's higher-price competitors spend their time investing in "stars" of the classical world. By stars they presumably mean critically-acclaimed musicians. This, to my mind, is good. It does a great deal to keep the classical music world alive, giving a revenue stream for new musicians to seek after. This is better than the classical music world simply becoming a stagnant archive of past performances - even if they are sold cheaply.

The Chap is an intentionally old-fashioned and possibly entirely tongue-in-cheek gentleman's magazine. I use the word gentleman in its real sense and not to refer to magazine that publishes loosely dressed ladies. It recently held a protest against a modern art construction that appeared at the Victoria and Albert Museum:

On 25th May 2004, twenty seven followers of The Chap handcuffed themselves around Rachel Whiteread's 'Untitled (Room 101)' in the Cast Courts of the Victoria and Albert Museum, as a protest against the pointless intrusion by contemporary art pieces into public areas. The Chaps and Chapettes formed a "human cufflink" around the 18X12-foot sculpture and recited the final lines of John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Manufactum sells traditional, heavy-duty products that are difficult to find. The German mail-order company, which has a UK operation, makes general household products. It excels at items for the kitchen and study.

The company has a particularly conservative meme, along the lines that household products are in decay because consumers, in league with producers, are willing sacrifice quality to get products more cheaply. Indeed. Though at some of the catalogue's prices, this is perhaps understandable. But if you want really top quality, this is a good source. The catalogue has quite interesting descriptions of each of the products on sale, and by many products makes a case for why the extra quality is justified.

When I was a student I bought a copy of one of Jamie Oliver's books. I hadn't watched any of his television programmes (to date, I've only watched two episodes), but his books are really quite good.

One of his recipes that caught my eye involved trout, and many times when I had a guests I would serve it. I cooked trout with parsley stuffed inside it for dinner on Friday, and served it with a bottle of Alsace Gewürztraminer. It has been a while since I've drunk Gewürztraminer and I had forgotten quite how sweet it is.

The picture is a bit poor, but it should give the idea.

Chile is produces some really top-class wine at the low end of price. For over five years, I've been a big fan of the reds Chile has been producing. I'm currently drinking some Chilean Merlot bottled by the Doña Javiera Estate (2002), and bottled with Berry Brothers & Rudd branding. It comes from Chile's Maipo Valley, the most northern of Chile's valleys (from north to south, the valleys are: Maipo, Rapel, Curico and Maule). It is full of fruity flavour and makes a wonderful general-purpose drinking wine.

I am currently listening to Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto no. 1. It is a real delight. As a child, I remember watching a Bond film - I'm not sure which one (maybe tell me in the comments) - in which Bond is sharing a bath with a "Bond girl" and has Tchaikovsky playing in the background. I thought at the time it was pretty excellent music. But it's only recently that I bought my first couple of Tchaikovsky CDs, and have listened to his work properly. Superb.

My academic son Zacharias has founded a dining club at St Andrews. Here is a review of one of the dinners.

I spent a week in Las Vegas earlier in the month. Slot machines are everywhere - the airport has rows of them (in addition to Rolex-branded clocks on the walls). Flyers advertising prostitutes are handed out on the street near priests collecting money for the homeless.

The weather was very hot (Vegas is in the middle of a desert, after all). I took advantage of this and spent some time in the pool to top up my tan (or, rather, my all-too-white Englishman complexion). I took a long walk up the strip on my first full day there, and popped into a camera shop to see if I could get a cable for my digital camera (I had left it back in the UK). Of course, camera cables are non-standard, and almost impossible to find, but the man helpfully suggested I get a CompactFlash reader (into which I would be able to plug the camera's data card). He offered it to me for $89. It seemed rather high for a little bit of plastic. He lowered to $45. On inspecting the box, it had a price tag for $199. Remarkable. I told him that I'd think about it, and returned to my stroll. I found the AppleStore and paid $20 for known-brand card reader which not only did CompactFlash cards, but other ones too. I had lunch in the form of a rather spectacular cheese and garlic "New York Pretzel" (pictured below). I'm not particularly knowledgable on the subject of pretzels, but it seemed much softer and more succulent than the dry things that generally get sold in Britain.

Vegas is a toy town, and most of the hotels have a theme. There's a Paris hotel, with a replica Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe as part of complex. I stayed in the Aladdin (pictured) which has an Arabian theme.

Some might argue that the design of a building should follow its form. In other words, if you are building a tall, concrete building it should look like a tall, concrete building. Others, like Virginia Postrel, say that there's substance in style. But maybe Vegas is just a little to plasticy? It was an enjoyable stay, nonetheless.

I'm in no way a technophobe, but I really don't like using a computer for keeping my schedule. I bought a Psion 3a in 1995, but it ended up staying hidden in a drawer. I gave the computerised organiser another go in 1999 in the form of an HP Jornada Pocket PC. That didn't get used too much either. And I don't find using Outlook or Entourage on a real computer works much better.

Pen and paper are much better at scribbling down notes quickly. This comes in very handy when on the phone. Partly, this is because paper is 'free form' - you can write wherever you want, underlining and circling important things, whereas in a computer you have to put the data in plain text into an already-defined field.

Someone I met recently swears by paper diaries for preventing the missing of appointments. She says this is because she can visualise the how diary pages look, in a way that she can't with a computer.

Of course, computer diaries have their advantages: they're much easier to share with colleagues, for example. But I won't be giving up my Filofax any time soon.

A lot of smokers resent the new huge anti-smoking messages the government makes cigarette makers put on cigarette packs. Some people, like Labour health fascist Catherine Stihler MEP, want offensive full colour pics on the front of packs showing disease caused by smoking. If introduced, this might have a hidden effect. It might encourage smokers to buy rather attractive, silver cigarette cases rather than slumming it with the manufacturer's packaging. These, I might add, have no health warning at all. By being completely over the top, the government and/or the EU might encourage smokers to literally bin their warnings.

O'Reilly has a knack of publishing really excellent computer books, and this knack is continued with Adobe Photoshop CS one-on-one. The book is published with colour examples throughout, and the author, Deke McCelland, also presents an included CD of video tutorials. These complement the book superbly.

The author covers the major features in Photoshop, but usefully also explains when you should you a specific feature rather than another one. For example, he usefully suggests that the 'Brightness/Contrast...' option can result in pretty awful results, and explains how to change brightness and contrast in a more satisfactory way. The result is that anyone with this book will quickly move from being an amateur user of Photoshop who just gets by, to being an expert who knows how to get the very best results.

The book is very practical, and not a dry run-through of the toolbox. McClelland uses examples - like removing scratches from a scanned image or improving the focus of a photograph - that may well make the reader load up their own pictures half way through a chapter to experiment. The text is very readable, and boken up well with headings.

This is quite possibily the best guide to Photoshop on the market.

I'm currently listening to The Polyphonic Spree's album, The Beginning Stages of... The Polyphonic Spree. It comes both with a CD and a bonus DVD, which shows them performing live. "Energy-charged, freakish, modern-day druids-come-penticost-lookalikes create modern classical fusion extravaganza," my brother describes them. This guy likes them too.

Here's a photo of some friends at a rather good ASI reception last night. More on the ASI Blog.

In this photo, I'm not entirely sure where the lens flare should go in relation to the spotlight. But it's a good effect, I think.

Brian's Education Blog talks about my old school's ventures into China. Good stuff.

While waiting at Stoke-on-Trent railway station today, I photographed this statue of Josiah Wedgewood, which appears opposite the station entrance. I am not sure that his right hand is supposed to hold anything - I think it is a piece of litter.

I watched Breakfast at Tiffany's this evening. I'm treating it as part of my education to watch as many cult classics as I can. My preference is for films with an intellegent plot. Profound plot is not something Breakfast at Tiffany's really offers. Paul Varjak (played by George Peppard) falls in love with Holly Golightly (played by Audrey Hepburn) and spends the rest of the film trying to win her over. That's the story, pretty much.

I was pleased to realise that the film stars (in a minor role) the brilliant Patricia Neal, who plays Dominique Francon in The Fountainhead.

So is this a good film? People seem to think so. I guess that is because it's a romantic thing to watch with your partner, while drinking a bottle of Bolly. For me, the film has two plus points. It was based in New York, and I have a big crush on New York. Secondly, the film's sountrack is based around Moon River, sung by Frank Sinatra, which I reckon is a pretty good thing to have in a movie.

I was looking at the Jack Daniel's website today to see if I could find out what "sour mash" is (two words that appear on the front of JD bottles). I was distracted for a moment or two by downloading a desktop wallpaper, and listening to the sound of a glass of JD being poured over ice (I kid you not - they really do have this stuff on their website). And then I found what I was looking for. The site informed me that:

"Sour Mash" is not the designation of a special type of whiskey, as most people think. Instead, the name refers to the similarities between making whiskey and making sourdough bread. In both processes, a portion of the previous batch is used to start the next batch in order to promote consistency. Every bourbon and Tennessee whiskey is made using the sour mash process.

Which reminded me of another good question. What is a bourbon? At university, the American Society - founded by my friend Conyers - ran a Cigar and Bourbon night. It met in a bar at one of the golf clubs, and one year had as guest of honour a genuine US Senator (Sensenbrenner). I have thus always had a general understanding of burbon being a US whiskey or a type of US whiskey, but not exactly sure of the definition. To dictionary.com I went and was told that bourbon is:

A whiskey distilled from a fermented mash containing not less than 51 percent corn in addition to malt and rye.

Hmm, I thought. Considering that I have no idea how much corn any whiskey contains, that isn't the most helpful definition. A visit to Google brought up this page, telling me that originally Bourbon came from Bourbon County, Kentucky, but can now be from anywhere. Then I stumbled upon this page describing JD as a bourbon, which helps me to conclude that pretty much all US whiskey is bourbon. Which is why it tastes different from Scottish whisky. Is this right?

Like me, Tim O'Reilly thinks that all the fuss about GMail is unwarranted.

For over 20 years, the bit of London's suburbia called Purley has been scarred by an a empty (town centre-type) supermarket. Sainsbury's to new premises, but nothing has happened to the old one. It remains, over 20 years later, boarded up.

What force is it that has led this to happen? Developers everywhere else in Purley seem desperate for land to build luxury flats or in-fill houses. But something is going wrong right in the town centre. It strikes me that lots of money could be made by building new flats there, and it would have the knock-on effect of bringing more business to the restaurants and shops in the centre. Is the problem the planning system?

Purley Baptist Church wants to do things with the whole block.

A truly heavenly creation was served up for dinner for me by none other than blogging expert Adriana Cronin. From the picture you might think it involves potato. But no!

Have a guess what the mash might be, and then click through to this blog to find out if you're right.

Supporters of open source software make bold claims on how the way software in the open source world creates better software. I think there's a role for open source, but the development model does not seem to produce software with such good user interfaces. In user interface and often functionality, the application software for Linux is generally poor compared with software for Windows and Mac. Of course, Linux fans would hate me for saying this. They look at Microsoft Word and think that it is a travesty (what planet are they on?), and then try and get people to use OpenOffice which truly is dire. Here's someone quoted on Slashdot comparing Photoshop with the open source program Gimp:

Many in the F/OSS community are raving about the Gimp, however pros who have actually used Photoshop think differently: This Mac professional designer goes through the steps of getting Gimp 2.0 up and running on his Mac, only to get baffled by the chaotic interface in general and its non-standard UI compared to other Mac apps, its slowness to open large files and to apply filters, the unintuitive tools that accompany it and its very visible bad quality of text and lines/shapes.

Photoshop rules.

I decided recently to move over from using POP3 mailboxes to IMAP ones. IMAP is a system that helps you manage your e-mail across multiple computers as I do. The e-mail is stored on the server, and syncs with each computer you use them with. It's great for me because it lets me have access to all my e-mail both at home and at work.

The downside was that I found that Entourage crashed a lot when I used IMAP accounts with it. I don't know whether this was because I was using too many (four) IMAP accounts simultaneous. But it made me decide switch to Apple Mail - after some testing as regular readers of this blog will know. I'm actually quite happy with Apple Mail, and it works much better with IMAP than POP3 accounts. It makes sense for it to treat folders differently from mailboxes, because the folders are stored on a server elsewhere. With POP3 accounts this just seemed weird.

One thing I couldn't work out was to get my sent items to save in my IMAP accounts. It may be an incompatibility with my ISP, or just that I haven't worked out how to do it. (I had ticked the relevant box in Preferences.) So instead I set each e-mail to be BCC-ed to me, and then set a rule to move these e-mails automatically into a separate folder. Because Apple Mail (unless you have a third party add-on) doesn't treat mail moved automatically from mailboxes into a folder as new mail, the program does not unhelpfully tell me that my BCC-ed copies are new mail. This is good.

I am currently listing to the Electric Soft Parade's album The American Adventure. Very excellent.

Dan Neesley e-mailed to mention a couple of Entourage features which stop him from using Apple Mail. He writes:

I get a lot of messages with clueless subject lines. You can't edit a received email to note a relevant (to you) subject or prune the actual message of the 75 lines of disclosures and such that some business people have as signatures. Also - replies always appear above the quoted text/message. I like to reference the text with my reply following.

Oddly enough, I had never realised you could alter the subject line of a message in Entourage, but sure enough, there is an Edit Message feature.

Some have expressed concern about GMail's effect on privacy. They feel it scary that the way GMail will display adverts based on the content of your e-mail. They are starting to see Google as Big Brother.

If you do a Google web search for "Wiltshire hotels", you don't mind Google giving you adverts because you have approached Google and asked for information. But when you read your e-mail, just like reading a personal letter, it is a private affair. Users may not like the feeling that someone is looking over their shoulder.

Nevertheless, I'm not too worried about GMail. Partly it is because I am unlikely to use it, at least not for the bulk of my e-mail. Unlike 1984's government, GMail will face competitive pressures. If you don't like it, you don't have to use it. But more significantly, is there really any difference, from a privacy point of view, between GMail and current e-mail systems? The fact that an e-mail service does not provide customised adverts does not mean that your e-mail cannot be read. Your e-mails are still stored on a third party server. And many of GMail's competitors already have computers which 'read' your e-mail, checking for virus and filtering out spam.

I suspect that GMail will be a winner. Users will not really care about a computer reading their e-mail, understanding that this helps pay for a better service. They know the difference between a computer and a human.

I've been experimenting with Apple Mail, Mac OS X's bundled mail client. It's quite good.

Two features that attracted me to it in a minor way were the threading of messages and the bounce back to sender. But the most interesting feature is that it works with other Mac OS X bundled programs. By using Address Book to keep track of contacts, I can sync it with my mobile phone and make sure I always have my friends details up-to-date both on my Mac and my phone. Apparently it interacts with iChat but I haven't figured that out yet.

I like the way that if someone sends an e-mail to lots of addresses, you can press a toggle button to see all the addresses. In Entourage you have to View Source. It offers a "Reply To" field for each e-mail, so if you're sending out a mass mailing, you can very easily enter a less personal address for replies. In Entourage you can't do this on a per-message basis.

One criticism of Mail is the way it handles inboxes and folders. I have to manage a large amount of e-mail, and like it to be sorted into different folders automatically, depending up on the subject and the e-mail address it is sent to. Mail, as Apple supplies it, displays the number of unread e-mails you have over the top of Mail's dock icon. But only if they are in an inbox, not if they have been sorted into a different folder. No good. Fortunately, there is a third-party patch that sorts this out, downloadable from here. Having said that, I still prefer the layout of Entourage's folders, but it is a minor point.

I've just been signed up as a speaker at FreedomFest in Las Vegas this May. Other speakers include Cato's David Boaz, top-selling author Dinesh D'Souza and Reason magazine's Ron Bailey.