It makes me wonder if Russia is planning to annex a large part of Georgia into Russia. They appear to be setting up points near the Georgian capital and destroying most of the infrastructure between South Ossetia and Tbilisi only keeping a major road open. It makes me wonder if they are planning on taking control of the oil pipeline going through Georgia...

I apologise for not blogging for some time now. I have been rather busy with work and travelling (yes I should have blogged about that to). Anyway in that time I have ended up owning all 3 major games consoles an Xbox 360, Wii and now a PS3 60gig! You may be surprised that I could get hold of a 60gig PS3 seeing as they are as common as gold dust and cost more now from Amazon resellers than it did when it was originally launched! Well luckily enough I managed to pick up and unboxed, ex display (by the looks of the case) and very dusty second hand one from an Amazon reseller for around the 300 pounds mark. I know what most people are thinking why not just get a 40? Well I needed the backwards compatibility I don't want to have to have a PS2 and PS3 sitting in my very crowded media area under my TV. Anyway I digress..

The main reason for my article is to talk about the BBC iPlayer on the PS3. You can't use the iPlayer on the PS3 unless you go to the website http://www.ps3iplayer.com/ setup by a rather clever chap named Chris Warren. Now you would have thought the BBC would have incorporated the changes he has made into the main iPlayer website and from the sound of things he would be pretty keen to help them, but that doesn't appear to have happened. What also gets me is that over a few weeks the BBC seems to do something to their own site that stops the PS3iPlayer version from working. This suddenly got me thinking, the Wii got its version of the iPlayer by the BBC, however I remember a distant article when the BBC were quizzed over why they didn't do an Xbox or PS3 version of the iPlayer. Their response was quite interesting and I kind of got the feeling that Microsoft and Sony were telling the BBC to butt out of their platform. It seemed as though Sony were only interested in feeding content to users under their own special service branded in a certain way and no doubt costing the user a monthly subscription in the same way Microsoft are doing with their rather limited content service on the Xbox 360 at the moment. Sony's approach would make sense, and they obviously don't want the video delivery model they have in mind for the PS3 blown out of the water by the BBC who would affectively be providing the content for free. I think Microsoft are being pretty much the same with the Xbox, it's the one reason they don't want to launch a browser for the Xbox it would make other content distributors able to supply content to a platform Microsoft would rather be the sole provider of content for their consoles.

Basically you ended up buying a delivery platform akin to a having a Sky or Vigrin Media box in your living room the only difference is it was disguised as a games machines that could play DVD's or BluRay Discs. The problem is that Microsoft's Xbox service is dreadful (in my opinion) and Sony are just taking a very long time to launch their service which should be available next year now. Both Sony and Microsoft have the ability to cash in big time on offering their consoles as a delivery platform to content providers in the same way that Sky, Virgin Media, FreeView and Joost are delivery platforms, which would help them claw back some of the losses they made selling the consoles at such a low price.

So you've invested in a Windows Vista ready laptop because everyone (including Microsoft) said you had to upgrade and that it was a really good idea. So you shelled out 400 pounds for a new laptop that supports Vista, but the problem is that in less than 2 years Windows Vista is probably going to be obsolete because Microsoft is going to be releasing Windows 7. You'd be forgiven for thinking that you could still use your old Windows Vista laptop (which requires twice as much RAM as Windows XP to get any worthwhile performance out of it). Windows 7 will require a new laptop to get the best out of it, why? Because of its new and innovative touch screen interface which from the sound of things seems to be a cross between an iPod touch and Windows? I suppose I can talk for a lot of people out there who sometimes wish they had never made the upgrade from Windows XP to Vista. You upgraded to Vista and so many of the things that effortlessly worked in XP (like your scanner) just don't work anymore, it's slower and for some reason it just doesn't seem as reliable as XP was. How much more will the cost of upgrading cost and will companies foot the bill after going through a companywide upgrade to Vista?

Take a look at these funny collection of pictures found on the Telegraphs website.

Just thought I would post this while I remembered. If you have been suffering from hiccups for a while the best cure is to stand in the shower facing the wall and have your partner standing behind you with a pint of water filled with ice cubes. Then when you least expect it they throw the water at your back getting you to gasp, and like magic the hiccups are gone! This has been tried twice and both times it has worked. The reason I say the shower is so that you don't get your living room wet! The reason you face the wall is so you don't see it coming and it becomes more of a surprise as you gasp. This seems to work better than my fake spider trick which will probably only work once.

If travelling away to some distant destination in the countryside or in the middle of nowhere I will

1. Always take 2 or more mobile phones with me because in the movies no one has a mobile phone when they are under attack in the abandoned building in the middle of the forest they decided to stay for the night.
2. I will ensure their batteries are charged scary movies have taught us that mobile phone batteries are always low on power.
3. I will check the mobile phone coverage before I go because scary movies have taught us that the one place you will get caught is a place where there is no mobile phone coverage.
4. Take a satellite phone with me because whatever demon or monster it is that will attack me according to the movies will take out the mobile phone masts for some odd reason.
5. Ensure I have a good gun
6. Ensure I have plenty of ammunition
7. Ensure I have plenty of silver bullets for ware wolves
8. Ensure I carry garlic for vampires
9. Ensure I carry stakes for vampires along with holy water and cross. One is bound to work ... right?
10. Take a hazmat suite with me the monsters that will attack me are bound to spread some sort of disease that will take control of its victims and use them as zombies
11. I will not dare play tricks on my fellow travel companions because if I really do get attacked by monsters they will think I'm crying wolf.
12. I won't split up from my travel companions.
13. If one of my travel companions starts acting weirdly I will shoot him (his obviously turned into a monster)
14. Take an ultra violet torch with me with plenty of batteries it will probably kill vampires?

I was disappointed when I started getting a 9006 error when downloading movies on iTunes on my new Vista machine. I looked all over the Internet and even on Apples website and couldn't find a solution to the problem.

But never mind I found the solution to the problem.

• Delete the failed download
• Shut down iTunes
• Go into C:\Users\[Username]\Music\iTunes\iTunes Music\Downloads and find a folder with the name of the movie you were downloading and delete it.
• Start up iTunes again go to the Store menu and select "Check for purchases"
• Your download should now resume.

Hope the above helps. If you are still having problems I would suggest trying a download with Windows firewall turned off to see if it makes a difference.

" You have a car that holds 20 litres of petrol, but it has a leak and is losing petrol at a rate of 10ml per minute. If I know I can get 20 miles on 10 litres how far can I travel before I must refuel?" teacher

"Well I'd only go 5 because there's a Halfords just near my house and my mate Dave is a whizz with fixing fuel tanks," student

"But what if you were not at home?" teacher

"I'd look up a station on my satnav," student

"Okay what if you couldn't find one?" teacher

"I'd call the AA," student

"What if your mobile phone didn't work," teacher

" I'd use my other mobile phone I always charge it at night," student

"Well what if there wasn't mobile phone coverage?" asked the teacher

"Well since my mobile phone operator has 98% coverage it means we must be in the Brecon Beacons where I went last year with my dad and the closest station is 7 miles and they even give you a free retest on your MOT there," student

"I give up..." teacher.

We have four cats Oliver, Oscar, Lucy and Owe. Owe isn't her real name, it's Willow but she's started doing some incredibly annoying things. You guessed it – she makes loud "owing" sounds all the time.

Now you would think this would be down to something she is unhappy about such as cat litter not being clean, not enough food or not enough attention. But "Owe" gets all of these things complete with generous servings of ham from the fridge from time to time Owes favourite treat. It's been particularly annoying for my wife who works from home and has to put up with "Owe" owing when she's on the phone. Eventually we decided enough was enough and took the annoying cat to the vet , who of course told us that nothing was wrong with the cat "maybe she's a little stressed?". The vet sold us a cat calming infuser you plug into the wall. It's supposed to calm your moggy down, a bit like camomile tea for cats.

The problem is Owe still continues to "owe" even when standing directly in front of the infuser. The only thing that seems to stop her and is a bit drastic is if you wet her coat a bit she's spends about an hour cleaning herself which gives us some rest.