I am writing this from a computer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana which will come as something of a surprise to many of you. I had been planning to visit sometime this summer but the final arrangements were extremely spur of the moment, having almost abandoned the idea due to inflated ticket prices and other commitments. It being last minute anyway I arranged a roof over my head with the Dixons but declined to tell anyone else of my plans. I like to keep people on their toes.

And so on Friday I was able to stand in the doorway of Jenna's apartment and watch her expression transform as she tried to fathom exactly why her cousin was not several thousand miles away. Or rather in her state of shock, as she explained later, whether I would be staying the night. Her newborn baby Clark was the major driving force behind my trip and he is as cute as one would expect, and good deal better behaved. I first met Karleigh when she was around three months old so this was a very different experience. At just a few weeks he is perhaps less interesting, although Karleigh's wonderfully sweet attempts to take care of him make up for this.

In a fashion befitting my surprise visit we shortly took off to Natchez, a town in Mississippi where my aunt and uncle have bought a new house. Other notable events include eating tamales and buying around forty cans of spray paint at Wal-Mart with Dave, which strangely caused no problem with staff but attracted several questions from concerned shoppers. We're vandals looking to join a gang, we explained. In fact the supplies were for an art event Dave is hosting at the house in a week. Finally, curiosity piqued by its schedule, a few of us also popped into the tail end of local cult festival BabelCon, dropping in on a lightsaber fighting demonstration.

Those paying attention to American politics will have seen Hilary Clinton's resurgence in the Democratic primaries. Narrow but crucial victories in Ohio and Texas mean not only that she will remain in the running, but also that the Democrats will remain strongly divided for some time to come, perhaps even going into the election itself which could have serious consequences. By contrast John McCain has the Republican side sewn up. Which naturally leads one to wonder how dissent might be sown amongst the Republicans. What possible alternatives tickets would draw such strong support so as to divide the party. Two immediately obvious choices emerge:

With WMDs like the Death Star on your side one presumes everyone else's become less of a concern. And could there be any greater political tool than the lie of Sauron? But if Hilary has shown us anything it is that a woman in the White House is finally in sight. And with that in mind my vote goes to:

Google have finally released an application to synchronise Outlook with Google Calendar, though I cannot fathom why it has taken them so long to produce something with such rudimentary functionality. Yahoo! has offered this for years. However Google Calendar is much nicer application than Yahoo!'s outdated offering. The issue I have with all of these synchronisation tools (including Microsoft's own calendar sharing with Office Live) is that none properly support the colour-coded categorisation of events, an Outlook feature on which I rely. Blue for lectures, red for classes, green for social, is a system that I've used ever since I started uni and it allows me to assess the week ahead with just a cursory glance. Losing that colour may seem insignificant, but it poses a serious usability drawback. Has anyone come across a solution for web-based calendars that synchronises with Outlook and maintains categories and colour?