It's been over 10 years since I last saw Bob Brozman; in this time, he's lost none of his prowess, and learnt a fair few new tunes. I think he's got more rhythmic as well.

He's a difficult musician in many ways; he changes rhythm a lot, his sense of humour is continual and a little strange; his musical tastes are getting to define the word eclectic. But, he's also engaging, entertaining and exciting to watch. It was a superb gig; I would be a fool if I left it 10 years again.

It was a strange gig also; I was faced with a difficult choice: Bob Brozman, a house party or a combined barbeque and eurovision night. In the end, I know that I made the right choice. What was interesting though, is that this is the first gig that I have been to for ages on my own; since I have moved up north to Newcastle, I've had the fortune to meet quite a few people with similar music tastes. Actually, I really enjoyed being solitary; that I was exhausted added to it; I almost slept in the interval; I became totally engrossed in the music, and lost a sense of self.

I'd not been to the Buddle arts centre in Wallsend before; but they have some stonking gigs coming up. I shall be there for more I think.

I've just found out the terrible news that Bill Bug has died unexpectedly; this has come as a shock to the community. Bill was a phenomenon and the sort of person that you need in science; he was interested in everything, had ideas and opinions about it all, topped with an almost childlike pleasure in it all. He was a good scientist, a motivation and a reminder why most of us got into science in the first place.

His emails and their length were legendary. He was hard-work — you had to fight through the morass of ideas — but well worth it. I only had the pleasure of meeting him once; I was looking forward to meeting him again, something that now will never be.

I decided that the time had finally come for me to encrypt the home space on my hard drive of my laptop in case it gets nicked; I've been encrypting high-value information for years, but I thought the time to just do the whole home space had come.

So last night, I set it going. It started off suggesting it would take 12 hours. Okay, no worries, I'd rather not leave the laptop overnight but needs must. By the time I left work it had dropped to 6 hours, all going swimmingly.

Get in this morning, look at the progress bar; 92 days remaining. Oh dear; I mean I know I have a lot of files, but there's only 10G of stuff there. Next stop, true crypt I guess.

Yesterday was the board of studies. Day before was the board of examiners. Conclusion: today is the first day of summer, an opportunity to apply myself, mostly fulltime, to research.

So, what have I done today. Erm, teaching. Almost all day. Life can be hard at times.

Struck, no doubt, by the facebook phenomena, I noticed today that Friends Reunited has gone free. So I wrote to a couple of old friends whom mailed me 2 or 3 years ago, but who I was too tight-fisted to pay to reply to. The first has replied; turns out he's now a published author (I mean real books, in bookshops, rather than technical books), writing about murderers, werewolves and general ghost stories. He was always a talented bloke. I'm pleased he's now been unleashed on the world at large.

Last week, I saw Toumani Diabate at the Royal Northern College of Music. My experience of the Kora is a busker who plays in Manchester at times; he's pretty good actually. In concert, though it becomes a different instrument. The music is actually fairly repetitive, but the pieces generally play in cycles, flowing rather than jumping following one theme, then moving to another a note at time. As a result, it's hypnotic rather than exciting and lulls the audience. He only played four numbers (before the encore); I think that like many people, I was surprised to find that this had taken well clear of an hour.

The one negative part of the night was the accompanying blurb; this suggested that the audience should stiffle any sneezes or coughs and not open sweets during the performance to maximise everyones enjoyment. I mean what a load of po-faced nosense; like the SAGE, it's obvious that the RNCM is a snobbish, uptight venue but this is really taking it too far. Music is to be enjoyed, engaged in, not worshipped with great reverence. When I rule the world, I will find the idiot responsible for this statement, and string them up publicly, in front of an audience, to whom I shall allocated bubble gum, packets of crisp and low velocity, high volumn sneezing powder air rifles.

Rachael Unthank and the Winterset at The Round was the an entirely different experience. A small intimate venue anyway, they were playing on home turf; their mum (the two main singers are sisters) was in the audience. The venue is odd — basically someone's put a roof on the gap between two buildings. The sound proofing isn't too great; you could hear music and people walking upstairs, but this makes it more personal and engrossing. The music was wonderful; like much folk, and Toumani Diabete it's often hypnotic. Their arrangements are remarkable, often highly melodramatic, and very innovative especially when compared to more traditional folk. I think, we were lucky to get tickets; I'm not sure that they will be playing a venue that small in future or will sell out quicker than they did.

Wish she hadn't done the gag about Hexhamshire though; it was about a misheard lyric; I won't repeat it. I've had the song (Fareweel Regality) running through my head for the last week; now it will be associated with an alternative version instead.

Moved my desktop to Hardy today. Had a few errors but it all went smoothy, right up to the point that I tried to use it, when I was getting lots of wierd stuff with the mouse. Basically, left click was giving double click events.

Took about an hour to work out; I'd configured xorg.conf a while back to enable mouse wheel emulation on my trackball. As a result, the upgrade didn't add the vital new line (Option: Core Pointer) without which it doesn't work.

X still sucks; the configuration is bizarre, unfriendly, inconsistent and impossible to debug. One day this will all get fixed. I hope it's soon.

Actually, thinking about it, the install balked have way through and asked me something, which was irritating as I was at lunch; unintended installs are good!

Saw the Doll's house at the Northern Stage this week; it was well done, had some nice gags in it. But basically, it was dreary, long-winded and rather dull. I didn't like any of the characters, the central plot device was silly and I just wanted it to end. Right at the end, it perked up a bit, with the patronized woman, spreading her wings and starting anew; but, this felt unbelievable, and it makes no sense spending two and a half setting the scene for 5 minutes of excitement. I can see that the play must have been revolutionary at the time, but it now is only of historical interest.

Battle of the Planets, on the other hand, has little plot, doesn't really make sense, and is generally daft. But it's full of 70's haircuts, the animation is exciting and the score is wonderful. Added to this a chief baddie who wears red, thigh-length boots, a villanous cackle and the most fullsome pout this side of page 3 and you have a winner. The Doll's House has probably helped to change our world, redefine the relationship between men and women, and has last a 100 years. But BofP was more fun to watch and at 30 years old ain't doing bad either.

I had to take my car to KwikFit yesterday as my exhaut was hanging off by a thread; I was irritated to be phoned up by them the same day. How was the service, they asked? Could we have done anything better? Well, the exhaust hasn't falled off in the half mile from the garage to my house, and can you reduce the cost to 20 quid, please. Free would be better. Turns out they didn't care, they just wanted to try and flog me car insurance. No, you can't give me a quote, and no you can't call me back next year.

I've been reading "Medicine balls" by Phil Hammond; fine stuff. He repeats the old ear, nose and throat gag: never put anything in your ear small than your elbow. This makes me wonder, how to explain the stethoscope?

I've also added a new Silly idea. Only 6 months since the last; what a flood of ideas I am having?

Today is the kick-off meeting for ONDEX. This is a new project which is doing something that I've wanted to do for ages; in a nutshell, it's a large, graph-based datawarehouse. It's rather similar to a proposal that I wrote with Mark Wilkinson from BioMOBY a few years back, with one important difference — the system actually exists, produced at Rothamstead over the last few years.

The new project involves integrating some other bits of technology — taverna, text mining and so on, and a couple of specific biological examples. I think it's going to be a pretty cool project, and we should get some useful biology out of it.

Two things that I have learnt today: firstly, what "Ondex" actually stands for is not actually sure and, secondly, some varieties of willow are dodecaploid. Why would any plant need that many genomes?