It's been said alluded to before that I am, occasionally, an obsessive, with a tendency to think about totally unimportant rubbish and that I should get out more. Clearly, a post on video connectors is necessary here, for me to clear the air.

See, I just got myself a big new monitor at work; no doubt some people will impune that this is a method for making up in my lack of prowess in other areas; probably they are right. But it's left me wondering.

For years, monitors all had that strange 15 pin thing, always blue. Everything plugged into everything. Then, a short while back came out the DVI connectors; these are slight offwhite, with a novel combination of flat and round pins. My new monitor has an HMDI connector. But the other end of the cable is a DVI; my old monitor used DVI plugs, has no been downgraded to a second screen. Fortunately, it also had a VGA, which is lucky because the video card has one DVI and one VGA.

What's going on here? It's totally confusing. If I want to swap computers and monitors around, I have to sit and add up, do they have the same interface, do I have the right converter cables if they don't (or if I only have convertor cables, do they have different sockets).

It feels like the bad old days before some bright genius of usability invented USB; a flawed genius because they were stupid enough to make them rectangular, but a genius non the less.

It all goes back to what I was droning on about in the pub, on friday; it ended up like a comparison between different operating systems, cause I was a bit too drunk to make myself clear; I move between linux and windows freely, and given the choice, I decide on relatively trivial grounds; it makes no difference to me, really, because I can make them largely look the same anyway. And this is the point: what do people want from a computer these days? My answer is this: forget the features give me familiarity; stability not excitement. Just don't change a damn thing. And that includes the background wall paper.

Likewise, video plugs. We have three different sorts now. Stop it guys, just stop it.

You think this is bad, don't even begin to get me started on low voltage power supplies...

Well, it was a good meeting. I enjoyed listening to the talks, although I frequently found myself a little out of my depth; perhaps both a sign of how much biology I have forgotten and how much maths I never knew. Also, I think that the conference was not ideally weighted. Some multi-track, shorter talks, I think. It felt rather like the early eScience All Hands meetings.

On the way, down almost all the Newcastle people travelled together; for some reason, on the way back, we all scattered and went different routes. I thought I was on my own, going through Sheffield, but bumped into a fellow Newcastle academic on the platform, in the shape of Tom Kirkwood: Professor of Gerontology, former Reith Lecturer, and all rather clever chap. What brilliant and incisive obervation on the state of systems biology did I make? What stunning analysis of the impact of the RAE results did I posit? "Hello," I said, "did you get the train to Sheffield too?"

Still, it isn't all bad; I did manage to proof conclusively that it is possible to survive for three days eating only two of the major food groups: fat and carbohydrates.

So far, the BBSRC Grant Holders Workshop has been fascinating. Dennis Noble's talk last night, including an entertaining slagging of the Gene Ontology; entertaining but as wrong as you can be when you confuse a gene name and a function. Nice to hear a new variation of the Syndney Brenner "but an ontology doesn't allow you to understand all of biology" argument.

I also learnt that a) without convection it would take 10,000 years to make a cup of tea (unless you invent a spoon) and b) there are, on average 8 sausages in a tin of sausage and beans and, further, that the distribution of sausage number is low enough that the machine that puts them in the tin must be counting.

I also learnt that some people have too much time on their hands; that I am blogging about this means I have to include myself in this category.

I finished Exit Music this morning. I've been reading Ian Rankin's novels for nearly a decade now starting, perhaps ironically, just after leaving Edinburgh for London. I still think Black and Blue is the best, although Tooth and Nail is my favourite. I heard Ian Rankin say once that as he'd just moved to London and was feeling miserable, he's inflict the same onto Rebus. As I was hating London also, I emphasised greatly with the book. Also, it's got a keystone cops, comedy car chase at the end. Both author and detective moved back to Edinburgh fairly shortly afterwards. I never did, although I did leave London.

The last book is good and a suitable ending. Like many of his more recent books, there is a random, unresolved element to the plot. But it's exciting, page-turning and a suitable finish for the series.

Having said that, it's probably a good thing that it's coming to an end. The books got lots of moody, black and white shots of Ian Rankin, with readers notes and meaningful questions about the use of metaphor for reading groups. Doesn't detract from the novel, but is, really, deeply pretentious.

I had cause to go doctors recently; I thought, I'd try the new drop-in centre that they have opened in town. It was fine, for the record, although I can't really see the difference between this and a normal doctors. Well, with the exception that they don't have the appointments fiddle (we guarentee to give you an appointment with 48 hours, but not giving you an appointment which is further away).

Next day, I get a call from my own doctors — were they phoning up to send me a get-well soon. No, of course not, they were phoning up to sign me off; the receptionist seemed quite irritated that I had been to the drop-in place, and had great pleasure in telling me to seek a new doctor.

The problem was, of course, that I have moved, so I am "now no longer in their area". Yeah, but I only go to the doctors once every couple of years, on average, and I move on average about that often. So, theoretically, I would have to register with a new doctor about as often as I want to see one; hardly surprising, then, that I can't be assed to register at all.

Been looking forward to Jolie Holland for a while; I think her records are superb, from the Be Good Tanyas onward. Her strange, wierd vocals seem to work; Mexican Blue is stunning song, which leaves me lost everytime I hear it.

I guess this is a lot to live up to. Last nights gig missed by a mile. The support, who's name I forgot, was poor; nice voice, but the songs were crap, and the performance shambolic. This was replicated by the main act; she treated the audience like they were the wall-paper at her own private practice session. The band spent lots of time talking to each other; they had to tell poor jokes while she tuned up, which took ages. And she needed it; the first three songs were played with an out-of-tune guitar, that was mixed up loud enough that you couldn't hear her voice anyway.

God knows, I'm not a performance fascist; I like things relaxed, I don't mind raw and I'm not a technical freak. But a live performance is just that — a performance; if you can't be bothered, then you shouldn't be there.