I have it over a month now so I can testify.
Impulse buy at Borders, does not help in Cambridge as the shop can sometimes be a short cut between green street and the market square.
It is basically the same screen as the sony e-book but a lot lighter and simpler. It is disconcertingly bright. If you used to LCD sometimes it feels like it glows. The screen is very clear and high rez with 8 grey scales. Te interface is simple with a few buttons and quizzingly a sudoku button. It does not come with any software to install, it works like a USB flash drive with 256Mb storage and a SD card slot.
Adobe ebook software is an optional download to support copyrighted books.
It can read most files such as pain text, simple html, pdf and jpg.
It comes with a collection off free Gutenberg project books.
Here comes the crunch, it is excruciatingly slow, it takes half a minute to load a file and a couple of seconds to flip a page. Navigation is a bit archaic with cursor control.
On the plus side it can work as a simple picture viewer.
Note that is best to disable the auto power off as it blanks the screen when off and takes half a minute to bootup and looses the last page position.
I would not say it is a bad buy, it is basically utilitarian. Considering that cheaper models will come out soon like the Asus ebook it is better to hold off a while to see what happens.

Long weekend in Venice.
Did not manage to sleep with the first flight in at 6:30am from Stanstead, had to leave home at 3am! Then cought the 3:30 bus to arrive at Stanstead at 4:30 for the 6:30 flight.
In Treviso there was a bus shuttle service to venice, 1h there abouts. Of course had the temperature shock stepping outside at 30˚C. The road ends by the car park and railway station, is on foot there after, with canals instead of rods, there are endless bridges to cross them. Good thing I went just with hand luggage.
Stayed in a hostel in Dorsoduro near the Peggy Guggenheim museum. Bit of walk and bit hard to find first time round. Note that the addresses in Venice do not include the street name, only the house number and neighborhood name. After dropping the bags went to see the main tourist attractions. The San Marco's Square, Dojo's Palace, the Basilica di San Marco, Rhialto Bridge. The Museus are mostly paid but there are museum and attraction passes that cover several attractions and they are not time limited, allows one visit of the listed attractions each.
The Modern Art biennial was happing at the same time so I expend the next day to see the main pavilions. They where mostly around the Arsenal area, the original ship yards of Venice. The main pavilions where in two areas spread on that side of town and they charged entry. Other exhibits where spread throughout the city and mostly free.
Next day spent seeing the Peggy Guggenheim museum, Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, modern art museum and other biennial exhibits spread throughout the city.
The last day used the opportunity to take the vaporetto to Murano to the the glass museum and a quick walk round Murano. It actually only had glass shops. Only found a small mall in a alleyway with a pizza fast food, ice cream shop and supermarket where the locals went :)
Got the vaporetto back and round Venice and Lido to finish off.
So the pictures are here.

For some reason all places where booked up in fort william on friday night and the usual fort william backpackers where full. Found Calluna instead, small youth hostel with a climbing wall! On friday decided to stay on the Glen Coe SYHA.
Got there straight from work on the sleeper and dropped off by the Chacheig. After treddging up the road and dropping the bags up in the SYHA setoff to do the Ballachulish Horse Shoe, once I was passing the village I saw a sign for a mountain bike hire. So I hired a bike for a day, cycled back to the hostel, got changed to bike kit and cycled 50Km all the way round Loch Leaven. The weather was amazing and got some amazing pictures!
Next day rained alll day and headed off to Fort William early ish and had a lazy day to recover as the weather did not help. The folk at the hostel gave me a lift up the hill where the hostel was.
On Sunday was great weather, hired a mountain bike and cycled all the way round the woods by the nevis range. Still some paths where closed there due to forestry work. Wasn't so good for pictures thought, although the highland cows on the middle of the track lightened up the day :)
Some pictures here.

Another great bash in the Brits with the SCUK. Almost got disapointed when I arrived as it was spring conditions and rather warm but it dumped in the next two days giving us almost 0 visibility again, on the plus site kept the skiers off all the red runs which where untracked so we had another couple of days of amazing fresh tracking and off pisting. Thanks to Dunx for finding that hill side off the La Siala lift!
This time I got the first flight in with ryanair and last flight out and they actually had no incidents. I also learned that ski luggage is not weighed and I did not need to book hold luggage as everything was in the board bag and it did not count as hold luggage.
Also the ski pass was valid from 3pm on the day of arrival, just about enough time to get ready and changed, perfect! I also had to buy an extra days ski pass for the last day but they only charged for half a day.
The Brits where great with great events in the evening, specially the rock night with the bands and the electronic night, likes specially Gentleman's Pistons and Kovak, which where a lot better this year!
Mind you did not manage to watch the competitions much, just sat down here and there to watch it as we where enjoying the riding more this year and the slopes on the flims side where almost empty!
So some pictures here.

I finally succumbed to Flickr.
I got to the point I realized I needed more exposure with my photography.
I uploaded my panoramas for now.

I just got a t.rice and been riding it all week on the bash.
Yes it is amazing, its is stiff so no shatter at high speeds, and its impossible to catch an edge on it because of the banana/magnetraction, when it catches an edge it corrects itself points straight again.
The magnetraction also helps quite well on hard pack and steep slopes, gets quite good grip.
Mine is the 157 blunt so i did not notice much difference riding on powder, also the banana camber is less accentuated on the t.rice than the banana.
Only thing I did not like about it is that the top sheet is plastic (bean or whatever they call it) so its very very easy to chip it. On my last board the top sheet was fiber glass so I did not have as many chips even if I did put it through a lot more.
Bear in mind that you have to change your riding style as you cannot put weight in the front and you cannot steer with the front foot. I noticed that it is better to have the weight in middle/back. It is a non issue if u carve properly as u put weight in the middle and lean on the appropriate direction.

Great boarding trip with great conditions and great resort!
This time got the Eurostar direct train from St. Pancras making travel from Cambridge really smooth. Just got the local bus from my house to the station, then a direct train to Kings Cross, all I had to do was cross the road to St. Pancras. Got there some 2h before just in case, considering that they advise you to check in 1h before departure. After security check and passport control you can board straight in the train. The waiting lounge only had an over priced coffe shop and an over priced shop, so its better to have dinner outside in St. Pancras as the main station hall is full of shops and restaurants. Managed to meed Martin and later Dunx at the station and the Jordies at the train. The bar in the train was a bit pricey but not anywhere as bad as I would find later on. Got to Bough station early in the morning and the driver from Dragon Lodge was waiting for us. Was snowing quite heavily and getting deap :-) The police was stopping all vehicles with snowchains at a checkpoint half way on the road. After an hour and half's drive we got to the resort at 8am, early enough to have breakfast in the loop bar, get changed in the Loop Bar and get our ski passes so we where up in the slopes by 10am! We met Nick, Rob, Paul etc. who where already at the resort for a few days and mentioned that the lifts where closed the day before because of the snow so it meant that we where riding on fresh untracked powder! The snow also kept coming down on and off for the next 3 days and then we had quite a few blue skay riding days :-) Considering that the temperature was between -9˚C and -3˚C the snow did not deteriorate much.
The resort was a rather expensive resort and with the weak exchange rate made it even more expensive. The usual €5 pint and €6 for a pie or chicken noodles for lunch on a stall beside the loop bar. This time we only ate out a couple of times and I had only a couple pints a night and still spent €250!
The return trip was also quite smooth, we had a great riding day and managed to get the transfer back without any further incidents.

Some pictures here.

Pics from the Open House event. Mostly from Foreign Office & India Office which had been redcorated back in 1997 and the last 3 pictures from the Royal Institute. We also saw the impressive Portcullis House and later the Freemasons' Hall but pictures where not allowed in those buildings.
The pictures are here.

Sat in Leicester Sq. Park to drink a juice and noticed a commotion outside the park. It was a prémiere on the side, by the Empire cinema. On the cinema's balcony managed to see Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Good thing I had my camera with me and got a few shots :-)
The pictures are here.