It's a prison of sound.

• Steve Kilbey on Grant McLennan. Still no word on the cause of death.

• Microsoft don't throw rocks through your window ... they post them. (courtesy baljemmett)

We all went to compilerbitch's housecooling party last night, including redcountess. (Sorry to teqkiller for the double booking, and happy birthday for last Friday when I got some good birthday pics of you!) We had a lovely time with the fearsomely smart Cambridge geeks and I took a zillion photos on the old S100 (the very first model of Digital Ixus, which does great shots, despite being painfully slooow and incredibly thirsty, and on Liz's my K750i phone. It's even possible the subjects will approve any of their pics and you might get to see them. timeplease beer-geeked at me ... I can see how he could move from computer science to running pubs.

Today we were woken at 3:30pm by a call from someone I'm buying another S100 from. arkady's had yet a third IBM laptop hard drive die on her, and we seek recommendations for brands of 2.5" laptop hard drive that will run 24 hours a day, can put up with hot weather and don't get nicknamed "DeathStar." Servalan is currently running on an Ubuntu Live CD. (And so is currently being called Commissioner Sleer.)

Arkady and I got to housecleaning, her in the kitchen and me in the spare room, playing Watershed by Grant McLennan. A lovely album of solo acoustic guitar songs, dressed up with a grossly inappropriate 1990 disco production. And the trademark clunky McLennan lyric bits. Fabulous. I found the charger for the Ixus 50 — I like the pics from the older range better, but by crikey this one's faster with a better interface.

For those who envied my insanely tiny Casio camera, I just got an EX-S1 with all accessories and software. It's only 1.3MP, but is so bloody tiny. Get in touch if you're interested before I eBay it. And if the_rin could please get in touch about the S110 ...

We are now listening to Primal Scream's unspeakable massacre of "Some Velvet Morning", courtesy tintintin, who actually likes it. This must have been done for a bet. We had to play the Rowland Howard/Lydia Lunch version to clean our brains afterward.