Cried like a baby, not least due to the very end of the end credits showing the late Andy Whitfield proclaiming, “I AM Spartacus” :*(

Love love LOVE! I’ve had glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice that were less tang-full of orangey goodness scent, and it’s something I find amazingly uplifting – JUST what I needed last night! :)

The bar is big enough for at least 3 generous baths, too.

As ever with these lists of tips from Infinite Ideas, the few genuinely useful nuggets are drowned by a pile of the obvious and several that are just downright bizarre. Fine for a freebie, I guess.

It’s not my favourite of the series, largely, I suspect, because I find it too difficult to keep the ship names straight. I also find their exchanges a little too much like reading email chains (only, the to/from order at the top is reversed from the familiar convention!) and lose the gist of who’s speaking pretty quickly. More so than previous Culture novels, the ships are very definitely characters here and part of the plot, so all of this matters.

On the other hand, it is intriguing to see how these Minds think and interact, and there are certainly enough human stories to stop the whole thing being too cerebral. My main recommendation, then, would probably be not to read this in a state of over-tiredness just before bed and maybe then it’d make more sense!

Birthday card using the impressabilities to emboss on silver mirricard. Big Shot sandwich as if it was a thin die.

It looks like a bit of a scary colour, but I was surprised at how well it seemed to suit me (well, my toes..!) and I like the touch of summer-feel :) It’s lasting very well, too.

Ultimately I just didn’t like it, any of the characters or anything that happened in it. I can see Charlize Theron acted well, but – too bleak, too badly behaved, all of them!

Sticks very closely to the book – with a few welcome omissions (tarantulas, thanks be!) – so no surprises. Was great to see some of the elements I’d been visualising in the book, even stuff as simple as the size of the boat. The CGI was fine, yeah you knew you were looking at it but that wasn’t unexpected, and the acting was still great.

Big complaint: there is no clear instruction anywhere on/with this about how to position the remote – and if you get it wrong the game really doesn’t work!

Correct is:

• belt on RIGHT hip (not mirroring the loading page pic, as seems intuitive!)
• base in first/at the bottom – so, strap in first
• buttons out (the only bit they do tell you!)

Once all that’s done, this is actually a whole lot of slightly daft fun! Certainly gets me out of puff, but then I am unfit! There’s that element of dancing about your livingroom that appeals, so it feels like less of a slog, and the upbeat music also helps.

Downside would perhaps be that it’s not that sensitive so you can get good ‘marks’ when your movement’s not been that great – which isn’t awful when you’re beginning, but might get tedious if you really really want to be pedantic.

A surprisingly useful aid to my get fit aims! Recommended.

Ooh – wasn’t expecting it to be THAT colour in the middle!! ;)

The red glitter is still everywhere , though o_O