You might have noticed I haven’t been here as much as usual lately; that’s because I’ve been caught in something of a perfect storm of work and life pressures.

One of these has now at least ended – well until next week, and every week after, when it will be back again, but hopefully much easier later times around – which was the production of the Guardian Weekly’s first podcast – “hear the voices of the Guardian”, as we say. (No complicated technology required – just click the play button just like on a cassette player.)

Some 15 years ago I was doing a bit of work for ABC Radio Tamworth, which involved, among other things, editing reel-to-reel tape with a razor blade. Happily now it is a bit easier, but getting on top of the technology does take a little while…

Now I’m off to the Green Party conference in Swansea – of which, provided the conference WiFi is working, you should hear a lot more.

Grrrr – I hate Macs; I’d love it if anyone could tell me why, when you are doing a simple drag and drop copy of a file, they half the time manage to create an alias rather than a proper copy….

Yes, I have been using PCs for 20 years, but why are Macs so utterly non-intuitive?!!!!

Alighting briefly, before flying on, the Britblog roundup is to be found this week on the nicely named From the Dustbin of History. I wouldn’t agree with everything there by a long-shot, yet I do believe in the principle of bringing people with different views together – gosh even Tim Worstall and I agree sometimes…

But there is a nice argument against Trident in there.

But the tale of the week is the seven-day book – put together in that time period to raise money for Comic Relief. So you can decide if UK bloggers are actually funny… click here.

* Free delousing and social grooming – at least that’s the promise of the next edition of Four Stone Hearth, the anthropology carnival. For this one, you’ll have to settle short-legged aggressive primates and nudity in Scandanavia, and a warning that the opening pic may turn the stomach of vegetarians (and others).

* An American journalist finds a new perspective on the environment from Britain:

Ignorance is bliss until you step out of the carbon-guzzling garden; then it’s just downright embarrassing.
But what would it take to find a new lover in the Green Revolution? Even the British rhetorical tradition of environmental stewardship, which problematically implies that humans are the Earth’s caretakers rather than its guests, is largely that: mere rhetoric.

* Blogging a war: how the story has been told from the front line – powerful stuff.