Reading those kinds of kitchen catalogues that include astonishing improbable gadgets designed to “take the hard work out of preparing a fruit salad/slicing an onion/pulling out the cling wrap/some other simple task” have long been a source of small innocent amusement.

But this really takes the biscuit:

LCD digital photo frame with bright 7″ display for your favourite digital images with customisable slide shows & MP3 music via built-in speaker
* Bright 7″ active matrix LCD display – 16:9 widescreen format
* Create customisable slide shows with music via intergal speaker
* MP3 music playback and MP4 video playback
* Supports SD/MMC card, xD card, MS and USB flash drive
* Clock and calendar with alarm and snooze functions
* Supplied with credit card style remote control and 3 interchangeable fascias

Could you possibly put together a more pointless collection of the latest electronic gadgets?

Well I suppose you could, but you’d have to try very, very hard.

… I find myself saying for the second time today, after noting that was the placing (shared) I took in Jim of The (Daily) Maybe’s poll of Top Green Bloggers. Congratulations to Paul Kingsnorth, the winner, and Life is complicated, my fellow runner-up.

And thanks to everyone who voted for me! (and to Jim for raising the profile of green bloggers).

In a spectacular piece of bloggery, Jim on The Daily (Maybe) has collected a listing of 100 Green bloggers (a neat balance to an insignificant little list of political bloggers that managed to entirely ignore the Greens earlier this year.)

And I’m urging you to have a look at it not because he’s also got a top ten on which he’s asking people to vote, on which he’s kindly included Philobiblon, but because you’ll find some great new bloggers there.

You’ll also be pointed there to the blog of the new Male Principal Speaker of the Green Party, Derek Wall.

The blog of Sian Berry, the Female Principal Speaker, has been on my blogroll for some time. (The focus is less on her at the moment, BTW, in case you were wondering, since she was elected unopposed in September, while the poll for her male counterpart was a postal ballot, the result of which was only announced today.)