The fridge gave up the ghost last weekend and we don’t have an extended service plan to fall back on due to the fact that it is over 15 years old so there is another appliance to replace. One thing we are not worried about is the fact that we are about to score a whole new kitchen out of the insurance company – that tiny drip caused so much damage that it had knock-on effects and now we are looking through kitchen brochures for renovating ideas. I wonder how happy the insurance company will be to have us stay on as customers after this is all over?

But as well as guarding sensitive information, iTrust also records any clandestine activity while the owner was absent – storing a fingerprint record of every button pressed on the phone’s touch-screen display.

Little Brother is watching you…?

It has no doubt also been a major reason why the divorce rate has soared with so many social networking sites reuniting former lovers and childhood sweethearts – and these have certainly brought out a dark side in many people. On the other hand it has made vastly easier staying in contact with friends and family who live miles apart – you can do things like set up your own website where they can keep track of what you are up to, or simply place happy greetings on the web like people such as richard willich do on theirs.

Like it or hate it, the internet – and all it’s pros and cons – is here to stay and we better learn to get along with it.

This all began when ghetto blasters came into being, then the sony walkman made it all small and mobile; now doctors are urging people to turn down those iPods and MP3 players to try and arrest the growing levels of youth deafness. Most rock stars have impaired hearing, as do many classical orchestral musicians, jazz musicians…loud music constantly played into the ear causes nerve damage and this is irreparable.

The message is clear; turn the sound down or lose it altogether some day!

The news may come as something of a surprise to the U.S space agency, who down-scaled the threat of the 885ft rock hitting Earth in 2029 from one in 37 to virtually non existent. Nasa predicts the asteroid will peacefully pass us by, coming no nearer than 18,000miles away. There is a tiny possibility that Apophis could hit Earth in 2035 however, although again the odds of this happening have been lowered from 1 in 45,000 to 1 in 250,000.

Scientists have long theorised about asteroid deflection strategies. Some have proposed sending a probe to circle around a dangerous asteroid to gradually change its trajectory. Others suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid and alter its momentum, or using nuclear weapons to hit it.

I have been busy doing all the things you do when setting up a new PC – important things like effective online backup and transferring my old data to this new machine. So far so good and I am having to get used to Vista – I was using Ubuntu before and quite liked it so I might run with the both options this time.

I think you would look brilliant wearing this dress down a red carpet dont you think…? but as I said, if you had a pimply back you would need some serious acne treatment as it would highlight every flaw on your skin. But it does look lovely eh?

Scientists have created a Star Trek style phaser that can be used to both stun and revive creatures. However so far the weapon, which uses a special form of light, has only been used on tiny worms, not menacing Klingons. Canadian researchers fed pinhead-sized worms with a solution containing the molecule dithienylethene. This changed the molecular structure and colour of the worms when they were exposed to different light wavelengths. When the scientists shone an ultraviolet light on the transparent creatures they turned blue and couldn’t move. A beam of normal light then revived most of the worms although a few did not survive the process.

It is reminiscent of the fictional phaser used in the TV series Star Trek that could stun or kill adversaries using a beam of light. At present doctors use light-sensitive materials and photo-reactions in medicine to treat certain forms of cancer and the study authors hope their research can contribute.

I am kind of thinking about it though – I have an old fondness for good ol’ super mario and friends – I played him first back in 1990 and he has come a long way since then.

The firm is instead going to focus on making new Studio Master Quality technology, which sounds as good as the original recorded product, and can be downloaded from the internet. The first commercial compact disc was released in October 1982, and by the end of the decade looked to have seen off LPs. But in a final twist vinyl looks set to outlive the young pretender to its throne.

Top DJs prefer records, because of the flexibility of the format for mixing, while audiophiles enjoy its “warm” higher quality of sound compression. Demand is such that Scottish-based Linn, whose top systems cost more than £100,000 pounds, is continuing to make turntables. The CD is not the first technology to be made obsolete in the digital age. Its little brother, the DVD, pushed old VHS cassettes out of the living room and consigned bulky players to the dustbin.