Exciting news: Red Dwarf is getting a new series! Despite Back to Earth not living up to series I-VI I'm excited anyway.

I spent last weekend updating all my Firefoxes to 3.5. My laptop and Firefox Portable were on v3 already, so it was just a case of clicking the button and updating a couple of my add-ons manually. The netbook was a different story...

The trouble with it is that Acer made some programs dependent on Firefox 2 and disabled the check for updates button, so I hadn't bothered updating. It was faster than my old computer, but it had got to the stage where it was really slow, specially in Gmail where my typing was ahead of what was appearing on the screen. So I found some instructions on the internet about how to install Firefox 3 alongside v2. So I copied Firefox files on the netbook so I could make sure to get back to the old version and followed the instructions.

I briefly had both versions open before I restarted, which made all my old Firefox menus and icons open v3. Which, because it wasn't installed over the top of the old version meant that it didn't have my profile. The instructions said that it was easy to get the old version back, but didn't say how. After spending ages searching the internet and trying things I gave up and set up the new version of Firefox.

Which was all fine except that whenever I opened it it opened up four tabs, which wasn't what I wanted. I assumed this was a problem with Tab Mix Plus restoring things. A week later I found this was because I'd accidentally set my home page to be all four tabs, which it didn't even occur to me to do...

It's worked out ok in the end because 3.5 is much faster, nothing seems to be broken, and I have the Penguin Racing game that's on the Asus Eee on my netbook. Not that I can play it because it moves, but it'll be there for future usage...

I've also watched lots of new things on TV that all seems to be American. But how exciting is Friday evenings going to look with SJA, HIGFNY and Armstrong and Miller? Read more...

Today, or yesterday depending on how you count it, I've been ill for seven months.

Things I have been doing:

Watched Generation Kill, which turned out to be surprisingly good. After seven episodes I can name seven characters, which is pretty good going (Ray, Trombley, Reporter, Brad, LT, Captain America (who I recognise from somewhere but can't work out where), Godfather). Plus there's also the bloke that wears glasses who lost his helmet. There may or may not have been other speaking characters, I got a bit confused - they all dress the same, it doesn't help!

I finished v2 of my Sarah and Harry ficathon story. So I have a draft or two to go and it will be about 5000 words. Handily, the SG Rare Pairings ficathon starts up once that's done and I'm hoping there will be some Jack/Elizabeth prompts for me to write (and I'll be leaving some, just as soon as I work out what). Then there'll be Yuletide and I so want to add Teachers to the list of fandoms. And after one episode of Merlin I want to request Gaius & Merlin again.

I'm meeting Avon on Sunday, yay!

I have a new shower. It's cunningly fitted into the corner of the bath so if you want to stand under it you have to stand on the bit of the bath that starts going upwards. So I take it down - which required me to take the shower head off so I could get it out from the middle of the soap dish so it would actually stretch far enough to shower with, and to rinse the bath with.

There really isn't anything else at all going on in my life at the moment. Just lots of things I want to do.

This week hasn't been too bad a week. It helped that it was only four days long and working from home Thursday afternoon. Although I spent the whole week confused so I forgot that it was the day I buy the newspaper until Thursday evening. It is all on the website, it's just such a pain to read that way, I'd far rather have the paper.

This weekend I even felt well enough to clean the flat and go out to Sainsburys, so that's an achievement. I'd quite like to go out for a walk at some point, as I currently get no exercise. I couldn't fit that round cleaning, though, but maybe next weekend I'll do that instead.

I'm onto the head moving exercises, which are really hard. But I knew they were going to be because I already don't nod or shake my head, and try not to turn round at work when I hear something interesting from behind me.

I am working on watching all the stuff on my PVR so I actually have some space to tape everything that starts this autumn. After having had the prompt for a week I managed to come up with the whole plot for my Sarah & Harry ficathon story. I even started writing it. I seem to be on about 300 words at a time at the moment, which is about half my usual, but will get there in the end as long as I keep up with it.

For some inexplicable reason half the week's TV is on tonight (Last Chance to See, Miss Marple (who I don't like as much as Poirot) and Joanna Lumley doing something with cats. And the US Open is on the radio from tomorrow, so hopefully there'll be lots of exciting tennis to listen to and they'll get it done quickly because I really can't stay up late these days.

And now I need to have a lie down so I won't be too dizzy to cook dinner.

I've been watching quite a few new things recently.

First I tried Chuck. It confused me no end when it was on because there's a Chuck in Pushing Daisies and that was on at the same time. I kept seeing people talking about Chuck expecting them to be talking about one series and then finding they were actually talking about another.

However, with the aid of lovefilm, and giving them money for extra DVDs, I watched the whole series this month (and a bit of last month - it was quite handy that the time I decided to try it was not long after it came out on DVD). And I really liked it. There are some characters I wouldn't be sad if they were never seen again. But whatsisname who plays Casey does make up for them. (I find it quite amusing that he played a character called Jayne in Firefly and I know a girl called Kacey...)

hhertzof on more than one occasion put me off watching The Middleman by describing it to me. But then I finally saw someone talk about it in a way that made it sound interesting, so I tried that too. I got two thirds of the way through the first episode before I gave up. It's just not very interesting at all.

Goodness knows why I thought trying Tin Man was a good idea, apart from it coming out on DVD a couple of weeks ago, because I'm not that into The Wizard of Oz to start with. I made it through one hour and 24 minutes: it's just so slow. All of that could have been done in half an hour. I'd go and read the rest of the plot summary somewhere, to save myself the bother of another three hours of that, but ultimately, I'm just not that interested. I'd have tried it sooner if I'd known it was only one series, though. I assumed it was the usual American jobbie of hundreds of episodes over several years.

Then tonight was Merlin. I confused my sister completely today by telling her I was going home to watch Merlin, until I pointed out it was a new TV series. It's the same thing the BBC have done with Robin Hood, with putting a long (13 episode) series into the Saturday night slot to get family viewing figures across the year with Doctor Who. (One more series and they'll be able to do the whole year) I found this one quite interesting, although I was really surprised to see whatshername who plays Gwen in Torchwood in it, doing an English accent. I'm not sure about Merlin and his cockiness and his angst yet, but it does look as if it could be interesting. So I'll be watching that next week. (I think I lasted an episode and a half with Robin Hood).

Talk about the tennis, with photos, will be tomorrow once I've chewed all my fingernails off and I know the result.