Whoops, did I fall off the planet again? Drat. I'm just not good at keeping to a regular update schedule.

I've been busy working, mostly... on my PhD thesis and implementation, one of which is reaching completion, the other barely started... guess which is which.

Other stuff that I've been occupied with over the last couple of weeks includes:

• Participating in the open beta test of Earth and Beyond, a massively multiplayer space game (think Frontier Online). Fun, but not good enough for me to pay for the game.
• Dining out at New Ocean City, a Chinese restaurant on Derby Road in Nottingham, which serves far-and-away the best buffet I've ever seen. It's all-you-can-eat, the selection is huge, and the food is deliciously good. I regret that I didn't know about this place a lot sooner.
• Watching the latest TV imports from the US's fall season - I'll comment on the best and worst at a later date, but to sum up my thoughts so far: it looks like it's a fairly lackluster year for new series, it certainly doesn't rival last year (which brought us Smallville, Jeremiah, The Dead Zone and 24).