I thought I would show my new Skype avatar picture which I had made the other week. The avatar is nearly identical to the avatars which Yahoo offers their users of Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger so it makes me wonder who's stealing from whom.

Skype is one of my favourite web applications and it would probably be my number one favourite if they would only get the sound quality and the time delay fixed. I might buy a new headset tomorrow and see if that helps with the sound quality. But saying that, the headset I have at the moment is alleged to be "Skype approved" so I'm not sure what else I can get that will be any better. I really want a proper Skype phone but that's 74 Euros and I can't justify the cost at the moment.

Anyway, I discovered that an avatar was only 1 Euro off my Skype credit so I thought what the hell. I also really like how you can skin your Skype application so along with the avatar, I also put a rather fetching beige patch pattern wallpaper on (I was torn between that and a black-and-white zebra pattern). Being of a literary bent, I also included a quote from Shakespeare which I will change every so often.

It's nice to be able to modify programs to brighten up your PC desktop.

In my quest to beef up my iPod with new good music, I have been turning lately to a cool new music website called Pandora.

I've been reading a fascinating post on the Micro Persuasion blog about using Gmail to set up your own "personal nerve center". Reading this makes me realise the ever-expanding uses for Gmail and other Google applications.

I particularly like the Twitter one where you can get BBC and CNN headlines sent directly to your Google Talk application which is embedded inside Gmail. I am a big news junkie and I have been subscribed to CNN's Breaking News email service for many years now. But if this Twitter / Google Talk thing really starts working without any hitches, I may consider ditching the email service. The cool part is that when a news headline arrives in your Google Talk app, Gmail automatically files it away in your Gmail archive where it can be found and retrieved later.

The other interesting part of the post is having your del.icio.us links and Google Reader "shared links" sent to your email every day for filing. Since I am a big user of both services, this will prove quite useful.

The post has also got me considering the possibility of applying for Google Apps. The lure for me would be the 10GB of email space. But at $50 a year, I think I would probably wait until I see how fast I am going to use up the free 2GB that Gmail already gives users. After 3 years and 5500 emails, I am only at 13% of the storage space.

Yesterday was my 32nd birthday and all in all, it wasn't as bad as I thought. In the past five years or so, I have begun to hate birthdays. I don't want to be reminded that my young 20's are over and that I am marching steadily onwards towards middle age.

I got some nice presents (4 good books among them) and some other nice things including a huge home-made cheesecake! Last night, I had a pizza party with a few close friends and today I am feeling sick from eating too much! Time to start a diet I think!

After finishing the first draft of "Lab Rats", I did my usual practice of leaving it to "settle" for a week or 10 days and I moved on today onto my next short story manuscript with a working title of "Only Business". I never know when I start something if it will be a book manuscript or a short story. I start off with the assumption that it will be a full-length novel and by the time I have done say six or seven pages, I normally then make a decision about whether or not to make it a short story instead. I have heard repeatedly that short stories are easier to sell than novels because you have a plethora of newspapers, magazines and websites that need short stories for their editions, whereas the competition for novels is extremely cut-throat and intense. I suppose part of me wants some solid fiction-writing credits so when I do eventually approach a publisher with a book manuscript, they may look more favourably on me if I have a proven publishing track record with short stories. I don't fancy ending up in some editor's "slush pile" where my work will never be seen again.

I seem to be drawn to science-fiction writing. I am a big Star Trek addict and I like reading sci-fi books from people like Ray Bradbury, Philip K Dick and Isaac Asimov. Sci-fi also gives you the luxury of truly making things up as you go along. If you write say crime novels then you have to be careful to get the police procedures right, the legal terms right and so on. Just getting one fact wrong discredits your whole work. But with sci-fi, there's no such restraints on the author because most sci-fi takes place in the future and who's to say what will and will not happen in the future? So you can have things anyway you want and if anyone nitpicks, you can just say that your story is in a futuristic world where things are different from what they are right now. End of discussion, end of argument!

Anyway, with "Only Business", I am suffering from what I usually suffer from when I write something - a severe case of "self-doubt" - the symptoms include "is this story good enough? Are the characters credible? Is the dialogue OK?". Plus from a practical point of view, I am often asking myself "can I sell this?". OK, I love writing for the sake of writing but I am also practical-minded so I know I have bills to pay so I want the work to sell fairly well. Nothing motivates me faster and better than $$$$$.

I heard today that "the real writing doesn't start until the re-writing". So I guess I'll just have to wait and see how the story pans out in the editing stage.

At the moment, I am in the middle of cleaning up in my little home office and doing the mountain of filing that seems to have accumulated during the past year or so. I have to get my 2006 tax paperwork together so I am up to my eyeballs in little receipts and invoices.

At the same time, I am managing to unearth past attempts at writing, old unfinished dusty manuscripts, articles that I wrote but never managed to get published and so forth. Most of the unfinished unpublished stuff is pretty crap though which is the main reason why it is unfinished and unpublished in the first place!

So when I saw this cartoon, I had to laugh out loud because it sums up exactly what I am finding in my filing cabinet at the moment!

This is me as a Lego figure which I made using a website I found earlier. I chose the Superman logo for my chest because one of my favourite T-shirts is a blue one with a Superman logo. I put stubble on my figure's face because I normally wait a few days before shaving (being a home-based web-worker puts you in these kinds of habits!) and of course I don't go anywhere without my trusty tasty cup of tea.

The only thing I don't like about the figure is the yellow belt (I wouldn't be seen dead wearing a yellow belt!) but I couldn't find any way of removing it on the page. Oh well.

I had an interesting discussion today with a student of mine whom I am tutoring in English. We were discussing the German words for "you" - du and sie.

In English, "you" is "you". There's only one word for it and it can be used in all situations. But the German language (and the French language too) has this unique situation where "you" has two different meanings and you have to change the word depending on the situation you're in. In French, it's "tu" and "vous" while in German it's "du" and "sie". "Du" is for personal informal situations like talking to your dog or talking to your auntie ("Moechest du eine Tasse Kaffee?" - "would you like a cup of coffee?") while "sie" is the formal word, used in business or if you're talking to strangers or if you simply don't want to get impersonal and overly friendly with someone ("Moechten sie eine Tasse Kaffee?").

As a native speaker of English and a long-time learner of German, I find this whole situation fascinating because as I say, we don't have this equivalent in English - we use the word "you" for everyone. But in German, it's extremely important and it highlights a cultural difference here in Germany.

Basically the rule goes that you use "sie" with everyone and you only switch to "du" if the other person indicates it's OK, if they invite you to use "du". For some people, being invited to use "du" is a privilege and a honour, a sign that you mean a lot to someone, that you're getting closer to someone. If a German boss invites you to use "du" with them, you could be looking at a big promotion soon. If you're chatting up a member of the opposite sex, hoping to see the inside of their bedroom and they suddenly ask you to use "du" then you're in with a good chance. But if you use "du" without an invitation from the other party, then that is a big insult. It's like embarrassing a Japanese person, making them "lose face". If you revert to a friendly familiar "du" then you have committed a big linguistic error. That's like the office cleaner walking up to the CEO of a big corporation high-fiving them and saying "hey dude, how's it going?". In other words, if you use "du" without an invitation, that would be interpreted by the other person as you being too inappropriately friendly and familiar.

Also, if you're invited to use "du" with someone then one day they abruptly revert back to "sie" then you know that you're no longer in their good books. By reverting back to "sie", they've become more formal with you, perhaps keeping you at a distance.

Whole books have been written on when to use "du" and when to use "sie" and it highlights a cultural bear-trap for learners of German. You could really put your foot in it using the wrong word and when you are talking to someone, you also have to be thinking in the back of your mind, "is this a du moment or a sie moment?". Normally you can take your cue from the other person by listening to what they say first and follow their lead but if you're starting the conversation, you have to get the right tone by deciding which word to use.

And people wonder why I get a migraine learning German?