I like flying, especially now with airports so full to capacity that you get to walk out to the plane over the tarmac and feel like The Beatles or the Pope. I also really enjoyed overhearing "It looks just like Google maps" from someone looking out of the window as we took off. No doubt Google and the airline have a plan for overlaying adverts for local businesses.

I also like Italy although, at the risk of coming over all Clarkson, I've never understood the European obsession with Snoopy. The dullest character in a fairly dull comic strip, and yet the first bit of graffiti we see beside the train track is the small white hound. He's also on many a sweatshirt to be sold around tourist attractions, with his twin pillar of American marketed cartooniness Bart Simpson (the dullest character in what I'll admit is/was a brilliant show). What Bart and Snoopy are doing here is called 'Pisa Posing' or 'Pushing the Tower' - that is standing in between your mate with a camera and the tower and trying to line yourself up so it looks like you're interacting with the round leany thing.

The odd person pretends to hold it in their hand, some hug, but most either hold it up or push it over (an interesting psychological distinction, anyone want to fund a long research paper into it?). Of course, they're only trying to look as if they're doing it from the angle of their mate taking the photo. Which means the area is filled with people doing crap tai-chi. It looks like the biggest mine convention in Italy. It looks brilliant. I spent a good couple of hours taking pictures of them from the 'wrong' angle, and chuckling manically to myself. There's a Flickr group dedicated to it, as there is these days for everything.

An event city, what does that really mean? And more to the point how do the people who live here benefit? We keep being told that the Tories brought £20M to Brum -- but how much of that will ever get anywhere near improving things for residents? The Rotarians are also estimated to bring £20M despite there being twice as many of them, well I suppose they do drink less.

Let's consider Brum as a big old boozer, like the Yenton, people who live here are the regulars; some drink in the bar (Kingstanding), some drink in the lounge (Moseley) and some only come once a week and use the bowling green and sip half a lemonade all afternoon (er, Sutton). What's this got to do with being an 'events city'?

The events venues are like the function room -- the landlord hires them out to outsiders, they spend money over the bar and help to keep the place going but they might only book at most once a year. For the regulars, all they mean are more noise, the car park being full, the bar staff being busier and sometimes running out of Skol White Top or nuts. It'll also be impossible to get a taxi home, without stepping over people in Ben Shermans who can't handle their ale.

I've never been to a party conference before, so I said yes. It does help that it's only a short bus ride away too.

It's an interesting idea really, one that's already got people talking, at the very least it's always nicer to be asked if you'd like to go to something than not. Unless it's a gathering of people who need to do something about their BO.

Once we (there are apparently ten local bloggers, I know who about 5/6 are I think) were asked then there was a complex system of security to get through to get the required ID. It was tougher than getting a passport -- not least because you needed your passport to fill in the forms. Then you had to get someone to vouch for you, which was hard because it meant explaining why you were going to the Tory conference -- which is as complex as explaining Twitter, without being able to get Boris Johnson to say hello over the interwebs to prove it's a communication tool.

Since then the local history responsibility has been covered a bit by Thinktank, a bit by more local museums such as Soho House -- but that's about to change with a £300,000 grant which BMAG will use to create a new gallery showing the history of Brum from "medieval times to the present day".

A great opportunity. The museum has a wealth of artefacts that would suit this -- many at its collections centre that gets popular but infrequent open days -- and there are some pieces at Thinktank that could do with bringing back into context a little. There are also pieces such as the Baskerville collection at Central Library that it would be great to see in a proper setting.

I've been collecting ideas of what else the museum should have: some have been serious "A retrospective of the old adverts that encouraged families to move from Birmingham into the new towns.", some not so -- but interesting all the same -- "Camp Hill Flyover".

My best times at the old local history museum were when my old granddad would tell me more about (giving the human side) some of the things there. It's a fine line that has to be trod between the kind of interactive, but child-focussed, exhibits seen at Thinktank - and the dry exhibition of artifacts. A local museum has a perfect opportunity to create an experience that not only engages people, but draws on the experience of its potential visitors about the subject.

What price a sort of "wiki-museum" where the public could pop in and add/correct information and even drop off stuff that that they think contributes to the story?

It is stunningly beautiful at first glance, although the view is spoilt by the car park packed with monster trucks that I'm sure Mrs Simpson (of Edward and... fame) didn't have to put up with. The rooms are also fantastic, and a great deal of time and effort has been spent reflecting the style of the building through nice bits of design. A particular favourite touch of mine was the beer mats in the style of the Marion Dorn rugs that once graced the reception. The spiral staircase just begs you to take photos of it, which I did:

But there's something a bit wrong. There are already stains and signs of rust on the roof of the rear terrace, there is the odd bit where the floor titles have worked loosed are in need of repair. Some of the doors are marked with signs obviously made with Microsoft Publisher, blu-tac'd on, saying "staff only". The way to the toilet from the function suite is past a pile of mops and buckets, primed for use with already dirty water in them. Not huge problems, and ones I'd have probably not even noticed if it were not for the 1920s decadent vibe I was trying to buy into.

The Flapper and Firkin (formerly the Longboat) has seen thousands of tiny, sweaty, gigs over the years. It's one of the few places in Birmingham that a new band might be able to get on the bill, supporting a band that are on a national tour. Much needed practise, exposure, and ultimately culture for the city. After the loss of the similar venue The Jug of Ale earlier this year, it might be one blow too many for the local music scene to cope with.

I'm not anti-regeneration, I accept that on the whole the new buildings and facilities in Birmingham over the last ten years have been a good thing. But. If we remove the good stuff along with sweeping away the bad, we will become a souless city.

Before every game of the European Championships this year some uncomfortable looking ex-pro was asked what they thought would happen in the next two hours. Given that they only had to focus on events within around 10,000 square feet of grass, with 23 people on it at any one time, they did -- as ever -- spectacularly poorly.

Weather forecasts have got more reliable over the years, as computing power and simulation models have improved, we can now pretty much trust predictions that don't involve humans. Maybe that's why weathermen (and women) don't become personalities any more -- we only remember them for getting it wrong.

But to try and predict anything that depends on human behaviour, and you're all but stuffed. No simulations can help, you can't foresee trends, and if you're trying to make even educated guesses on the future of the internet, that mass of interconnected humanity, then all I can say is "good luck".

It's normal for people who write about illegal downloading to give all sorts of reasons why the record companies are out of touch, out of time, monolithic and wrong, to say that piracy actually results in more sales not less ­ and then say that, of course, they buy all their music legally from iTunes. I won't, I'll admit that sometimes I've download albums, the odd TV or radio show and once ­ because I was absolutely desperate to watch a film involving penguins yet to reach the UK - a whole film. The film took ages and wasn't worth it, it was obviously recorded on a camcorder, the colours were washed out and someone went out for a wee right during a crucial squawk.

So this week I was expecting to be notified of the first of my "three strikes", with a kindly letter reminding me of the illegality of downloading, advice to keep my wifi connection secure and informing me that Feargal Sharkey was on to us.

The city council have said that whatever the result of English Heritage's attempt to get The Central Library listed, they still intend to knock it down. It's nice to have city planners with vision, but it's important to disagree when we think they're wrong. I do here.

This post is a slightly re-worked version of this one from Birmingham: It's Not Shit, as much as I don't like crossposting I think Josh in the comments there makes an important point about The Birmingham Post being where this debate is taking place. Sorry for the very rough 'artist's impression'.

Quite a few people have raised objections, which the council have decided not listen to, but so far I don't think anyone has voiced an opinion on what should be done instead.

One of the main arguments against keeping the library is that the whole 'paradise' development cuts one side of the city centre off from the other. People do see the divide as an effort to cross, the council is always keen to have events and focus in Centenary Square and these can be sparsely attended on occasion. It's a valid point, but knocking down the library and placing another building in its place (very probably one the public will have no occasion to use) won't solve that.

The council want to be able to see the Town Hall, they think the library cramps it -- but the beauty of the library is similarly cramped by truly horrible buildings.

So, lets open it up -- and knock every bit of Paradise Circus apart from the library down.

You can easily imagine the hopelessly amiable Palin, bumbling though life painlessly overachieving in all of his chosen fields, as well as the feeling of inadequacy it also inspires you a little that nice guys don't have to finish last. Especially if they don't consider they're racing anyone.

I'm glad I read it thirty or so years after the event though, imagine how wearing it would be to read Palin's blog each day or worse hear about every effortless triumph on twitter.

I think it's something to do with the bus being the middle ground, not the romantic freedom of the car, nor the regimented closeness of the long distance train. Buses are always just that one step up from Shank's pony, and bus stops don't get names so there's isn't even a Mornington Crescent type game to play.

We didn't have a car when I was a kid, and for one reason or another I'm just not bothered by them, trains were always expensive (they were competing with the fabled 2p fares on the bus, remember) and still to me seem a middle class way of travelling I'm not totally comfortable with. So buses are where it's at for me culturally, not that I get aroused by a shapely MCW Metrobus or even a Gardner engined Daimler Fleetline (I am however quietly obsessed with the 11 route, the local network in general and harbour fine memories of the tracline 65).

The interweb, of course, is nothing if not home to the nichest of niche content so, along with the bus-spotting and the tiny sites I've made that track people using twitter on the bus, there is something genuinely interesting and bus-related happening.

Yesterday I attended a screening of Nic Gaunt's film 'Rotunda: 21 Stories', a film ostensibly about the building that stands, er, 21 storeys tall at the bottom of New Street. But, while the film radiates from the Rotunda at its central core, it pushes far beyond that to be a film about identity, family, and how the built environment can help shape the way we feel.

Apart from possibly being the cinematic work that contains the word "round" most often, the film takes time to talk about how Birmingham has been shaped by its architecture and by using only the voices of Brummies and those involved in the building means that it's thankfully free of theories, instead focusing on emotion.

The 21 stories range from the base and James Roberts, with tales of how the building grew taller almost on a whim, to the top, restoration, and a young carpenter who's too scared to work alone in the basement. In between are a host of people talking about, confessing almost, their relationship with a huge pile of concrete and glass and by extension their lives.

It seems that social scientists measure happiness by just asking people to rate their happiness on a scale of 1-10. Governmental scales take more variables into account, crime figures, health, and even economics. Clearly, while money doesn't make you happy you need enough for the grind of existence not to make you unhappy.

There's an almost standard move to blame "progress". Each new invention ties us more closely to our employers meaning we can't even hide. Each new labour-saving device ends up creating more work, as anyone who's attempted to clean a smoothie maker will testify. At the other end, there are claims (like here on the New Generation Arts blog) that technology will be what sets us free.

But what if technology could help, in the first instance at least let us work out just how happy we are. The measurements used now don't really get near enough for me, they're too general too subjective, and too slow to allow us to work out what effect events have.

These days there is much more information floating around that can be used to help measure happiness, we can look a news headlines, what people write on their blogs, even the "ambient information streams" that are tweets. So, is it possible to snatch a bunch of this as it passes, look at how people are feeling and work out if Birmingham is happy?

Up until a few years ago I had a season ticket in the main stand at St Andrews, and was in the habit of meeting the guys I went with around two hours before kick-off in The Sportsman on Garrison Lane. A few pints in a pub shorn of all its furniture to pack more people in, at least I assume that's what happened -- I never went in when there wasn't a game on so the pub could possibly just have had no chairs or tables at all.

A combination of Brady et al deciding to evict a section of the people that sat in the main stand, in favour of people who could pay for padded seats and access to a bar offering us much worse tickets as replacements, and the spiralling price of watching poor football meant that I stopped going to every game. Once out of the routine it's difficult to rouse yourself to go and watch on a cold Tuesday night, or a cold Sunday at four o'clock especially when the game is on TV. Much of my footballing budget was transferred in to watching England more regularly, and while I'm not sure the standard of play was any higher (and the frustration levels are much the same) at least I got to go to Frankfurt or Barcelona rather than Small Heath.

I still go to St Andrews and in truth it probably costs more to do it the way I do (£40 to watch us throw away a two goal lead against Liverpool, £40 to watch Agent Ridgewell put through his own net against the Villa), but this year I've seen almost every game home and away -- through a combination of pixelated internet feeds and darkened rooms in pubs.

I don't hate you if you demonstrate these, they won't even make me like you less, I'll just get mildy irritated. That said I will probably refrain from attempting to explain Twitter to you, then again that may be just what you want.

So, without attempting to upset anyone, here's my top twelve interweb no-nos :