Black Holes conjure up a variety of images for people. To some, they are beautiful, celestial objects that drift through the cosmos whilst to others they are fierce, destructive forces that seek out and destroy other worlds in an attempt to satisfy an insatiable appetite. To yet others, they are imaginary; made up by astronomers to fill gaps in what we think we know. To those people that came to the December Birmingham Café Scientifique, a new understanding of Black Holes was formed, that brought together current research from a variety of fields, in an evening that was entertaining and fascinating in equal measure.

Apparently I am not a gamer! Whilst I was obviously devastated to hear this at first, I was able to overcome my distress and continue with the Birmingham Cafe Scientifique earlier this month and to find out if games are changing the world.

I will be honest and say that I didn't really know what to expect from the evening; I didn't have any real idea about serious games are. There was something about the concept of games being serious that struck me as being potentially interesting and I am relieved to say that it was a really fascinating evening. It was early on in the evening when I made my faux pas and asked if 'Call of Duty' was the war-based equivalent of the games that I see Sheldon et al play on The Big Bang Theory. A) it is not, and B) if you don't know this then you are 'so not a gamer'. Mind you, if anyone is going to tell you that you are not a gamer, then the Director of Research, Prof Sara de Freitas, at the Serious Games Institute of Coventry University is probably one of the best people to be able to tell you this!

At first sight (no pun intended) this is a rather strange question to ask. We all know what we mean by colour and we all generally agree on which colours are which, in which case, how much discussion is there to be had on the subject of 'what is colour?' How wrong could I have been! This month's Birmingham Café Scientifique asked this very question and our guide for the night was Prof Tom Marsh of the University of Warwick, an astrophysicist by trade. Not only is the concept of colour very important to him professionally, but he also has a keen interest in the human psyche and our perceptions of colour.

I received my first complaint about the Birmingham Cafes Scientifique this month! One of the people who received my Email reminder felt quite strongly that I had made a grave error in judgement by inviting the Soil Association to come and talk to our informal gathering. Not only had I invited the Soil Association, but I had also invited their Director of Communications and she was therefore a 'poor choice of non-scientist'. The gentleman concerned made it quite clear in his Email that he would not be attending the propaganda based evening that I had clearly planned.

It is such a shame that biofuels have a bad name for themselves. Last week, at the monthly Birmingham Café Scientifique, we had an incredible evening with Prof Andreas Hornung from Aston University on the subject of biofuels and in particular, the technological and engineering advances that he has made, such that they are a very realistic alternative fuel of the future. What was particularly great to hear was that Aston University is very soon going to put into operation a biofuels reactor that will provide heat and power to the campus - in a significant way.

Several years ago, an unusual article appeared in the science journal Nature that caught my eye. It could have been the picture of the armadillo, or the word 'penis' (unusual in high end scientific literature!) that I noticed first, but the combination of the two was surely a recipe for a good story. It was an article about a research group that studied penis structure, using the armadillo as their model animal. Whilst the article was interesting, there was an entertaining section at the end on why armadillo was chosen as the model for this work; armadillos are found in the roadkill lining the highways of Florida.

To someone like me, for whom science is a way of life rather than a job, or simply a passing interest, I shouldn't have been surprised when I heard about the next generation of particle accelerators. Every month, I organise the Birmingham Café Scientifique series of events where we have an invited speaker come in for some pub based banter about their work. This month, our speaker was Dr Nigel Watson from the University of Birmingham and he has one of those great job titles: Particle Physicist. I think he was as surprised as anyone about the standing room only audience that was attracted to the event, and he talked us through the current particle accelerators as well as what the future holds whilst also discussing the subtleties of neutrinos, muons and antimatter.

I have a confession to make. I am a proud geek. I have recently been preparing for some events that we are running at Thinktank over half term called 'Meet the Scientist' and in preparing all of the necessary materials, I came across some scientific Top Trumps cards. For those of you who are under the age of thirty, you may not be aware of the phenomenon that are Top Trumps (even though you can still get them) but it is a very simple game in which you have a set of cards all relating to a particular topic (e.g. supercars). Each player then compares their top card in terms of engine size or price etc and then the player with the highest score takes both cards. It is that simple! I have however come across Cells Top Trumps and even Virus Top Trumps in which I find myself playing Ebola virus off against Varicella Zoster virus! Brilliant!