August 31

I'VE had a few emails off people claiming I don't like Madoc the cat and commit random acts of violence against him. This is untrue. I'd like to state for the record that my acts of violence against the cat are never random - they're always carefully planned in advance. So there.

August 26

OPINION in our apartment is currently divided over the intelligence level of Madoc the cat. Ev's opinion is that he's an average five-month-old kitten: inquisitive, friendly and cute.

However, I've noticed that he certainly does a good impression of being thick as two short planks, especially where closed doors are concerned. To be honest, compared to Madoc, Clanger seems like Einstein, even if her nose does a good impression of builder's arse (and if you don't know what builder's arse is, mail me and I'll tell you).

To aid us in our ongoing investigations over the cat's intelligence - or lack of - I've painstakingly drawn up the chart below, which took me a good 35 minutes to do (or 12 minutes if you don't count the cigarette breaks). It describes behaviour patterns exhibited by the cat and checks if the rat displays similar tendencies.

As we can see from the available data, the answer's obvious: the cat doesn't know his arse from his elbow but the rat is well on her way to world domination.

ON A happier note, I've managed to get a multi-region DVD player from Amazon. Most of my Region 2 DVDs have been flogged at the car boot sale in Hereford, but dad's sent me Spaced and I've ordered Porridge, Men Behaving Badly and Rising Damp so at least something decent will soon be on the TV. And I've finally started driving on my own, so keep an eye out for my forthcoming rant about Californian drivers.

August 23

IT LOOKS like my six-month Californian holiday is about to come to an end: I've had the date my work permit will be ready. I have to go to the INS office in LA on September 7, have my photo taken, sign some bits of paper and then I'll legally be entitled to seek work. Bugger.

August 21

WE WENT down to San Diego last weekend and I ended up going to Lake Elsinore to take pictures of Ken and Craig on their dirtbikes. After the trailer had been loaded with three bikes, during which time I manfully stayed out of the way drinking coffee, we were off. Lake Elsinore is about an hour from Ken's place and it's bloody hot there, even at ten in the morning. Luckily the trailer has air-conditioning, so I manfully stayed in there drinking Gatorade while the bikes were unloaded.

After setting up the camera for "sports" mode (it's amazing what you learn when you read the manual) Craig and I headed over to the pro track viewing point to get some shots of the jumpers. This is where my admiration for sports photographers comes from: timing the shots to actually get the bikes in the frame is a bleedin' sight harder than it looks. After taking 30 or so shots of blue sky, I managed to get the hang of it, only to discover I'd cut the bloke in half. Five cock-ups later I finally got a shot worth hanging on to.

Then it was Craig and Ken's turn to get on the track. Suited up, they got on their bikes and shot off, leaving me and Craig's wife Rochelle standing in a cloud of dust wondering where the hell they'd got to. We found them racing round the intermediate track so I set the camera up opposite a corner and managed to get a load of pretty good shots. Twenty minutes later they were heading back to the trailer as the track was being watered to keep the dust down. After debating the pros and cons of running behind the water track we headed back to see how they were (hot and muddy pretty much summed it up).

After cooling off and refuelling the bikes they were off again so I went to a different part of the track to take more pictures. Rochelle showed more sense than the rest of us put together by electing to stay in the air-conditioned trailer.

By this time I'd pretty much got the hang of taking the pics - focus and wait turned out to be the easiest way to do it, the only real problem being the wait while the camera saves the picture to the memory card. After another trip back to the trailer for refreshments we headed out again. By now the temperature must have been pushing 95 degrees and I was half-wishing the water truck would run me over when Craig decided to get his bike as vertical as possible and piled it on the other side of the ramp, whacking his knee a good one in the process. As I said to Ken later, I don't know much about crashing, but I was impressed. If only I'd waited another half a second I'd have had a great pic of him hitting the dirt.

We decided to call it a day and headed back to the trailer, where I manfully stayed out of the way while everything was reloaded and we set off for home via In-N-Out Burger. Out of the 205 pictures I took, 50 are here.

August 13

FIVE ways you know you're turning Californian:

1. You put a coat on when the temperature drops below 65 degrees.

2. Taking three hours to drive 25 miles seems pretty quick.

3. You get a tan while walking to the mailbox.

4. Describing everything as "totally" is, like, sooooooo cool!

5. You put the top down on your convertible in December.

August 11

WHY oh why did we spend $55 on a cat when we could have bought a toy one for less and just chucked it under the bed?

August 10

IF YOU'VE ever wanted to know what it's like to walk around a huge boiler room that's forgotten to pay its electricity bill, you can't get any better than Doom 3. And if you can't afford the $55 asking price, just follow these steps to recreate the fun and games in your own living room:

1. Strew as many crates, pipes and barrels of explosive liquid around the room as you can. If this means you can't walk without bumping into something, you've done it right.

2. Arm yourself with a shotgun (preferably one that does the same amount of damage as a pea-shooter) and the cheapest torch you can possibly find - try the 99¢ bin at Wal-Mart.

3. Invite some friends over. Give them night-vision goggles and tell them to leap out at you at random making scary noises and punching you in the face.

4. Turn off all the lights.

Now try to make your way across the room, alternating between the torch and shotgun while trying not to blow yourself up by shooting a barrel of hazardous waste, taking hits to the face and looking for the doorkey, which someone's just informed you is hidden in the room and you need it to escape. Voila! All the fun of Doom 3 at a fraction of the cost.

What I can't understand about Doom 3 is the fact that it's taken years to come out and yet it's basically the original Doom but with nicer graphics. (Nicer graphics, that is, if you're earning circa $500k a year and can afford the kind of PC needed to play this game at medium level.) It's amazing that, knowing the sheer numbers of gamers salivating at the thought of playing a new Doom, id Software has effectively told most of them to sod off by making the game incompatible with Win 95, 98, ME and NT, although frankly if you're using 95 or ME you deserve it.

There's absolutely no innovation in this game, nothing you haven't seen in Half-Life or Unreal 2: Some Subtitle I Can't Remember, and that goes for the plot as well as the gameplay. The entire game revolves around running down a dark corridor, shooting something, having something else pop up behind you, shooting that, then running down another dark corridor. Believe me, if you're a fan of pipes, grates, grilles, steam and darkness, you're going to be in heaven.

And then there's the single biggest complaint about Doom 3: the darkness. This game is DARK. Here are some actual screenshots:

It's so dark you're going to think your monitor has been unplugged. It's so dark that the slightest reflection on your monitor screen means you can see even less, which is pretty much impossible anyway. I honestly believe id Software has discovered a whole new type of darkness and are probably taking out a patent on it right now.

And as for weapons, I've been wondering why the plasma gun appears to do less damage than the shotgun. Also, the chainsaw's made a comeback, which would be great if someone could explain why a scientific research base on Mars needs chainsaws. And not just a couple of chainsaws, oh no - at one point you walk into an unlit (obviously) warehouse full of crates of chainsaws. Not a lot of forest up on the red planet last time I checked Nasa's website.

So is there anything Doom 3 does right? Well, I'm sure the number of randomly-placed pipes/barrels/grates are pretty much spot-on, as are the number of infuriating cutscenes that show you what's about to happen, thus wrecking the gameflow and suspense. It's also got good sound effects, which give you something to listen to as you wander down yet another pitch-black corridor. As for PC Gamer magazine's assertion that this is "a masterpiece of the art form", I'm sure that'll keep id Software buying full-page ads for months to come.

August 9

WE WENT for a walk the other evening (yes, it does happen every now and then) and I managed to snap this pic of the sun setting over downtown Long Beach.

August 8

WE WENT to see the Bodyworlds exhibition at the California Science Centre in Los Angeles today. It was fascinating stuff seeing real human bodies that have been put through the plastination process, allowing you to see the muscles, organs and nerve system. We also saw the IMAX movie about the human body, and as it was a BBC production I got to see some green countryside. The film was superb but I could have done without the sight of a stomach in action, although it didn't look any worse than the McDonald's burger I'd had for lunch.

August 5

WE'VE just had a fun evening spent at hospital after Clanger decided to bite me when I was trying to feed her. The doctor told us not to worry, and after a course of antbiotics the rat should be fine.

July 30

HERE's a quick video showing you why kittens should never be made aware that there's a rat in the apartment.

July 28

WE'VE been cat owners for almost three weeks now. Here's a pic of "little cutie" Madoc. We got him from a cat adoption agency here in Long Beach. We weren't actually planning on getting a cat, as the idea behind going to PetCo was to get me a pet rat. However, one look at the little furball and we knew we had to take him home. Of course, having a rat and a cat in the same apartment isn't the best of ideas, but as they were both blissfully unaware of each other there didn't seem to be a problem. Until a certain someone decided to introduce the cat to the rat, that is...

During the time Madoc's been in the apartment, I've learned several interesting things about cats, including:

1. The sound of Madoc bringing up a furball at 6pm is the same as the sound of Madoc throwing up all over the bed at 2am.
2. Cats are supposed to be intelligent, but ours obviously came in on the short bus as he took three attempts before he discovered he can't run through a door.
3. Madoc has got the hang of the whole using-a-kitty-litter routine, but hasn't realised that treading in his own crap and trailing it across the bathroom floor isn't a good idea.
4. Kittens are very inquisitive and love to get to know their surroundings. Our kitten, on the other hand, loves to live under the bed/sofa/coffee table. He also seems to be nocturnal.
5. Cats love milk. Unfortunately, milk upsets kittens' stomachs. I had no idea about this until gave Madoc a saucer of milk and then saw what he'd done in his litter tray the next morning. As my mum would say, "Ych a fi".

The rat, on the other hand, is intelligent. I've named her Clanger after my first pet rat, as they're the same breed and she's just as friendly as the original.

As my last two rats, Lisa and Maggie, were a couple of homicidal maniacs, it's nice to have a rat I can actually pick up without fearing for my fingers.

Rats are great. They eat anything, don't trail crap over the bathroom floor and don't leap on your back at three in the morning. I'd also put money on her not running into a door, too.

July 27

STONE me, I've finally got this thing up and running. And I've only had four months to actually do it. Took me long enough, didn't it?

Anyway, here it is: Planet Mut, my online thingy that lets people know what I'm up to and how things are going now I'm living in sunny California. Yes, I know the colour scheme is a bit dull, but it saves me having to actually think of one.

The way things are going can be summed up in one word: slowly. The INS paperwork is done and sent, and all I can do now is sit back and wait... and wait... and wait. I can't actually do anything as the INS doesn't like that, oh no. I can't even do voluntary work - not that I'd actually want to, as sitting in the apartment all day playing Unreal and watching Blackadder on DVD is fine by me. I just long for proper seasons...

Actually, that's me being a moany old git. I've done loads of things since arriving here, it's just that the days are merging into one long blur with just the weekends to add a bit of difference. Of course, once I've got a job and am working in a little cubicle (why do American firms have those?) I'll be thinking back to the good ol' days of staring glassy-eyed at the TV (and what a TV it is).