Yesterday I suffered spasmodic chest pains when I breathed normally. It felt like I'd broken or popped a rib. I got almost no sleep last night as a result. Cycling to the station this morning was a struggle.

My friends at work insisted that I go along to A&E at the Royal Infirmary here in Glasgow. It''s just a few minutes walk. Spent three hours there - mostly waiting. Eventually got a 10 minute consultation with the doc.

The lack of reaction to jabbing the ribs suggested that the problem was muscular. This news was a relief. Ibuprofen was prescribed. Hopefully I'll get some sleep tonight.

It's still damn sore when I take a deep breath, laugh, cough, or hiccup so I'm avoiding those activities ;-)

The Scotsman - Scotsman Magazine - Adventures in motion pictures

IN A converted Edinburgh warehouse a young dancer spins her way round a computer screen, flashing a glimpse of thigh with each flick of her skirt. Shs followed by an older dancer with a more sophisticated routine and a hoop dress. As the rings of fabric rotate like living, abstract art, the dress slips, psychedelically, from yellow to red to pink to green to blue to purple. The film might only be 20 seconds long but is mesmerising. Is also over a hundred years old.

Restored and now computerised, these haunting images were rescued from a tatty old strip of celluloid which was bought in a flea market in Sydney in the late 1970s and then stored, forgotten about, in the collector's Highland attic. But a few years ago, when the owner finally retrieved the reel, he noticed the name Edison printed beside the fils date, 1897, and realised that he'd been sitting on a fragment of film-making history.

It might have been prolific inventor Thomas Edison's idea to create a device which would "do for the eye what the phonograph does for the ear" but, as head of the project, it was his Scottish protégé, William Dickson, who actually developed a machine that could record and replay movement. The film now flickering on that Edinburgh screen was one of Dickson's original reels.

Thanks to Edisom's skill at using the expertise of others to claim fame for himself, William Dickson has disappeared from the minds of all but a few film buffs. But his is an extraordinary story of scientific derring-do...

An fascinating article. For even more information than the article and to view the clip of the dancer, visit http://www.edisonfilm.co.uk

Pocket Reader

The Pocket Reader is completely portable, letting you capture quotes, addresses, phone numbers and more wherever you go. Then, when you get back to your PC or Mac, simply attach the serial cable (included) and the Pocket Reader automatically transfers the text to your computer, where you can edit and paste the information into e-mail, word processing, spreadsheet, and other software.

Looks like you'd need a serial-USB convertor to work with the latest Macs. But at under £34 this device looks real interesting. Paul has bought one so perhaps I'll take a look at that before deciding whether it's worth the money.

Jim Roepcke's weblog: have browser, will travel | Rare "Think Different" Posters

To all the people who laughed at me when I was buying tubes of Apple's Think Different Posters for $10 on their web site and from their company store, take a look at this:...

I wonder how much Jim is worth ;-)