This evenings news advised that the pandas at Edinburgh zoo wouldn't be mating today because the female "had too much bark in her coors" I wondered what a panda's coors were, and why they would be stuffed with bits of tree. But then I realised that it may have been "calls" and bark as in what dogs do.

I find the repeated reports that the number of cases of measles in South Wales has increased to be somewhat meaningless. Of course it has. Every new case will cause the total to increase. I feel a far more useful statistic would be the number of current cases, or the number of new cases per day (especially if balanced with the number of patients who have got better).

Work has been fairly quiet this week, though today was a little more busy and rewarding. I had to go to a meeting at short notice to point out that reports that a system I look after was causing a problem to another system were wrong (or, at least, ambiguous). What was meant was that the problem was with a third system that (independently) provides data to both my system and this other system. My system is working perfectly, so it is obviously a problem with one or other of the other two.

Earlier in the week I had an interesting email from a project manager in which he stated that in his view a particular problem had been solved. This was in reply to my advising him that, from my side, the problem was still there - even if it had been resolved for another part of the project*. I was tempted to point out that his view should be the entire project, not just one aspect of it, but thought better of it.

*later I learnt that it hadn't been!

There was no queue in the barber's this evening when I got home from work, so I got my hair shorn. I then had to go to Winchester for a meeting which I thought was at 1800 but was actually not until 1830. My fault - it wasn't till I got there until I looked at my notes from the last meeting which clearly stated "next meeting: 18 April 1830".

I spent a weekend giving training last weekend - Friday evening, and all day Saturday and Sunday. Was quite tired and sore-throaty by the end. Can't see how people such as CGF can do it all day, every day. I was kind Sunday and let my students finish early. OK, this was really because I lost the bits for the final activity. I also managed to learn all the students' names by Sunday morning - that was worth a haribo! No, seriously, I do find it very difficult to remember names but I am making a determined effort to improve. And I didn't even have to use name tags.