Yesterday started with one of those bizarre meetings where you all sit around like members of SPECTRE, telling other people what your magazine has just done and what plans are in the pipeline for the future. It’s always interesting to hear what the other magazines are doing, but invariably, if you don’t jump up and go first, someone else always tells your story about their magazine before you get that chance. I went third, so my story was getting rather tired by the time I told it.

By five, I’d got as far as the March issue with most of my sections, so I tackled the stack of mail that’s been piling up on my desk since last Wednesday and found an invite to a launch in the BT Tower, followed by drinks on the 34th floor, which spins at 0.17km an hour (22 minutes to go right around once). Very exciting. It’s been closed to the public since 1971 so I’ve got to take along my passport to get in. I wonder if they’ll let me take my camera.

Our new office is definately cold. It’s not just a draught, it’s the air all around us. I’m not the only one feeling it, either, and talking to the people who used to sit at our desks it seems that it’s always been like that. They’ve all moved around the corner and they’re toasty warm and sickeningly happy with it. Perhaps we’re haunted

I’m sure a nasty surprise is about to befall me some time soon. Everything is going very smooth at work at the moment, and I’m a nice way into the March issue, with plenty commissioned, and some of the long-lead pages edited even. At this rate I’ll be commissioning next summer this Christmas. I’m not making allowances for all the proofs that are about to drop on my desk, of course, but things are looking up so far.

The show went well this evening, too. Ursula came in to do the news, and turned up early so we could eat together and catch up on each others’ gossip. Unfortunately we were a bit pushed for time, so when she arrived we really only had time for a jacket potato before I was doing my trail for The Lab. After that, though, we sat around on the hospitality settee and thought up questions for some of the guests and then did the usual hanging-around-outside-the-studio routine while the news finished.

I think the show went rather well. Ursula is always chatty and easy to get on with, and comes across as very natural on the radio, and the rest of the guests were very varied, so it felt like the time flew by, even without Gordon again. He was at the MacUser awards this week, but he’ll be back next Thursday, no doubt full of stories about the fun he had in Comdex.

On the train back, Steve and I raced each other to do the puzzles in consecutive issues of Metro, but I’m hopeless at crosswords and got stuck on mine after two clues.

I got chatting to PC Advisor Will about FriendsReunited when I got home. He’d discovered that when you log in and look at your own profile it shows everything you’ve written, but when someone else looks at what you’ve written, all of the web and email addresses are stripped out. Very cheeky - you don’t know what’s been cut and what is still in there. I tried loads of combinations to sneak in my address, and it seems to have an aversion to the name Nik, so nikplus.com, nik.co.uk and nik.rawlinson.info don’t work. Even just writing my full name, it strips out my first name and leaves me as a rather gruff and impersonal Rawlinson.

In the end I just said to type my name into Google and see what comes out. I’m always first on the results list, after all.

Perhaps Nik is a top level domain somewhere in the world. nik@nik.nik would be a cool address if it was. I looked it up on Allwhois, but it doesn’t seem to think it’s a goer.

1. Jingle Russian Roulette
   It's very exciting having new music and jingles. Half of them say 'Nik Rawlinson and Gordon Laing' and the other half say 'Gordon Laing and...
   
   
2. What do I look like?
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3. Gym success
   Well, my come home and go to bed early plan paid off and in spite of the ice on the car and the cold cold...