So after years of straddling the line betwixt Windows and Linux - both loving and hating each in equal measure - my company offered to upgrade my computer to a brand spanking new 24" IMac. She so beautiful. From the day it arrived at work it was less than two months before I'd saved my pennies and bought one for home too and now I'll never go back!
Macs in general though are rather a chimera of ideas from the computing world. They are Unix based and as such are extremely powerful and efficient with resources, yet like Windows the hardware support is excellent (kinda easy to do that when you know exactly what hardware you will be running on eh Apple?). While there are many apps for OSX that are free, it's very much more a premium platform that requires you to put your hand in your pocket for the best apps.
So here is my rundown of the best apps for working efficiently (and fairly cheaply) on OSX.

BBEdit

Being a bit believer in Textpad under Windows I found this a much more intuitive application than Textmate. Lots of available plugins, great Subversion integration, nicely customisable highlighting and indentation. In short, everything I need from a decent editor and although at $125 it's one of the more expensive editors Id say it's worth it.

CSSEdit

Live previewing of CSS in a Safari-integrated browser. Plus lots of controls to speed up your work and keep your styling valid. A bargain at $29.95.

Shades

Although I love my Mac, one of the first issues I had with it was the screen brightness. Even at the lowest setting I'd have a headache at the end of a full day's work. Enter Shades - a free app that can take your brightness level right down to zero and will even work independently on seperate monitors.

IStat Menus

Enables you to put a vast amount of system information on your main menu bar. CPU load, memory usage, network traffic, disk space, temperature... this app has it all. Plus it's free and version two has recently been released which is fully functional in Snow Leopard.

Size Up

For $4.99 you can bag yourself an app that allows you unprecedented control over your windows. With a couple of key presses you can stack and tile windows in every possible configuration. It takes a little time to setup/learn the shortcut keys but when you're done you'll wonder how you ever lived without it.

MAMP

A free application which, when run will launch a self contained Apache/MySQL/PHP web server complete with PHPMyAdmin and a host of other tools. Even if you have another web server set up on your computer this will work away quite happily, avoiding any conflicts. It even comes with a neat little widget for turning it on and off.

Keyfixer

A Firefox addon that fixes your home and end keys to work properly on OSX. 'Properly' meaning that 'home' takes you to the start of a line and 'end' takes you to the end. No more of this top/bottom of the page rubbish!

sudon't - refuses to run a command as root
 
mcdir - creates a directory that's never as good as it looks on the poster and is 90% cow toenail yet you keep going back for more
 
assassinate - like 'kill' but will take out the specified process with a long range sniper rifle during some high profile public ceremony
 
echo - runs a command over and over getting slightly quieter each time
 
choon - changes the owner of a really good MP3
 
ps orcs - lists all the orcs currently resident in your computer
 
dog - like 'cat' but doesn't work until you throw it a stick
 
p45 - alias of 'sudo rm -rf /'
 
grape - performs a text search but gives a little wine as it does so
 
toe - like 'finger' but a little smellier

Get some ducks, put them in a line and wait. What happens? They start wandering off. You can then pick them up and put them back in their nice neat line but the same will happen again, you could spend you whole life striving in vain to attain the world's straightest line of ducks but it's never going to happen.
 
This is an example of entropy my friends - chaos tends to a maximum, the natural state of the universe is disorder. We see it everywhere - that's why we don't have self-cleaning houses, leaves don't land in nice neat piles in Autumn and no sooner than you've washed your car it's caked in mud again.
 
People spend their whole lives trying to find happiness and fulfillment in attempting to control the external world. How many times have you found yourself saying "once I've finished redecorating I can relax" or "once I've got the house cleaned I can be happy"? Let me tell you, there is always another job that needs doing, always another commitment. The nature of entropy means that the jobs never end - clean things get dirty again, paint fades, gadgets break, mess is produced and chaos always wins. When we get obsessed with controlling external situations like this we are simply putting off our own happiness - basing our moods purely on the current success of your battle with entropy helps no-one.
 
Now I'm not saying "Don't bother cleaning or tidying or generally taking responsibility for your little corner of the world", I'm simply saying "You have the power to be relaxed and happy no matter what is going on outside you. Happiness comes from within and can be completely independent of the amount of dust under your wardrobe".
 
Think about it.

Hello! And welcome to the strange, charmed and wonderful world of Quantum physics. Struggling to understand the title of the latest James Bond movie? Don't worry... we are here to help!
 
Before we delve into the technicalities of string theory, multiple universes and eleven-dimensionality, it would be worth defining a few terms. Here is a basic glossary of all things quantical.
 
BOSON - A naval Officer, in charge of rotating his boat a whole number of turns.
GLUON - The opposite of GLUOFF.
HEISENBERGS UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE - You're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.
JOHN VON NEUMANN - The lead singer of Bon Jovi, invented the atom.
KLIEN-GORDON EQUATION - A collaboration intended to bring fashion back to the streets of Gotham.
PHOTON - A long-range laser mounted to the side of a spaceship.
PLANCK'S CONSTANT - about 12,400.
QUARK - The stumpy guy from DS9.
SCHROEDINGERS CAT - A cat which is simultaneously dead and alive, for example Garfield or Dick Whittington's cat.
SPECTROSCOPY - A camera inserted rectally to search for ghosts.
WAVE FUNCTION - basically surfing or swimming.
 
The field of quantish mechanics was invented by Einstein, who discovered that his equations governing the way the universe were all well and good, until he realised he'd forgotten about really tiny things! So, the concept of quantable mechanics was invented and defined as 'What happens to things that are less than an inch and a half across'. Much to Einstein's suprise, he discovered things that were this small behaved in very unusual ways! For example, try rolling a kidney bean down a hill. You'll notice it bobs erratically from side to side. This is quantific theory in action!
 
A new and exciting use of this science is in the field called 'Quantiple entanglement' - this basically involves tying two quantums together very tightly, then stretching them very far apart. When you let go of one end, it will fly toward the other very very fast indeed - you could say instantly! This has applications in quantile cryptography, where the letters themselves are tied tightly together then stretched across the page, rendering them unreadable to everyone. It is still uncertain whether we will ever invent a technology which will allow us to finally decipher these myteriously entangled texts!
 
A surprising conclusion drawn from the effects we have so far observed whilst rolling a variety of beans down different slopes, is that we appear to live in an eleven-dimensional universe, composed entirely from string. So, while we live happily in the first three dimensions, the fourth one is time - that leaves another 7 copies of you made out of string living almost identical lives on almost identical worlds! But unfortunately, if you were to ever meet your string-replica, the two of you would cancel each other out and you'd be left with nothing but a few frayed pieces of stringy flesh on the floor.
 
So, to return to our original question - what does the phrase 'Quantum of Solace' mean? Well, as any scientist will tell you, 'solace' is when you make someone feel better, so a Quantum Of Solace is the application of quantle physics in the field of cushions, pillows and other soft furnishings.

So I was reading a very interesting article recently about the 'Anthropic Cosmological Principle'. It sounds very complicated but it really isn't. It basically says that the reason that all the conditions on Earth, the Solar System and the Universe seem so perfectly tuned to support our life is that were they not, we would not be around to marvel at them. Why is the gravity on Earth enough to keep us on the ground and encourage sufficient muscle growth but not enough to crush us? Because were it not, we wouldn't be around to ask the question. Why is the Earth contained within a system containing two gassy giants which act as vacuum cleaners for meteors, protecting the Earth from continuous impacts? Because were it not, we wouldn't be around to ask the question. Why is water in its liquid state on the majority of the Earths surface? Because were it not, we wouldn't be around to ask the question.
You catching the idea?
All these facts and many others along similar lines (right type of star, sufficient ozone layer, nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere etc) are often quoted by Creationists as proof that some sort of overlord exists. Otherwise they say, the probability of all these conditions combining by chance to make a planet capable of sustaining life is so minuscule as to be disregarded. The presence of a creator overlord is much more likely!
 
Leading on from this is the Weak Anthropic Principle: "Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP) is the observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable, but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so. We should emphasize once again that the enormous improbability of the evolution of intelligent life in general and Homo sapiens in particular does not mean we should be amazed we exist at all. This would make as much sense as Elizabeth II being amazed she is Queen of England. Even though the probability of a given Briton being monarch is about 10^-8, someone must be. Only if there is a monarch is it possible for the monarch to calculate the improbability of her particular existence. Similarly, only if an intelligent species does evolve is it possible for its members to ask how probable it is for an intelligent species to evolve. Both are examples of WAP self-selection in action."     -Barrow, John and Tipler, Frank (1986): The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Clarendon Press. (Slightly edited)
 
It is an amazingly insightful principle despite its simplicity and strangely is one that seems to be quoted by scientists and creationists in fairly equal measure. This, of course is implying that creationists can never be true scientists. Well, to call a spade a spade they can't. Not in any branch of science involving cosmology, biology or anthropology anyways. I have no time for a theory so obviously contradictory with every modern scientific finding. Creationism was a theory that conveniently explained the universe without requiring any thought whatsoever which was necessary for earlier civilisations who didn't have the tools to carry out complicated scientific studies. Now that we have advanced further in science we do not need any simple, convenient explanations when we can figure out the real ones for ourselves.
The reason that the Weak Anthropic Principle is quoted by Creationists as 'evidence' of a higher being is the mention of the values of physical and cosmological quantities being restricted to those that are conducive to the development and sustainability of life. This gives the impression of some supernatural outside force guiding these quantities to allow us to survive and thrive.
This is not the idea behind the Weak Anthropic Principle. The principle is merely explaining that the reason that these quantities appear to be restricted for our benefit is that were they not as they are, we would not be here to comment on them and wonder why not. We only need to look five miles directly above us to find an infinite void, which is very hostile to the development and sustainability of life.
Our Earth, Mars and one of the moons of Jupiter are arguably the only places in the Solar System that contain or once contained life. Earth is the only one to contain intelligent life. Thousands of stars in the galaxy have been examined by astronomers and still only a dozen or so have been deemed capable of supporting life on an orbiting planet if indeed such a planet exists. Currently the primary criteria for such a star are the type of star and 'wobble'    - when a star seems to be wobbling from side to side, this must be caused by the orbit of a very large planetoid which is itself exerting a gravitational pull on the star. As described earlier, such a planetoid is necessary to act as a vacuum cleaner and attract much of the stray meteors away from life-capable planet to give that life a chance to develop.
Anyway I digress. Within say, a couple of hundred light years (the distance light can travel in two hundred years) of Earth (I have no exact figures but I expect the number to be even greater) there are a dozen systems which could in theory support a planet that is itself capable of supporting life if many other conditions are also fulfilled. We only know of one for sure - us. Chances are we are the only life within this range. So within a volume of space marked out with a radius of two hundred light years there is one little piece of rock with a circumference of just 24,000 miles (light can travel seven and a half times this distance in a second!) that contains intelligent life. Now if we think of the volume of the Earth as a percentage of the volume of this area of space, it is very hard to imagine it as anything but 0%. To any sensible degree of rounding (and I'm talking hundreds of decimal places), 0% of the universe is capable of sustaining life. Given the vastness of space even if a planet containing intelligent life orbited every star in the universe, the proportion of the universe capable of sustaining life could still not be seen as anything other than 0%.
Now think about the probability nebula (from which stars and planets etc. are all formed) existing within our given volume of space, multiply by the probability of a star such as ours forming from this nebula, multiply by the probability of a very large vacuum cleaner planet forming around it, multiply again by the probability of a smaller planet forming at a distance from the star so that its water would be primarily in liquid form etc. The end result will be a very, very small number indeed (you don't need a degree in cosmology here, we're working rough), but will it be smaller than our value for the proportion of the universe that is capable of sustaining life? I doubt it. In fact the values may very well be quite close to one another.
Increasing the values greatly for the means of explanation we could say that there is a one-in-a-trillion chance of an environment capable of sustaining life forming from in the given volume of space and such environments exist in a trillionth of that space.

Over the next few posts I want to talk about some of my heroes, but rather than pick someone obvious like Darwin or Hendrix I thought I would focus on some less obvious choices that might be of interest. I have embedded links to the Wikipedia page of each person if you wish to read further.
 
Steve Wozniak
First up is co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak. I would like to quantify my admiration of him by saying that I am by no means an Apple fanboy. While I think they have created some great products I generally prefer Ubuntu to OSX for my home machine. Woz as he likes to be known was the technical genius to Steve Jobs marketing brain. A child prodigy who was reading and improving design schematics of mainframe computers while he was still at school, Woz designed the entirety of the Apple II himself. To put this achievement in context; when the Apple II was released a home computer was something costing thousands of dollars that came as a box of components that you had to solder together yourself and had a row of metal switches and a row of blinking lights as the only means of control. By comparison the Apple II had a keyboard and a screen with colour graphics, (The first ever to have this now standard layout) was easy to program and came assembled in a nice plastic box. It was rather like Ford skipping the model T and replacing the horse and cart with a Mondeo. The II was such a classic design that it stayed on the market from 1977 to 1993.
 
Single handedly inventing the home computer is achievement enough, but it's the attitude that Woz brings to his work that I'm most interested in. Despite being a billionaire Woz has always been more focussed on being the best engineer he could be and having a laugh while he did it. His sense of fair play led to him giving millions of pounds of his personal Apple stock to long term employees. When a serious plane accident nearly cost him his life he revaluated his goals, walked away from Apple and set out to live his life the way he wanted to. He went back to college and completed his degree, organised huge open air concerts even though they would loose millions because he wanted to organise cool gigs for people to go to and taught kids about computers while donating hundreds of computers to schools. Most important to me is his belief that to be a good engineer is one of the most important things a person can be and that the development of new technology is one of the most significant ways to benefit mankind.

I've been thinking about the major problems the world has and what devices could be invented to go some way to alleviating them. I'm not saying I have the knowledge, technical expertise or resources to bring them about (unfortunately) but I can say for sure that they would push us quite dramatically towards a better future.
 
Efficient Artificial Photosynthesis Devices
Lets face it, we're not going to be able to shift our reliance on oil for a long time while we are still making vehicles by the million that burn petrol, diesel and gas. However imagine if you could buy a device for your car that would attach to your exhaust pipe and using energy from a solar cell on your car, it would convert your emissions back into fuel and pump it back into your tank. It would effectively be a solar power conversion kit allowing any gas-guzzler to become immediately eco-friendly. Maybe such a thing would only be 50% efficient and you would still produce some emissions but imagine getting 90 mpg out of your Fiesta. That would do us all the world of good. Artificial photosynthesis is already a reality but it requires a lot of energy and a platinum catalyst to work, which renders it to expensive to be a realistic solution. Of course classic photosynthesis converts carbon dioxide and water into glucose so a further reaction would be required to turn the glucose into usable fuel.
 
An Environmentally Sound Way of Breaking Down Plastics
Plastic takes 500 years to bio degrade and we produce thousands of tonnes of waste plastic a day. Some is recycled which helps but other than burning (which produces nasty toxic smoke) there is no way to get rid of it other than sticking it in a landfill. For 500 years. If Shakespeare wrote with a plastic biro it would still exist today. Some success has been made with heating waste plastics in water and then electrolysing the mix to break it down but the energy costs of this are rather high. Solar technology however could soon render it economically viable.
 
An Economical System to 'Mine' Landfill Sites
We've been using landfill sites for many many years and they now are actually huge repositories of a lot of raw materials. Metal companies have huge mines and processing plants overseas to extract the raw mineral from the ground but they could do very well digging up landfills to extract the fifty years worth of metallic waste that was never recycled. The same goes for glass and plastic manufacturers also the natural raw materials for these industries are so abundant as to make the payback much lower. If one company decided to extract metals, glass and plastic from landfills and then filter the biological remnants they could produce a vast quantity of recycled 'raw' materials and very good compost.

Have you ever wondered why the Xbox 360 costs a fraction the price of an equivalent gaming PC, or why for a long time the Playstation 3 was the cheapest Blu Ray player you could buy? To understand the answer you have to go back a hundred years to the founder of one of todays ubiquitous brands.
In 1901 King C Gillette realized that by selling safety razors at a loss and then overcharging for the inexpensive blades he could rule the shaving market and make a tidy sum in the bargain. The business model he discovered is called razors and blades in his honor, and is the foundation of the modern console wars.
When the Atari 2600 games console with its new interchangeable games cartridges came on to the market the complex and expensive console was hard to turn a profit on initially, but once games like Space Invaders started selling by the truck load the money started rolling in. Atari were flying high, but dropped the ball by trying to keep everyone else out of the party. When a group of former employees quit and formed a little company called Activision (Yes the ones who make Guitar Hero) Atari tried to sue them out of existence for daring to make games for the system. Eventually this closed minded attitude and a lack of R&D spend knocked Atari off the top spot.
While Atari were still top dog former playing card manufacturer Nintendo had developed a games console, but wasn't sure what to do with it. They offered American rights to Atari who rejected it, which must tie with Decca turning down the Beatles as one of the worlds all time dumbest business decisions.
With characteristic business savvy Nintendo welcomed third party game developers to the NES via lucrative licensing deals. The wide selection of games pushed sales of the machine whilst the vast sales figures made the console the platform everyone wanted to write games for. This virtuous circle led theNES to sell a staggering 61 Million consoles far outstripping anything that had come before it. Nintendo maintained its dominance into the next generation with the Super NES, but ended up as the architects of their own downfall.
Sony wanted to partner with Nintendo and sunk a big chunk of R&D budget into developing a CD ROM attachment for the Super NES. Nintendo caused lasting bitterness when they reneged on the deal at the last moment by unexpectedly announcing plans they were working with Sony's arch rivals Phillips.
Sony's enraged management decided to continue development without the input of Nintendo a project that culminated in the Playstation.
At the beginning of 1994 there was a huge opportunity in the games market. The SNES was starting to look a little long in the tooth and its follow up the N64 was still nearly three years away. A lot of people were banking on the 3DO being the next big thing in the console world. The plan was to have versions of the console made by multiple manufacturers like a VCR or a TV. Panasonic and Sanyo were on board and it was thought competition between manufacturers would drive the price down and the quality up. Unlike the people making the 3DO Sony didn't care about turning a profit on the boxes. They had spent long enough the music and movie market to know that the real profits come from selling blades not razors.
When Sony announced the price and spec of the Playstation the opposition freaked. The $699 3DO died. Sega added an ill advised extra processor to their forthcoming Saturn which made the spec sheet look better, but had the side effect of making it more expensive and impossible to program for. Atari's Jack Trammel reacted the worst by threatening to sue Sony for price fixing, claiming the machine was worth $500. Far from dissuading Sony this had the effect of letting everyone know that the Playstation should be on sale for $200 more than its $299 price point and condemning the Atari Jaguar to the console graveyard. Sega didn't fare much better and both companies made huge losses which contributed to their exit from the console market.
When Nintendos N64 finally hit the market it was well received and continued their trend for innovation with analogue controls and vibration, but the Playstation was the perfect storm. In an inspired marketing campaign Sony targeted young adults with surreal advertising and Playstations in club chillout rooms capturing a section of the market which had traditionally seen consoles as children's toys and trading pocket money for disposable income. The Playstation sold like no console before it shifting an incredible 100 Million units and turning franchises like Tomb Raider Grand Theft Auto and Resident Evil into cultural icons.
Everything the Playstation did the PS2 took to a new level. It looked like a cross between a high end HiFi component and the obelisk from 2001 and its loss leader pricing strategy made it one of the cheapest DVD players you could buy. Even though the Sega Dreamcast was a well designed piece of equipment and had a one year sales lead people simply waited for the PS2 to arrive and when it did it decimated its rivals selling 140m units and cementing its place as the best selling games console of all time. Sega almost went out of business and left the hardware business for good. Even the once dominant Nintendo sold a paltry 20m of its comparatively toylike Gamecube and some thought its future was in doubt. With Sony holding exclusive rights to virtually all the biggest gaming franchises that didn't feature an Italian Plumber and the financial muscle to sell hardware at a loss for extended periods Sony looked indestructible.
Over in Redmond things were also looking good for Microsoft. With Windows XP and Office they had total dominance of the home PC market but something troubled them. As computers dropped in price and became a part of the fabric of everyday life the desktop PC in a study upstairs started to look like an anachronism. Microsoft took a gamble on the computing of the future being done in two places mobile phones and on the living room TV. They already had a mobile phone platform with Windows Mobile, but it was clear that attempts to put Windows "Media Center" PCs in living rooms was proving unsuccessful while Sony were filling millions of homes with machines which had the capacity to be much more than a games console if the mood took them.
Microsoft decided that Sony were a threat to their future business and that action had to be taken. Hoping to run a profitable business while taking on a brand like Playstation would be virtually impossible, but Microsoft had no intention of their newly formed Xbox division being profitable they just wanted to get a new kind of Razor into as many homes as they could. The way Microsoft see it the company that wins the long term battle to be the ubiquitous box under the TV will become the gateway to every Film, TV program, Song or Game consumed within the home a prize potentially even bigger than total control of the home PC market and if games consoles are the route to that prize then so be it.
The Xbox project was defined as a ten year mission to win the battle for the living room at any cost (They even considered buying Nintendo) by one of the only companies who can afford to loose billions of dollars to secure what they perceive to be their long term future.
A tip off of this aspiration can be seen in the specification of the Xbox which came equipped as standard with a Hard Drive and a Network Connection to allow expansion into movies and music downloads. The impressive spec of the Xbox made it impossible to sell at a profit, Eventually Microsoft lost $4,000,000,000 competing with the PS2 and managed 24 million sales. A fraction of the PS2s 140 million, but it earned them a toe hold in the console market and they were determined not to make the same mistake twice. Sony had a master plan for the PS2 revising the design to consolidate a number of processors into a single chip and allowing them to profitably cut prices to a place even Microsoft couldn't follow. The Xbox division to conceded the fight and focused efforts on the next generation. At the launch of the current generation of consoles total war was declared.
Microsoft took on an epic task with the Xbox 360. From drawing board to launch took under two years, less than half the time it took Sony to get their competing PS3 to market. With a years head start in the shops the 360 delivered big sales. Things were looking tough for Sony. The PS3sBlu Ray drive caused delays to launch and the high tech Cell processor was devilishly hard to program for. On top of this to compete with the Xbox they had to slash prices to the point of making huge losses. One industry insider estimated the $500 PS3 contained $800 worth of components alone at launch. Despite a sales lead things weren't going much better for the Xbox. Accelerating development had inevitably led to corners being cut. and the infamous "red ring of death" fault caused the failure of millions of 360s and resulted in the Xbox division having to write off $1.1 billion dollars in warranty repairs. With 360 continuing to be sold at a loss until 2008 the stakes were getting higher and higher.
The real winner has of course been Nintendo. With its emphasis on inclusive fun and and a low price point the fundamentally low tech Wii has sold in huge numbers and looks certain to be the biggest seller in this generation. Luckily for its rivals the Wii has no aspirations to be a media centre. It doesn't even offer CD or DVD playback and the tiny half GB flash drive is never going to be used for movie downloads.
Even the powerhouse that is Microsoft can't afford another billion dollar loss and the stakes are getting even higher as the pressure of heavily subsidized consoles has all but destroyed the PC gaming market giving them nowhere to go back to if they have to pull out.
The losses may be mounting on the hardware, but the plans for total domination of the living room have begun in earnest. Movie download services are now available for the Xbox and PS3 in the US and Sony have released a Sky plus rivaling Freeview recorder attachment for the PS3.
The winner in this tooth and claw battle is of course the consumer and even if you hate playing games the opportunity to buy Blu Ray playing Freeview recorder that can be used as a PC, a networked hifi and even part of a medical research super computer for under £300 is a pretty great deal.

I've been thinking a lot about cheese lately.
Arguably a good Cheddar is a solid all-rounder and the most versatile of the classic British cheeses. Great for pizza, toasties and anything that requires an even melting. The flavour too has something for every palate, varying as it does from subtle to quite powerful (I'm a fan of the medium Cheddar myself for the perfect balance of flavour and smoothness). Yet if I were to focus too strongly on the virtues of this one price of dairy produce I would find myself neglecting the great world of alternatives out there.
If you're looking for good melters then may I recommend to you Mozzarella for its wonderful texture (although it's very very mild) and Emmental as a good all-round Cheddar alternative. Double Gloucester and Red Leicester (the two classic red cheeses) are quite creamy and flavoursome but with a slightly tart citric edge to them. I'm a big fan these days but they definitely took a while to grow on me.
The crumbly cheeses are not good melters but in their natural form they cannot be beaten for a good accompaniment to a ploughmans. Wensleydale is the obvious classic with its sharp overtones balanced perfectly in its creaminess. Lancashire becomes slightly sharper and, in my opinion, is slightly less flavoursome. Cheshire at the end of the scale has quite an edge to it but balances perfectly against a good dollop of chutney. Caerphilly is a new cheese to me (I know, it's been around forever, I just kept passing it over for the Wensleydale) and I have been very impressed with its smoothness and creaminess. I'd recommend it to anyone looking to make the transition into crumbly cheeses from a more classic Cheddar.
As for soft cheeses, no-one can doubt the quality of a good chunk of Brie - as creamy as you can get and it just feels so luxurious. Try it on some crusty bread with bacon for a true taste sensation. Blue cheeses have never held too much appeal for me. I've always found them to be too sharp with not enough roundness of flavour. Camembert does have its place in some more decadent cuisine but with such great alternatives out there I see no great need to go blue.
And finally to the classic table cheeses to accompany a good cracker at the end of a fine meal. To me this is where Port Salut is a winner every time - mild yet well rounded and very very tasty. I also like to find a good chunk of Edam and maybe even a Babybel or two along with the omnipresent Cheddar.

A new company called 118800 will be going live next week with its new directory service that allows anyone to contact them with your name and general location and get transferred to your mobile phone. They claim to have over 15 million mobile numbers on the system already.
Now I should point out that they actually will never give out actual numbers to anyone, and as the recipient of the call, you can decide whether or not you want to speak with the caller. Even so they are already taking serious heat from privacy campaigners about the implications of this service and its inherent invasion of privacy.
However worry not, you are able to 'go ex-directly' and take your number your of their system on this page. While you're at it I heartily recommend registering with the Telephone Preference System and the Mail Preference System to avoid marketing calls to your land line and junk mail. They're not 100% effective but definitely make a big difference. Now if only there was some way to do this for emails...