Status-Q

It's 25 years since we started seeing footage of the space shuttle taking off - during which time the whole World Wide Web thing has happened - but it still makes for impressive viewing.

This is a pretty high quality video clip (on my broadband connection at least). Plug some good speakers or headphones in, turn up the volume, and watch as those rockets kick in. It's hard not to be impressed at what man hath wrought.

The tragedy is, of course, that it took a cold war to get us to the moon, and nothing has quite lived up to that - it's the rash but inspirational decisions that can perhaps only be made in wartime that often lead to mankind's greatest achievements.

Will it take another war to get us beyond orbit once again?

The Monty Python channel on YouTube. Wonderful stuff, from Bicycle Repairman to the Ministry of Silly Walks. And I've always loved Every Sperm is Sacred.

Anyway, it's all official and above-board and released by the Pythons themselves.

Bonnie Tyler as you've never seen her before.

From Jeannie Harrell.

Many people think of Richard Dawkins as a strident, aggressive figure. I think this comes mostly from passages in The God Delusion where he's deliberately mischievous, in a way that is decidedly uncomfortable to those of a religious persuasion.

I read The God Delusion and then moved on to several of his other books, like The Blind Watchmaker and The Selfish Gene - all brilliant books, by the way, which transformed my understanding of many aspects of science - but the thing that got me started was really YouTube. Hearing and seeing him speak made me realise he was a very smart, very thoughtful guy, who wasn't just out to poke fun at religion. He doesn't always give that impression in his writing, especially to those who have only read small excerpts.

Here's a little four-minute example of the man who has been christened "Darwin's Rottweiler":

I loved the Homeopathic A&E sketch from Mitchell & Webb. Dara O'Briain makes some similar points rather nicely here:

I pulled up behind this enormous truck, which towered over the (not insubstantial) car I had borrowed from my in-laws. There was one person in it, the driver, on his way to work, I should think.

There are two stickers on the back. The left one says, “Out of a job yet? Keep buying foreign!” and the other, “Please don’t fly MY flag on your foreign car!”

Somehow I think that’s not the real problem…

A few of my favourite recent iPhone/iPod Touch applications - all very different - all recommended:

• OffMaps is a map browser. It lets you do similar things to the built-in Google maps, but based on OpenStreetMap data (which is sometimes better, sometimes worse, but generally more up to date). However, the reason you might want to use OffMaps is that the Off stands for 'offline'. If you're like me, one of the main times you want maps of an area is when you are in another country where roaming data charges are extravagant. With OffMaps you can download the maps for an area in advance and use them when you have data roaming turned off - very handy.
• Glyder. I'm not much of a gamer, but I really enjoyed this, and played it through to the end. It's a lovely demo of the graphics capabilities of the platform, and a very nice use of the accelerometers as flight controls. Passed quite a lot of time very happily with this.
• RightMove is one of the biggest online estate agents in the UK, listing properties from very many sources. Their iPhone app is brilliant if you're in an area and think, 'I wonder how much it would cost me to move here?'. It can use your current location, and with one click list the properties for sale or rent near to you. You can enter an address as well, but that's not so cute! Very easy to use and very nicely done.
• HereIAm is a simple utility for iPhone users trying to find other iPhone-owning friends. It gets your current location, shows you an estimate of how confidently it knows it, and pops up an email-composing window which includes a link to google maps pinpointing your position. Desktop users clicking the link will get a browser window, iPhone users will get the Maps app. It works fine on my tests and it's free... it would be nice to be able to preview the location before sending, though - something that should be possible in OS 3.0. But I guess you can just switch to the Maps app for that - it'll be the same location.
• Now, given that most iPhone apps cost a pound or two, it may seem ridiculous to pay £14.99 for one! It must be pretty revolutionary, right? No, it's a dictionary. A Collins French-English dictionary, in my case, though they have a variety of other languages available as well. So, yes, this does cost about the same as a nice hardback edition of the same dictionary, but it's really very good, much quicker to search, and much easier to carry in your pocket. If you look up 'frog', it will also give the translations for 'to have a frog in one's throat' and 'frogman'. It includes verb declensions, it auto-completes searches... well, anyway, I took a deep breath before buying it when going on holiday, and have absolutely no regrets.

If you're visiting Salisbury Cathedral, and you want to make sure your photos don't look too much like those Constable paintings, here are some suggestions:

• Ask any passing peasants, cattle, haywains etc to keep out of the frame
• Take only an 80mm equivalent lens, which means there's no way you can actually get a shot of the whole cathedral
• Arrive just as it's getting dark.

Above Cotignac, Provence.

If there’s a convenient cave in the cliff next to your house, where better to park your Renault 4?