And if you want to see Bush at his smirking frat boy best, just click here

When we lived in Sweden, we had cable TV. It was quite handy, really - as well as getting broadband, we could watch a bunch of TV in English - as the Swedes subtitle rather than dub. But the two channels we were most grateful of were BBC World and BBC Prime. After all, it's always nice to relax with a bit of telly from your own country - even if BBC Prime did show an alarming tendency to show wall to wall Keeping Up Appearances (and to get an idea of the sort of people that like THAT show, click on the link at your own peril).

Now we're in France, the problem has been one of dubbing. I hate dubbing, and my French isn't really good enough to follow the dialogue as yet. So the cable TV issue was rather different - was it worth getting cable in order to be able to watch World, Prime and the other English language channels (the sort of hotel TV we've all spent the odd evening being forced to watch).

But the solution is something else: downloading. With Bittorrent, we can get TV from the UK and the US by grabbing it off the Internet overnight, burning it onto a CD and sticking it in the DVD player. Perfect. ER, Green Wing, West Wing and so on a day after they're originally transmitted.

I suppose it's a slightly less convenient and intelligent version of TiVo, the hard-disk video recorder that allows you to choose what you watch and when you watch it. It even allows you to skip the ads, which is where I have to take a professional interest.

Advertisers, TV companies and ad agencies are crapping themselves about TiVO. And well they should, because it challenges the status quo. In the industry in which I work; the 30 second TV commercial has long been king. It still is, in the sense that it's still seen as the zenith of a campaign (and, I suspect, marketing directors like to sit at home in the evenings surrounded by bats and drinking their glass of virgin's blood and feel the thrill of seeing THEIR ad on TV).

But what is the point of the TV commercial when nobody appears to be watching, and a fair number of those are skipping the commercials? And why spend a squillion dollars on a TVC that you can't track, when you could spend a few thousand on a carefully targeted DM piece and know not only that the right people will see it, but also know exactly whether they responded or not?

Is, to put it boldly, the TV commercial dead?

Well, not really. It still has a place for FMCG goods like soft drinks, cosmetics and the like that are principally sold to that critical 15-24 age group, because they still watch TV. It has a place for the seniors too, because they're also watching the box while ruminating on their incontinence, mobility and gardening problems. It still has a place for one-off spots during events like the World Cup and the Superbowl.

But those epic Guinness, Ford and other commercials you used to see trailed in the press and even in outdoor campaigns that would air for the first time during the middle break in the 10 o'clock news? Forget it. Those days have gone.

Nobody's watching, nobody cares.

I try to keep my computer reasonably tidy. I defragment, I delete unnecessary files using the wondows cleanup utility, and I regularly check for spyware and adware. My firewall works wonders and I'm always up to date with my security patches.

My Dad's computer, on the other hand, is struggling. It's old, it's not very powerful, and it's s l o w. Really slow.

So I was looking into ways I can try and speed it up next time I go and see them in November. And as well as all the things I already knew about, one of my colleagues suggested System mechanic by iolo. It comes with a 30-day fully functional free trial, so I thought I'd download it and chck it out for myself.

Well, it's fantastic. it tidies up your registry, it cuts down the programs you have to enter on startup, and it defrags everything. But best of all, oit gets rid off all the files you don't need (tmp files, zero-size files and even duplicates).

Believe it or not, my supposedly tidy computer had 150MB of rubbish on its hard drive. Which however you look at it, is quite a lot.

I found out something interesting(ish) yesterday. The computer giant HP apparently makes a loss or barely breaks even on all its computers and other hardware.

All its profits come from printers, and all the profit in its printers comes from the ink cartridges they sell you for about €30 a pop.

Now I don’t know about you, but I think that’s interesting. Not least because I’ve had two HP printers and both of them have been awful. But also it shows how people like you and me can bring HP to its knees (boy do I get mad if I buy a bad printer). All you have to do is buy generic cartridges, or refill your cartridges by hand. You can buy the ink in any computer shop and do the job yourself, only buying new cartridge when the print heads finally give out after 10 refills or so.

The price of cartridges is outrageous (and it goes without saying that it isn’t just HP). So just don’t put up with it any more. Fight back.

Incidentally, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ads at the top of this page start talking about printers soon. Why not check them out?

I see Cheney told some bare-faced lies on Tuesday night:

1. That he'd never met Edwards before the debate (a dig at his alleged lack of commitment in the Senate). In fact they'd met at least twice previously.

2. That he'd never suggested a link between Al-Qaida and Iraq. Yeah, right.

These people are liars.

I used to be a teacher long ago. And one of the things that pisses teachers in the UK off more than anything else when they're slogging their guts out every day (not that I was, you understand - I'm talking about GOOD teachers here)is the constant whine of the tabloid press that kids today can't add up, read or tie their shoelaces when they leave school.

It isn't true.

But here in France, it might be. I had an experience yesterday that left me lost for words.

I went into a shop to buy something for Isobel to eat. It cost ? 1.30. My pocket was full of tiny coins, so I handed over four 20 cent coins and a 50 cent coin. The subsequent conversation, translated from the Franglais, went like this:

Her: Excuse me (as I was leaving). It's ? 1.30.
Me: Yes, I gave you that, didn't I?
Her: (holding out coins which quite obviously add up to ? 1.30) No, you gave me this.
Me: ... (stumped)

Eventually the penny (as it were) dropped and I gave her a euro coin, she gave me back some of the small change and I left.

Is it just me, or is it not that hard to work out that 80 cents in 20s and a 50 cent coin add up to ? 1.30?

This isn't the first time something similar has happened to me here. Recently I was buying a ? 4.50 sandwich for my lunch and the girl behind the counter had to work out the change from a ? 5 note on a calculator.

I was no great shakes as a junior school teacher. But one thing I did make sure of that was, by the time they'd spent a year in my class, all my kids could do sums like that in their heads, and they all knew their times tables. Admittedly they may only have had a shaky grasp of the Tudors and Stewarts, but I know which skill I think is more important.