Tonight in Benwell: "Ew Mick these mushy peas are pure vile" "Eh? … That's guacamole man you barbarian!"

Never change.

Lib Dem political campaigns basically amount to pointing at stuff and tutting at it but not really admitting to the mess they've made or putting forward plans to fix it.

Sometimes there's bar charts.

I say this a lot, but I love my job. I'm doing really interesting work, with people I admire, and in a democratic and caring organisation.

It's nice.

I've eaten three mince pies today and I'm still undecided whether I'm unapologetic about it, or whether I'm deeply disturbed at myself.

Just discovered The Plaintext Project. If you're stuck on a project and productivity suites aren't helping you I'd heartily recommend reverting to plaintext; stripping away the pretense of whatever shiny app you're using and focusing on content does wonders.

I use plaintext for most things digital. It embodies simplicity and focus, and it's permissive. You know the boundaries of the form and as such you aren't constantly worried about spacing, title formatting etc. There's no buttons or menus to distract you.

I also use a pen and paper notebook to get the initial shape of things down, and to get creative. Generally my workflow will be akin to: Pen and Paper (Create) -> Plaintext (Produce and edit) -> Shiny thing (formatting). Shiny thing can be a Word Processor doc or some CSS, but I don't need to worry about it until right at the end.

Update: I'm still not over the manky brews