Ooh, ooh! I saw Cass in Chicago yesterday. And AmyLiz the day before that.

Hello. I am back from Italy and England. Italy has lots of food and hills. England has the Tate Modern, which has an exhibition with giant five-story slides. Also, I woke up at 4AM.

And AmyLiz the day before that.

::glances around nervously::

I was never there, I tell you.

"Addicts" showed signs of compulsive internet use, habitually checking e-mail, websites and chat rooms.

DH and I have had this discussion. I tend to think the 'net is more of a compulsion than an addiciton with me. But sometimes I think I'm a hardcore addict. He doesn't think so, though. He has a co-worker whose wife was really a 'net addict. She'd spend something like 16 hours a day online, ignore her two kids and let the entire house go. She left her husband and kids to marry someone she met in a chatroom.

So it could always be worse. But I was sweating this morning before Liv woke up when I do my usual b.org check and it was down.

England has the Tate Modern, which has an exhibition with giant five-story slides.

I saw this on TV! Did you get to slide?

What are the clinical definitions of addiction and compulsion, et al? Can I have an addiction that doesn't have a detrimental effect on my life? Can I have an addiction that has a beneficial effect?

I'm not sure where this came up in reading or discussing OCD, but I have been exposed to the point of view that as long as it doesn't get in the way of day to day functioning, why treat it?

I saw this on TV! Did you get to slide?

Frankly, the slides were a little narrow, and I figured that it would not to be good to get halfway down and then figure out that my hips didn't fit through. I did take pictures and video of other people on the slides. It was mostly kids. I'll try to remember to post those at some point.

Oh, SLIDES!

I thought you meant GIANT photo-transparencies.

Oh, you didn't slide! I'm all disappointed virtually! But pictures would be good.

I hope the remainder of your trip was fun and safe and there was no driving the wrong way on any one-way streets.

Swarm, swarm!

A "swarm" of simple-minded robots that teams up to move an object too heavy for them to manage individually has been demonstrated by robotics researchers.

The robots cannot communicate and must act only on what they can see around them. They follow simple rules to fulfil their task - mimicking the way insects work together in a swarm.

"In the object transport scenario they search for a red object and grasp onto it," explains Dorigo. "When they do that they also change colour from blue to red." This means a cluster of bots is "connected" to the object. When the bots cannot see any more blue - meaning they are all linked together - they start dragging the object towards its target.

The robots can adjust their caterpillar tracks, to ensure they are all pulling in the right direction. "Each robot has a traction sensor inside that detects all the external forces on it," explains Dorigo. A robot uses its sensor to identify any conflicting forces, and then changes direction accordingly.

Dorigo is now working on a swarm of robots that could operate in a human environment. "It is called Swarmanoid and will have three different kinds of robots," he explains. Some robots will be able to crawl along like Swarm-bots, others will be able to climb walls, and others still will be able to fly, he says.