Get the Freelander out and have a play!

Seriously, the chap I know who used to have one absolutely adored snow. If it's anything like my Discovery it'll just ignore the stuff and keep going.

Also worth looking at these and the smaller round one. They have fairly strong magnets in the back and will stick to any suitable metal, the larger one is bright enough to illuminate a medium sized room.

Normally I won't touch Rolson kit but they just buy these in and rebrand them, so providing it works properly when new (no dud LEDs on the four or so I know of) you'll be fine. My little cousin managed to bounce-test one off a tarmac drive from around three feet and it still worked, albeit minus a magnet and in need of a bit of snapped internal plastic gluing back.

I'm not convinced it's terribly new either (I'll admit the wider part directly under the camera and the rubber feet are their ideas, but still!) I've found a few sellers offering long Arca Swiss-type QR plates which would probably have a similar effect and also work with your tripod head, assuming you have something compatible.

Or for under £20 you can have a Slik Mini Pro tripod, which isn't much bigger but will perform the same task (and more!)

Daily Wail also thinks that everything causes cancer, then a month later the same thing cures it. Can't help but think I wouldn't regard them as a reliable source!

Given this year's theme appears to be street photography I have a wonderful mental image of a bunch of people pointing cameras at each other, as they outnumber the non-festival goers!

The only machine I would feel happy not having AV on is Linux, and I still have the program there to make sure I'm not unwittingly passing viruses on (it doesn't run all the time, I have to tell it to scan particular files/folders).

Some of the more excitable ones are already claiming that it will cause freak weather and natural disasters. Meanwhile on a more considered site (Snopes) they're pointing out that the moon came closer in 1993, and nobody can find any records of natural disasters on or around that date...

I'd love one of the latest Eee PCs with the flip screen, only snag is that they no longer run Linux. At the moment I have Ubuntu on an Eee PC 901 and it's brilliant - you're into Firefox while the Windows XP machine upstairs is still churning away doing something-or-other and not telling you what it's up to!

Watch for shutter capping on the SV. Mine suffers from it at higher speeds.

I did contemplate taking the front off and giving the shutter mechanism a good clean and re-oil (flush with lighter fluid and add a few drops of very light oil after) but didn't fancy fiddling with the flathead screws. In my experience they seem to be a lot more fragile than the crosshead type, so it'll remain a display piece until I can afford to have it professionally CLA'd.