A good argument to stick with GIMP then - no aggressive pressure selling!

If you ever buy one, get the turbo. It's actually slightly cheaper on fuel than the non-turbo and a lot more entertaining!

I wouldn't mind a FED-2 either, the main thing putting me off is the fact that the rangefinder mechanism seems prone to going out of adjustment and requires a lot of fiddling around to set it up.

I definitely find mono much more effective for architecture. Once you take the colour away the details jump at you, which is what I'm after. Most older buildings are covered in little bits and pieces which the majority of people completely ignore, despite the fact that those details would have taken considerable time and effort to add. It also seems to render images timeless - you could have stood at exactly the same spot any time in the past hundred years and taken that image, aside from clothing and minor details like TV aerials.

Hmm, Leica M9 body only or used Subaru Forester and a K5 with kit lens (seriously, you could have either for the same money)...

I think I'll take the latter, bit more useful!

I'd just use the hood

I've adopted that approach with my new DA* 50-135mm and don't think it's really in much danger. The hood is so deep that you'd need something like a broom handle to hit the front element!

I'm not sure about the landing side of a jump unless you're a good distance away. The advice I saw was to avoid them as cars may go out of control on landing!

Junctions, use some sense. Don't stand in the road they're being signed away from as they often overshoot and then have to reverse to join the proper route. I know when I marshalled the Baja GB a few years ago we were advised to park our own vehicles well back from the junction and leave as much space as possible for any lost competitors to slow down in (nothing physically blocking the road apart from some tape).

I'm always dubious about any monopoly, but the Kindle seems relatively benign compared to some. You can at least download free out of copyright works from Project Gutenberg to load onto it. Slightly surprised they won't sell you one outside the UK, given our local Tesco currently has them on the shelf!

My parents have one each. The free 3G access is very handy on holiday as it seems to work in mainland Europe too, so they can check news sites to find out what's going on as well as looking for opening times, campsite addresses, details of hypermarkets, etc. It's monochrome, slow, and rather limited but it's perfectly capable of, say, going to a retailer's site and pulling up store location listings.

I've been watching with great dismay the destruction of the Bristol Industrial Museum and its mangling into something which seems to be terribly PC and trendy but appears to have lost most of the best exhibits. It used to be a proper museum in what was obviously a little-altered transit shed, now I'm amazed they've been allowed to keep the cranes, boats and trains active.

If you really want to engage people and make a museum relevant then get the exhibits working. Make them live. Ok, this isn't possible for everything (the original Stephenson's Rocket for one - in this case a replica does the job) but clouds of steam and whirring motors will do more to keep kids entertained than any number of interactive displays. As for originality, parts were replaced all the time. So long as the replacements are made to the same designs and using the same techniques as the original then why is it a problem? Keep the broken bits and hang them on the wall if you must!

Don't get me started on badly thought out museums...

I like the old approach where you have a large shed full of old stuff with nametags attached, and hopefully some boiler-suited types out the back overhauling the exhibits and getting them working again. None of this "interpretive and inclusive" nonsense, let the engineers run the place rather than the sociology graduates!

He must be very good at reading people, as it were. Also he evidently moves fairly rapidly in crowded areas which would help. By the time his subjects realise what happened he'll be a good distance away and still moving.

Bit surprised to see him using a handheld light meter - I'd want to keep the amount of extra stuff to a minimum.