This film is about the life of Rodney Bingenheimer. Bingenheimer is the Californian John Peel: not quite so famous, perhaps, at least outside the US, but the film is jam packed with footage that proves his celebrity-worthiness. In fact, it’s clear that celebrity is much more important to him than it was for Peel (which is not to say that music isn’t, because he obviously loves that too).

He is also, however, incredibly gentle and shy - he seems to typically avoid lengthy eye contact. The film makes clear that in many ways, he’s the music equivalent of Andy Warhol. He even looks like him. It’s hard to understand how Bingenheimer survives in the cut-throat world of Hollywood and American entertainment. Perhaps just through being so innocent - there are many poignant scenes in this documentary that underline this characteristic.

Fabulous drama from an all-star cast. This is the kind of film in which it’s hard to find imperfect acting, and David Mamet’s script makes it even harder. No character is quite as simple as he at first appears, and they’re all fascinating. The film just draws you in, despite the simplicity of the setting (it’s easy to see that it came from the stage). The ending is untidy, but appropriate, and anyway, this film isn’t just about the plot: it’s also about the character and machinations of salesmen and their morally blurred world. Al Pacino’s character is so transparent that you’d swear you’d never fall for his patter: but you know you would (he’s so funny when playing this kind of character; for another example, see The Devil’s Advocate).

WebSphere ESB includes two distinct technologies, both of which use the name ‘mediation’:

• WebSphere Platform Messaging mediations, introduced in WebSphere Application Server V6.0 (and thus included in WebSphere ESB and Process Server).

• Mediation flows, the primary facility introduced by WebSphere ESB V6.0.1 itself.

Let’s come straight out and say it: yes, this can be a little confusing, given that these two technologies go by similar names. Nevertheless, although both of them can both be used to alter messages on the Platform Messaging bus, they work in quite different ways.

After getting to Barcelona airport yesterday, I looked in despair at the long lines for the Iberia economy check-in. I thought I’d give the quick check-in machines a go, but I wasn’t seriously expecting them to work. I’d booked both flights for my roundtrip between LHR and BCN with BA but the return hop was operated by Iberia; the BA quick check-in at Heathrow had worked, but hey, this is a different airline, right? They’re not going to have my credit card details or anything, are they? The machine, though, seemed to accept the record locator (booking reference) as an alternative. Maybe this was a faint hope - though I’d had experiences with the BA website being incapable of viewing my reservations with AA, and vice-versa, so I wasn’t confident. But it all just worked - the boarding card was printed, and I was congratulating myself again for my foresight in only packing carry-on.

So whilst in Barcelona, we did manage to go inside the Sagrada Família in the end (after taking a look from the outside).

It’s an even more amazing building inside than out. I felt like I’d stepped into the main engine room of a gas turbine on Mars (think Total Recall). It’s hard to believe that Gaudí was allowed to build something like this (do they have planning permission in Spain?), but thank goodness he was - and to be fair, his work is all over Barcelona, so presumably they must have liked it. It’s a shame to my mind that it’s a Christian building, as it could easily have been something else, unlike most churches, but clearly religion was the main driving force behind Gaudi’s work.

Just back from Barcelona. I plan to write in greater detail on my trip when I have the chance, but a quick question to the guys out there: how do you shave when on a short trip, given that you can’t take razors onboard planes these days? (I have the same opinion about this as Bruce Schneier does about mobiles in Mumbai). Increasingly I’m trying to manage with carry-on luggage only these days, and I managed it for Barcelona. But after three days, I do look a touch unkempt.

I´m in Barcelona currently, visiting some friends. I had some free time this morning so decided to spend it rambling around downtown. I think I covered the two canonical tourist attractions in Barcelona:

• Las Ramblas - this was a bit of a letdown. It´s obviously a great place to come if you´re after buying a chicken for a pet or some tourist tat, but apart from that the street´s full of tourists looking at not much. Seems to be very much Barcelona´s Oxford Street. Having said that, there is a superb food market to one side - beautifully presented, with the an astonishing amount of colour and liveliness. It felt like a London East-End food market transported to an impossibly posh Indian city centre. That made the ramble a little more worthwhile.

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- ‘L__é__on, what exactly do you do for a living?’ - ‘Cleaner’ - ‘You mean you’re a hit man?’ _- ‘Yeah’ _

Léon is an astonishingly original film. Natalie Portman plays Mathilda, a girl of twelve who befriends a milk-drinking hit-man after he rescues her from thugs who are murdering her family. She asks him to teach her the ways of his chosen career to enable her to exact revenge. And, incredibly, he does.

Scott Berkun’s excellent book, The Art of Project Management, contains a chapter on ‘Power and politics’. In it, he describes a realisation he had - from thinking that politics was something practised by selfish and evil people, to thinking that it was a useful skill to develop - something everyone does, for better or worse.

His prose convinced me, and I am encouraging myself not to put things I don’t like down to ‘politics’ but instead to try and understand them at a deeper level. I think there is a great temptation to put problems and shortcomings down to politics, without realising that it’s part of the way human beings interact and not something that’s disposable, however ’nice’ everyone is. Ignoring it is intellectual laziness. I think the reason I found it hard to face up to this truth before was that I thought I didn’t understand politics, but Scott makes it easy - with descriptions of different types of power, where it comes from, and how to influence those who have it. Practicing politics is still hard, but it’s worth trying to improve one’s skill.

You frequently see fire doors illegally propped open outside buildings across the UK. But to see this at a fire station, as I did today at Winchester? Now that’s irony.