It seems like only last week that I was at a friends wedding (in fact it was just over two weeks), but on Tuesday two more friends tied the knot.

I’ve known R since my time in Norway. We met up a few times in Oslo and continued when we both returned to London. She had dreams of travelling, going back to Norway or Paris, or, generally, elsewhere. But she drifted back to her home-town, Bristol. Later, T, a Polish tree surgeon, moved into the flat-share she was living in. She jokes that while I tried internet- and speed-dating, she just stayed at home but had greater success.

Last night we went to see Dylan Moran do stand-up comedy at the Hammersmith Apollo here in London.

Here in the UK he is probably most famous for his role in the sit-com Black Books where he plays, well, pretty much himself it turns out. It’s a version of Moran who works in a book store with Manny (Bill Bailey).

It’s difficult to say much about his show as he doesn’t really tell jokes as such, more a stream of observations. A couple of years ago when I first saw him live his most memorable line was “Children are just small drunks.” This time it was about relationships: “The first time you meet your partner you are generally drunk. Why would you do that? You wouldn’t buy a toaster drunk. It’s too important a decision.”

It turns out that 2006 is a big year for weddings. I got married in April, a friend of my wife got married in May and my friends P and I had a Civil Partnership Ceremony yesterday.

Despite the poor weather, it was a great day for everyone. They tied the knot in Wandsworth Registry Office with nearly twenty people present. It was a short but touching ceremony. They said their vows and exchanged rings.

I was introduced to the strange world of Geocaching over Christmas last year.

For the uninitiated, geocaching is, basically, a high-tech scavenger hunt. People hide things all over the world, typically Tupperware boxes containing various goodies, and post the co-ordinates on a website. Other people then enter the details into their GPS systems and try to find them. It sounds simple, silly even, but it can give you a good excuse to look around an old and familiar area with a new perspective.

Bruce Schneider again talks some sense about the recent unsuccessful terror attacks.

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic.

If the security services did most of their work in the back-ground, without people knowing about it, then the public wouldn’t be in a state of terror. And — from the point of view of the police — working behind the scenes never did James Bond’s reputation any harm…

I found this interesting article that “demolishe[s] the myth that faith strengthens society.”

While we’re frequently told that religion provides a moral basis for a civillised society, the study found “that secular societies have lower rates of violence and teenage pregnancy than societies where many people profess belief in God.”

How can that be?

“Consciously or subconsciously, those who are “born again” or “chosen” have diminished respect for others who do not share their sect or their faith. Convinced that only the Bible offers “truth”, they lose their intellectual curiosity and their ability to reason. Their priority becomes not the world they live in but themselves.”

It’s easy to get the wrong impression of Vietnam. Switch on the TV and you find films showing vast areas of land being napalmed. Switch on the radio and you hear Paul Hardcastle. Even in books you see self-immolating monks.

But the place is not all about the Vietnam War (or the American war as they call it). In fact there was little sign of it in the parts that I saw. Insead you see a beautiful, enthusiastic country that’s full of contradictions. You see successful small businesses, you learn that health-care and education is paid-for yet you know the government is officially Communist.

What does a two year old mince pie and an ewok have in common? The answer, it turns out, is “wedding cake.”

Huh?

Let me explain.

Wedding cakes have a bit of a history for us. Americans tend not to be very keen on the traditional British fruit cake, which was a bit of a problem since I got married to a Californian in New York! Even the hotel concierge could only track down a fruit flan which is not what I’d call traditional. In the end we had to make do with less conventional but still delicious “normal” deserts.

This last weekend we hosted our wedding reception. Actually, it’s probably our second or third depending on how you count it. But we’re not keeping track as we fully intend to celebrate for as long as we can get away with it…

Rather than book a hall and get people to sit next to almost total strangers for a couple of hours, we decided to hire a boat and cruise down the Thames for a few hours. In the end thirty-two guests turned up in the rain to help us celebrate. We sailed west towards Westminster, then east as far as Greenwhich and back to Temple.

This is a bit of a weird one. For those that have not come across it, AllOfMP3 is a Russian competitor to music downloading sites like Apple’s iTunes Music Store. It distinguishes itself by offering higher quality (good), in a number of different formats (good), without digital restrictions managements (also good) and for a much lower cost.

(DRM is the bit in iTunes that stops you burning your purchases more than five times or streaming to more than five computers.)