When buying a coat, remember to consider the following: Pockets. Proper pockets you can really jam you hands into. You can’t imagine how important this is until it’s 7:30 in the morning and there’s a bit of a breeze blowing. Check that it fits over your usual work stuff. A coat is not a substitute for your standard suit jacket. Make sure it’s longer than your usual suit length! Nothing like a short coat to make you look a fool. Check you can button it up so that little draughts can’t get in, coz that’s baaaaad. Side-slits to get at your pants-pockets would be useful, though. Check that it’s not going to whimp out in the rain, or whatever cheap-imitation-of you may have in your town. Be prepared to spend money (When I saw a £1000 suit from a non-designer brand, that freaked me a little) My best piece of advice though? ...

While reading this: I laffed. But it’s probably just me.

Is it Christmas yet? Pop this in your kids’ RSS readers.

Two All-American heroes in action movies of their own eras! (ok, that’s debatable for Bruce Willis) Let’s see how they turn out head to head. Die Hard 4.0 (a.k.a. Live Free or Die Hard) Die Hard has been updated for the Net generation, and, in the UK and Australia at least, it’s even pitched with a software-esque version number (for the record, I prefer the American name). The scenario is a “fire sale” - a comprehensive hack of all the systems we depend on in our modern life. John McClane gets dragged into it involuntarily while escorting a white-hat hacker to Homeland Security, and as soon as there’s bullets flying from helicopters it’s on. ...

Pixar have a history of telling stories which take the ordinary and recast it into something far more wondrous - who didn’t, after watching Toy Story, take a second look at their toys and imagine their lives when they were alone? It is perhaps a unique advantage of animation to be able to do these things in a believable way and be able to get away with it consistently. Ratatouille continues in that tradition, perhaps only broken by The Incredibles, which was a movie that could have been done with ordinary techniques (though of course nowhere near as fun). It’s the story of a French rat, Remy, who would be chef, and if that doesn’t twig every sense of improbability then perhaps you’ve just watched Cars. Which was about a world of cars and cars alone (only in America would that concept be even raised, let alone considered bankable). ...