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I thought I was not going to be able to write anything this lunchtime and now I find I can, the usual blankness has descended. I started using the handwrite application on the Palm to note down things I want to write about; the handwriting recognition system is too slow to allow it to be a spontaneous notebook. Actually, for a few days last week, I was carrying a notebook and pen which says something about the technology we still have. It struck me that some technological advances are not really advances at all; they are simply prototypes that are put out there to try and get some revenue from a gullible public. The videophones seem to be a good example and I remember that the service providers have been censured for using in their adverts, sample images that are of higher quality than one would get in the real world. Software is another area where this occurs. If you made a car with as many problems, faults and features and some software I could mention, it would fail. The problem may be that people just don't know what you can do with software. As you have complete control over the bits and bytes of the computer disk, the computer memory and the computer screen, then everything should be possible. It is like the statement at the beginning of the Six-Million Dollar Man which says that the idea of a bionic man may look fanciful and impossible to realise but the fact that Human Beings are walking around with functioning bodies is proof that a properly constructed artificial replacement will work. The key phrase is of course 'properly constructed'. So much software is not properly constructed possibly because it is so easy to put out something that looks very good but functionally is awful. You can make the Flash screen on a computer program in seconds and it makes your software look very good indeed. You cannot make the polished wing of a car without spending real time on actually constructing it. I hope you agree with me on this next point. Sometimes the best websites are the ones with actual meaningful content rather than the flashy add-ins and animations. I know I point out what I think are nicely designed sites but sometimes I do realise that they are basically form over content. Eyes bigger than my mouse finger you might say.

Tate Liverpool are showing some Government arty type films as part of their Paul Nash Exhibition. One of them was Night Mail which is always magical and another had film of Nash himself sketching in a junk yard full of bits and pieces of planes. I had a feeling I had seen the painting which had resulted from this and I was right - here it is. The other really famous Nash painting is The Menin Road which is huge and covers a whole wall at one end of one room of the Gallery. My daughter said that she could see a bridge in there somewhere but we couldn't find it. One thing that struck me about Nash's post WWI pictures was that he developed from painting stylised images of reality to almost abstract pictures and that the progression was almost exactly like that of Mondrian as he went from the pictures of trees to the geometric blocks of colour for which he is most known. Nash's progression was not as dramatic but it was there.

And something else about Nash. I always thought that the painting Over The Top was by Paul Nash. I am surprised to find that it is by his brother John who I didn't believe existed. It is lucky that I didn't ask where it was when we were there.