Disaster! On the way to work on Monday, a driver went into the back of my new car. He was only a young lad and I think it was his first accident. We exchanged details whilst we both tried to ignore the shouts and honking of annoyed drivers stuck behind us.

The damage is relatively minor, but there are some dents and scratches in the rear bumper, as you can see quite clearly in the picture.

The other driver admitted full responsibility, so it won't cost me anything, but it will cost his insurance company somewhere in the region of £800 to put right. At least, that's what my local Toyota dealer reckons it will cost to put right anyway. The other driver's insurance company are sending out their own inspector on Monday to assess the damage.

I generally don't have much luck with cars. I once bought a car that in the short time I had it, had a tyre blowout whilst I was driving down a dual carriageway at 60mph; I also put a massive dent in the passenger door whilst trying to park in multi-storey car park and I also took the nearside wing mirror off by pulling off too fast from outside our house and clipping the pillar of the front garden wall.

My cat Jarvis had his first weigh-in this week, as part of his obesity management programme. The good news is that over the past two weeks, he has lost just over a quarter of a kilo (about half a pound). If he continues at this rate, he'll reach his target weight in about 10 weeks' time.

The effect on Jarvis has been quite noticeable. He looks and feels slimmer, and is able to get up the stairs a lot easier.

I wonder if the manufacturers of his special cat food make a human-friendly version…

My Observer Pattern presentation that I delivered two weeks ago went down so well that I'm going to be doing it again next month at NxtGenUG Birmingham. I may also deliver the same session during the Heroes Happen Here launch event for Microsoft Visual Studio 2008, Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2008, in a "speaker idol"-type competition. Watch this space!