Scientists have finally decided that Pluto is no longer a planet, but rather a dwarf planet to be grouped with other dwarf planets including UB313 (Xena). This means that there are now only 8 classic planets in our solar system.

While the scientific debate and decision seems to make sense to me, it does cause concern for teachers the world over who have to mark down solar system mobiles with 9 planets, and will mean someone will have to come up with a new mnemonic for remembering the names of the planets.

For me, it was always "My Very Elderly Mother Just Sat Under the North Pole" - any suggestions for a new one?

Update - Pluto responds..., and the public (well some of them) speak in defence

On the latest Taking Notes podcast Bruce Elgort & Julian Robichaux have a quick chat about dominoblogs.com, which is great - the more people who hear about the site and register, the better the resource it will be for everyone.

As part of that they had a quick chat about meeting Tim & I at Lotusphere earlier this year. It's nice that they remembered us, as I know just how many people they would have had coming to talk to them at the Openntf booth. Funnily, Julian mentions that he remembered us from the Blogging Birds-of-a-feather session. During this session there was much discussion about getting your "voice" heard in the blogosphere, and Julian made a comment something along the lines that most bloggers had pretty big ego's and so were happy to keep shouting their opinions until someone listened. After a few minutes of prodding, I finally got the courage to speak up and say that I didn't think that was true - that many bloggers start and then give up because they feel like no one is listening. Julian jokes in the podcast that I made him feel bad for making a blanket statement. I guess I should let Julian off the hook now by saying that my ego is probably healthy enough - it's just that shyness usually wins the battle for me (and probably many people) when it comes to speaking up in front of a room full of strangers... if I ever get the chance to attend enough Lotusphere's to get to know many of the super-bloggers better then I'm sure they would discover the hidden ego!

Anyway - for the super-egos, and for the quiet, retiring bloggers out there - don't forget to go and register your blog on dominoblogs.com - it's a great way to be heard without having to shout!

PS. The title is courtesy of Robbie Williams' album of the same name...

It's only just started, but might this survey be fun to watch. This was the first time I could actually answer with honesty, as I've now officially used both Outlook & Notes at work.

Interesting that in the admittedly small sample so far more people hate Outlook, and more people "madly and deeply" love Notes than Outlook - could the Domino blogsphere community already be skewing the results! Anyway - keep it up...

via Richard Schwartz

It's amazing how quickly you can get into a habit, and just as amazing how quickly you can break one. Back in January when Lotusphere was in full swing, and exciting travels were underway blogging was almost a compulsion of mine. Just about everything would prompt a "I must blog about that" thought, even if it didn't happen. I would get jittery if I was without internet access for a couple of days because I couldn't post something, and I would check my hit counter with embarrassing frequency.

For a few months there I was averaging about 10 posts a month, although I went crazy in January with 19...but I've now only posted 7 times in the last 5 months.

We went away recently for a family holiday, and I looked at the internet for a total of about 45 mins all week - and I didn't really even miss it.

I still often have the thought "I should blog about that", (not that "must" has been replaced with "should"), and I keep promising that I will try to get back into the habit of putting my thoughts, rants, work and personal experiences and opinions back into the written word.

However, I'm now starting to run out of excuses not to get back into it. The Outlook migration project I have been working on is now finished, and I'm getting back into full time development, which I'm hoping will help me find some technical content interesting enough to write about for SnTT, and there has actually been alot going on in the non-tech world I want to start talking about again as well. There is still a lot going on with personal stuff at the moment though, so I can't promise that this will be anymore than another random, meaningless blogpost about nothing at all, except to maybe remind some of you that I am still here, in spirit if not in acutal postings!