I’ve now been using MyBlogLog for barely a day and I’m already puzzled at how and why people come here.

In particular, it looks like some people have asked questions of Google, and come to me looking for answers, which they won’t have found. This feels frustrating. People have come to me in their hour of need and left empty handed. As a public service, here are the answers they should have had:

• “What to do with jam-jars”

Easy answer to that one. Sterlise them with boiling water, or in a dishwasher. Put them in the oven GasMark 1 whilst making jam. Then, er, fill them with jam.

• “No pressure in my homebrew”

Oh dear. I guess that means one of two things: either your pressure barrel isn’t airtight (did you remember to grease the seal?) or your homebrew isn’t fermenting. Which means it’s not, strictly speaking, homebrew.

This reminds me that half of the barrel of beer I made nearly a year ago is still sitting undrunk and probably undrinkable in the cellar. And there’s no cellar in the new house. Can I make beer in the shed? Where will the wine go?

• “long time no mail”

Oh dear. One of those dilemmas. Is there a technical problem or do your friends suddenly now hate you? Here’s some things you could try: Phone your friends and check for frostiness on the line. Check your e-mail using a different mail program (eg PopTray or SMB) or the website www.mailreader.com to see if your account at your ISP looks the same as it does in your regular program. Check your ISP’s service log to see if there was an outage on your mail server. If you run your own domain, have you done something stupid to your MX table?

• “civilization iii serial three hour”

Actually mate, you’re probably better off not finding that serial number. Just think how much of your time Civ will waste when you do actually get it running.

Can’t leave without mentioning:

• The aforementioned “barrister strike blog”

Although we were talking about this in the pub last night, there’s nothing here specifically about that. Yes, it’s a blog. Yes, I mention the word strike occasionally. But the only previous mention of barrister before I got intrigued about my google hits was talking about the Lib Dem candidate in the Hartlepool by-election. And this despite having a good friend and former housemate who is one.