All over London, a new subculture is emerging. Artists, engineers and even the odd journalist are ripping apart electronic toys, reprogramming them and creating entirely new gadgets.
Last weekend, I decided to join the budding Heath Robinsons, known as tinkerers, by taking part in a weekend workshop learning their ways.
At an ungodly hour on Saturday, I arrived at the London Knowledge Lab, an offshoot of the University of London. There, I was equipped with the tools of the trade - an electronic breadboard, a bag of components, and a piece of kit known as an arduino.
The arduino is essentially a mini computer that can act on sensors - anything from a light collector to a command from a web site - and then trigger a series of events you program in. Look at any recent electronic art installation, and the chances are behind the scenes there's an arduino running it.
Our first task was to get our new toy to simply flashing a blinking LED by building an electronic circuit then programming the arduino to control it. Within minutes, we'd moved on to flashing and dimming the light, and controlling it via a light sensor.
On the second day, we were set free to build our own projects. Mine, rather ambitiously as it turned out, was to create a sensor for a home electricity meter that would drive a motorised pointer on the wall to reflect how much power was being used by my vast collection of gadgets.
On reflection, I should probably have stuck with the flashing light we'd built the day before, but nonetheless the tutors were very patient in explaining exactly how it might work (And no, mine didn't work by the end of the day - although amazingly, after a bit more messing about at home, it now does).
My fellow tinkerers built everything from musical instruments controlled by the wave of a hand to a hi tech light that changed colour as you waved your hand over it.
The company behind the weekend, tinker, admit they have been amazed by the response, and so far have run and sold out seven of the beginners workshops, and also run regular pub meetings for enthusiasts, as well as more advanced classes.
There's something oddly organic and lo-tech about the whole movement - it's about recycling, essentially, and old toys, computers and even home appliances form the basis of many of the gadgets created. While they are pushing the boundaries of art and electronic installation, they are doing it all with kit that might once have run a child's toy or controlled a kettle - and in a world where the launch of a new mobile phone can create headlines around the world, it's an approach that's very refreshing.
It might seem an unusual way to spend the weekend (and admittedly you'd need to be a bit of a nerd in the first place to consider it), but I'd highly recommend breaking out the resistors and capacitors and giving it a go.

www.tinker.it

Facebook has, following a huge online campaign by users, removed the 'is' from its status updates.
At first glance, it seems an inconsequential move, and indeed for a lot of people means absolutely nothing.
Yet for several of my friends, it would not be underestimating things to say it has completely ruined their Christmas.
Facebook status updates, for the unitiated, are the mechanism by which you let your friends on the site know what you are doing. You can thrill to the revelation that 'Dave is doing the washing up', or 'Andrea is deciding what to have for lunch'.
Yet this week, Facebook tweaked the system, which previously automatically added an 'is' at the beginning of updates.
For addicts, of which there are many, it's been a major upheaval. Just minutes after the change was made, this popped onto my news feed:
"Alison is thoroughly discombobulated by the removal of the mandatory ‘is’. My whole world has shifted on its axis. Everything I know is wrong."
Now, it has to said my friend Alison does take her Facebook status updates more seriously that most - I've seen seven or eight in a day from her, all obviously having been thought through at great length. It all points to an interesting problem the emergence of social networking has led to - knowing too much about our friends.
It's not that I don't have an interest in what my mates are upto. But in actual, real life conversations the phrase 'I am doing the washing up' tends not to occur very often, and that's a good thing.
So what can be done? I propose a worldwide boycott of Facebook status updates.
If recent figures on Facebook usage are to be believed, I think one day a week where we don't have to read what everyone we know is thinking of having for dinner would save London's offices thousands of hours in lost productivity.
Rather than the 'facebook hour' that many companies have introduced, how about a 'real life' evening where we all go to the pub and get drunk with our friends instead?

Apple's announcement that it is to begin selling its iPhone in the UK on November the 9th has left the gadget obsessive (such as myself) with a major dilemma - do you buy a US model now, or wait?
The argument is complex.
Importing a US version requires you to install a small piece of (highly unapproved) software before it will work on a UK phone network. This is a relatively easy task, but leaves you open to future problems. In a nutshell, when Apple next updates the iPhone's software, chances are it will kill your phone as it tries to protect it's hugely lucrative exclusive deals with phone networks.
However, as Apple boss Steve Jobs admitted last week at the iPhone's UK launch, the chances are that within days hackers will have cracked the phone again in a hi-tech game of cat and mouse.
The official UK O2 approved model, on the other hand, will work perfectly straight out of the box, and even give you free access to wireless internet hotspots across the UK. However, you will be locked in O2's contract (paying between £35 and £55 per month), which while actually a pretty good deal, will involve changing networks for many people.
The answer? It's a tough one, and one that really seperates the nerds from the consumers.
Ultimately, importing an iPhone will require a reasonable technical knowledge.
For the average buyer, the answer is simple - just wait until November 9th, and buy the official UK version. That said, I'm putting my faith in the hackers. My US iPhone is currently winging its way over the Atlantic from a friend in New York. Perhaps it is just an admission my gadget obsession has got out of hand, but I'm actually looking forward to the tussle of tweaking the phone to keep it one step ahead of Apple's corporate crackdown.