I am not a dork

How White and Nerdy Are You?

I may be white but I'm not nerdy.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse

I would encourage everyone to check out The War Game, a BBC fictional documentary by Peter Watkins which was never shown due to governmental pressure. Appearing to be the first of what is now a genre of "aftermath" movies from Briggs's sublime When the Wind Blows to ABC's The Day After Guttenberg-fest, it's in equal measures frightening, harrowing, and an ultra-realistic depiction of what might have been.

I grew up in the 80's of Reagan, Thatcher, and Haughey and remember the all pervasive fear of nuclear war. Survivalist books were on the best seller lists. Chernobyl gave us in Europe an idea of the widespread damage a nuclear detonation could do. Even Tomorrow's World got in on the act with a special programme simulating a Soviet Nuclear attack being repelled by Reagan's fantastical SDI programme (if anyone can find something on this please let me know).

Of course, since I was only nine years' of age, I truly believed there was a nuclear attack. Thankfully Mr. Tulié put me right the next day in school.

The computer of the 80s

And it comes. With a. Real. Computer. Keyboard.

Kahfee

The office where I work, like most modern offices, has a posh coffee machine with several options. Is this wealth of choice really actually worth it? Let's try all of the options and see.

• Café Crème: Not a great start. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is coffee with cream as I did. Imagine my disappointment to find it was just a cup of black, quite bitter, Americano style coffee which tastes no better than instant. Milk might help, but for the purposes of this taste test the only addition I'm making is my usual two sugars.

• Americano: This actually does what it says on the tin. Unfortunately it tastes like warm dirty water. We'll not be having it again.

• Espresso: No, it's not expresso and in this case it's barely espresso. I won't be sleeping much tonight.

• Café au Lait: From the French for Coffee with Milk, one would expect it to be simple coffee with a dash of cow juice. In reality it seem more like a latte, with a dash of Americano style coffee topped up with heated milk. This seems to be the best, so far.

• Hot Water: You are kidding? No, I won't drink a cup of hot water with two sugars in it.

So, apart from only keeping me up for the next week I've discovered that machine made coffee is pretty much all the same. I just want a pot of filter coffee - is that asking too much?