How Can I Support My Child in Learning Maths?

A normal week has 168 hours in it. Assuming 8 hours sleep a night^[1], that's 112 waking hours for doing everything else, including learning things. In a school week, children spend somewhere between 3 and 5 hours in maths lessons^[2] depending on various factors such as which school they go to and what year they're in. That, using the middle of that range, is about 3.5% of a teenager's working week.

TLDR: Model resilience & positivity, and engage with the subject in front of and with them, just like you would in any other area of their development.

Digital Skills for Teaching & Learning: How to Present with Google Slides or Powerpoint in its Own Window

A little background

EDIT (06/07/2020): Now with added PowerPoint!

I've taken part in a good number of online discussions, seminars, conferences and the like since our Lockdown period started and on the whole it's all been very good, with incredible use of broadly (and often freely) available use of resources to turn an experience that could be flat and impersonal into a very positive one. There are a few things that niggle me, however, and I've been looking into overcoming them, especially as I've been moving into this online teaching lark as well. I thought I'd post about some of the things I've found out and include a few "how to..." walkthroughs. This is largely so that I can find these things again but I realise there may be others out there who might benefit.

Thoughtful transitions can be used to make slides clearer and less cluttered. Losing them can make a big difference.

If that's you, fill your boots! Also ask questions if I'm at all unclear, miss out an important step, or say something you don't understand. If I get something wrong correct me; if there's an easier way let me know!

How to Use a Spreadsheet to Batch-Upload Events to Your Calendar

The other day I posted...

One of my favourite things I've discovered this year is using a spreadsheet to batch-add things to my calendar. Such a timesaver!

— Tommaths (@TeaKayB) June 1, 2020

... and a couple of people asked me how to do it.

To some of you this may be the most obvious thing on the planet, but I only discovered it earlier this year and - my oh my - has it saved me some time. My day* job sees me visiting various places around the country and I keep track of it all in my calendar. As any self-respecting nerd is driven by unknown forces to do, I often put a bit of effort into finding out how I can get the tech around me to do some of the more boring jobs so that I have more time available for doing the interesting things. I'd list some potential use-cases for this spreadsheet-to-calendar trick but I figure that if you've read this far you already know what you want it for.

Before we get started, a disclaimer: Yes, there are plenty of other articles detailing how to do this and I visited many of them. I haven't referenced any of them because it was about six months ago so I've forgotten which ones I used, none of them gave me every piece of information I needed, and there were a few important stumbling blocks that weren't mentioned at all.

How to fix Google Reader's "oops, an error occurred..." message

Blogging is a big thing at the moment, though many of us read far more than we write. Keeping track of them can be a bit of a nightmare, dotted as they are here and there across the internet. Reader is Google's solution to that: it keeps tabs on your favourite blogs so you don't have to, grabbing new posts from each one and putting them in the same place so you can read them in a similar way to reading your emails: they come to you.

But, like everything in life, there is the odd problem. One of them is this:

In certain versions of certain browsers (my school's version of Internet Explorer is one of them; not sure about others that this issue affects), whenever you try to do much at all (I discovered it when trying to unsubscribe from a blog, but it has happened when trying to mark individual posts as read or unread, and I'm sure there are other times it happens too) an error is displayed towards the top of the page which reads "Oops... an error occurred. Please try again in a few seconds." Waiting a few seconds and trying again doesn't help.

The fix
The fix, it turns out, is an easy one!

1. Look in the address bar towards the top of your browser window
2. Where it says "http://...", just click between the 'p' and the ':' and type an 's', so now it looks like "https://..."
3. Hit return to reload the page.

Done. everything should work properly now. If it doesn't, try the steps outlined above again. If it still doesn't then I'm sorry, but you'll have to continue your search...

Good luck.

How to become a Saint

We all know, from Pope Benedict XVI*'s well-founded, superbly researched and not at all lie-ridden speech in Edinburgh the other day, that all the world's ills are caused by atheists. Ills such as wanton, unfounded prejudice and discrimination, child abuse (including rape), terrorism, mass murder and genocide. Or knowingly and deliberately doing something that will further the spread of a particularly nasty disease.

So now we know how to be bad people: simply put, just don't believe in a god**. But if we want to look at the other end of the scale, ultimate goodness and eternal recognition for it, then how on Earth does one become a Saint in the eyes of the Catholic church***?

Luckily for us there are just a few easy steps to attaining eternal religious superiority over our fellow human beings. They are as follows:

Step 1: Die.
In all honesty, the Catholic church doesn't 'make' someone a Saint, they simply officially recognise their Saintly status, but for someone to classsify they have to have been admitted into heaven. It's difficult to get into heaven without being dead first.

Once you're dead, the process really kicks off.

Step 2: Impress a local Bishop
Obviously, in order to be recognised as Saintly you have to have officially been awesome throughout your life. The Bishop of the area you lived in, once alerted to your feats of heroic virtue while alive, will research and document your life, work and writings in order to provide evidence for consideration by the relevant authorities.

Actually, thinking about it it's probably better to impress your Bishop before you die.

Step 3: Be submitted for consideration to the Congregation for the Cause of Saints
This is a bunch of Cardinals and theologians based at the Vatican who work together to evaluate your life. If the evidence is convincing enough, the Pope will proclaim you to be a role model for Catholics everywhere. You will then be given the title "venerable", which looks fantastic on any C.V. but doesn't come with a badge.

Step 4: Perform a miracle

Because there's no such thing, so you have to pick and choose from stuff that just happens.

This is where it gets difficult: not only do you have to perform a miracle and get it recognised as such by the Church: you also have to do it whilst being dead (see step 1). When you have performed this miracle and been recognised for it, you are then beatified, which allows you to be honoured by a geographical region or group of people and presumably involves a makeover of some sort.

The standard miracle is curing someone of a disease or affliction after they have prayed for you (specifically) to do so. Well-known helper of people**** Mother Teresa was beatified in 2002 after she posthumously cured an abdominal tumour of Monica Besra by emitting a beam of light from a picture of Teresa kept within a locket owned by Besra. The Pope has, as part of his 2010 tour of the United Kingdom, beatified 19th Century brummie clergyman Cardinal John Henry Newman who cured Deacon Jack Sullivan's spinal disorder after being prayed to. The Vatican concluded that these things couldn't just happen on their own, therefore the most likely explanation was that someone who was long dead did them by magic.

If you want to get a head start in proceedings you could always put an effort into making step 1 occur for reasons of a particularly religious nature. An in-service death for a Catholic, (martyrdom) is a fast-track route to beatification and trumps the performance of a miracle.

Step 5: Perform another miracle
One miracle is not enough, presumably because a single miracle can feasibly be faked, fabricated, invented or even made up completely. But two miracles is an entirely different matter.

Worry not, however, as miracles come in many forms, as can be seen by the Miracle of the Herrings in the player below:

Once your second miracle is discovered and verified by the Vatican, then you will be canonised. Congratulations! You are now a Saint!

Where to next?
Sainthood may seem like the top of the ladder, which may be a disappointment for the more ambitious good-doers amongst us, but fear not! There are yet further steps to take for the truly brilliant Catholic follower:

Veneration:
This is a kind of upper level of Sainthood; becoming a Saint Prefect, or a Saint of Saints, if you like. If your life and deeds have shown particularly outstanding commitment to the cause of spreading Catholicism you may be raised to this pedestal of pedestals and adored by thousands in the true sense of the word.

Patronism:
Certain groups, occasions and other things have their own special Saints known as Patrons. To become a Patron Saint is certainly the crowning glory for any Saint, and the great thing is that you can become a Patron Saint of just about anything: the Pope is currently looking for a Patron Saint of the internet and computer programmers, with Saint Isidore of Seville being the current front runner. There are Patron Saints of ugly people, fireworks, comedians, procrastinators, coffee pots, various phobias, mad dogs, dysentry and sexually transmitted diseases (which is hilariously ironic, considering the Catholic Church's dislike of condoms).





* Born Joseph Alois Ratzinger, or Palpatine to his mates.
* Or, rather, don't believe in Benny's God. The only way his comments make any kind of sense at all is if he is lumping followers of the thousands of alternative gods to his Catholic one in with those who follow no god at all. Which makes no sense anyway.
*** I'm looking at Catholicism because all other religious choices are false and therefore evil.
**** Unless, of course, they didn't want to convert to Catholicism, in which case she just let them die.

'How to' and Photography - Conquering Snowdon

At the weekend (21/08/2010) I, along with Emma (@squiggle7) and Robin of The Foxes of Nevis climbed Mount Snowdon. I thought I'd combine a photo post with a bit of a 'how to' for people who consider themselves to be very amateur at mountain climbing (as we are!) There are more photos on my Flickr photostream, and more Snowdon photos (including full-sized versions of these) here.

Snowdon is the highest mountain in Wales, reaching 1085 metres at its peak. It is often stated to be the second highest mountain in the UK, after Ben Nevis, but this is not true: the top ten highest mountains in the UK are all located in Scotland. For more information on mountains, you may like to check out this post. And then go somewhere a little less... tongue in cheek.

This was the view after we'd been walking for half an hour or so. We followed the Pyg Track on the way up, which starts at the car park at Pen-y-Pass. The car park currently costs £10 for the day and fills up really quickly quite early in the morning. Instead, we caught a bus from nearby Llanberis (where we were staying in a B&B) for £1 each.

This photo shows Emma and Robin in the foreground, and the Pyg Track, dotted with people, stretching back into the distance. In the distance, about a third from the left and a quarter from the top of the photograph, you can see a small cluster of white buildings. This is where the Pyg Track starts. It was about here that the going started to get a bit more 'mountainy'.

This is the view in the other direction. The Pyg Track curves round and up this elevation, and crosses to the other side of the mountain on a ridge between this peak and the one you can see in the background, Crib Goch. It is at this point that there is the option of breaking off the Pyg Track and following the Crib Goch route, which takes you up and over this summit before carrying on to Snowdon's peak. This is recommended only for experienced climbers and those not used to mountain climbing may find themselves quickly out of their depth. We didn't go that way!

This is Robin grinning like a loon. We stopped here for a snack after the first challenging 'climbing' bit. Just to clarify, when taking the Pyg Track you don't actually do any real rock climbing in the style of, for example, Sylvester Stallone in Cliffhanger, but there are a few places that require you to get stuck in and use your hands. Again, in this photo you can see the beginning of the Pyg Track in those tell-tale white buildings.

Over the ridge, and inside the 'horseshoe' of mountains, there is an astounding array of beautiful scenery that changes  minute-by-minute as you walk. The next part of the track is fairly easy going, very uppy-downy, but not so much so that it is arduous.

Here's Emma having a break. Robin was busy finding a place to rest his bag and coat so that when a big enough gust of wind came it would be in danger of blowing it all over the edge and down into that beautiful lake you saw in the previous photo. Thankfully, when the gust of wind came it was only just not-big-enough and merely caused the birthing of a couple of litters of kittens as we realised what almost happened. This was shortly before Robin was saved by a passing mountaineer from a potentially traumatising Jaffa Cake loss event.

Here's the continuation of the Pyg Track. Snowdon's summit is round the corner a bit and lost amongst the clouds.

And looking back on the lakes within the horseshoe.

Looking back before the most challenging part of the ascent began, just after the Miner's Track joins the Pyg Track: for most of our walk, the Miner's Track was visible down below us, and looked much easier until the climb up to the Pyg Track, and then the following climb almost to the summit - they made up for it then.

I didn't take many pictures of the next bit, as both hands were needed to help the climb, and I was very fearful of seeing my D60 bouncing all the way back down the mountain and landing with a plop in the lake at the bottom. It went back in my rucksack for a while...

We stopped for a break and a quick munch after the tough bit and I took this. You can see where the track goes if you follow the people. We were about 20 minutes from the top, here. I'll take this opportunity to say something about footwear and other equipment: If you're going to do this, you need good, sturdy walking boots, a few layers of clothing (it gets pretty cold towards the top, but you'll be sweating like a pervert near the bottom) and a waterproof coat and trousers in your bag just in case. I saw some people doing the climb in jeans, t-shirt and trainers, and thought they were mad. They were lucky with the weather we had, but if it had started to rain they'd have been drenched and freezing by the time they got to the top. I wouldn't have felt safe doing it in trainers, and you need ankle support and a good solid sole as, if you're not used to it, mountain climbing takes it out of your joints and leg muscles, and the paths are far from smooth tarmac!

I heard other climbers talking about someone they'd seen doing the climb in sandals. I dread to think what state their feet were in when they got home.

Here's Snowdon's summit taken from about the same place as the previous photo. You can just about see a group of people standing there.

Reach the ridge before the final climb to the summit, and this is the view over the other side.

And looking back down at the route we'd taken- you can see a hefty portion of the Pyg Track in this photo. The most difficult parts are in the bottom-right of the picture.

Emma and Robin at the summit. It was quite crowded- there were loads of people climbing Snowdon, and apparently this isn't unusual. There's practically no chance of getting lost because the paths are just a constant stream of people going in both directions. It'd almost be possible to send a note from top to bottom without moving, just by passing it from person to person.

This is an installation at the very top of Snowdon that tells you what, on a clear day, you're looking at. Mostly what we were looking at were clouds- we were in them! But they cleared now and then so that we could take a photo or two from the top:

You can just about see the zig-zag of the end of the Pyg Track that we came up on the right-hand side of this photo. The Llanberis path that we descended on goes down the far side of this ridge.

A significant portion of the Pyg Track.

A significant portion of Wales.

We walked down the Llanberis path which is one of the easiest routes for climbing Snowdon, but also the longest as it starts in Llanberis itself. It covers roughly the same route as the mountain railway, crossing it a few times as it descends/ ascends (depending on which way you're going).
I found the Llanberis route hardgoing on the way down- it's very rocky and I was already tired from the climb up. Also, whilst the scenery is breathtaking at first, it changes very little as you descend and, still beautiful at the bottom, it gives you little that is new to look at for the 3+ hours you're walking it.

All-in, the climb and descent took us somewhere between 7 and 9 hours, with the downward portion taking the longer time- it was further, we were tired, and blisters had started to form. It was a hell of an experience, though, and one I'd probably repeat given the opportunity. I'd like to try Scafell Pike at some point, and then Ben Nevis too!

There are more photos on my Flickr photostream, in the Snowdon set.

How to: Make a home-grown-vegetable curry

I've just had an awesome curry. It was prepared by @squiggle7 and myself out of garden vegetables (bolstered with some other non-gardeny bits and bobs). Please read the whole thing through to make sure you have workable ingredients- I'm not listing them because it's the kind of thing that's infinitely variable and I want you to take some responsibility for your own dinner. It's also worth noting that I have made the steps more complicated and waffly than they need to be, as well as very vague. Make of this what you will.

• Preparation time: About five months (+ 1/2 hour)
• Feeds: Some to Many, depending on quantities used

You too can make this delicious curry

Here's the secret in 8 easy steps:

1. Grow some vegetables. - I did this by letting @squiggle7 do it.
    - Home-grown vegetables taste much nicer than shop-bought ones. This is not just something said by those who grow their own vegetables in order to justify it; it's true.
2. Harvest the vegetables.
    - I did this by letting @squiggle7 do it.
    - We ended up with carrots, courgettes and runner beans. We only managed a couple of strawberries, they were very small, and are not a traditional ingredient in many curry recipes, so we left them out.
3. Chop the vegetables up and put them into a saucepan.
    - I did this by letting @squiggle7 do it*.
    - How many is up to you: I'd suggest somewhere between a few and lots depending on how many you want to feed, individual appetites and other factors. Bear in mind that the finished article will freeze perfectly happily to be consumed another day, so you'll probably want to make too much rather than too little. Again, which saucepan to use is heavily dependant on how much you're making- go for too big rather than too small**.
    - This is where the 'bolstering' stepped in too: we added a tin of chopped tomatoes, a tin of sweetcorn and a tin of red kidney beans***.
4. Pour in a jar of some variety of curry sauce.
    - Many people will say this is cheating. It's perfectly acceptable, not to mention greener and more economical, to make your own sauce, and feel free to do so if you know how, but we were hungry, had a jar of sauce that needed using up, and are not adverse to a little rule-bending now and then.
5. Mix it up a bit and get the hob going.
    - Make sure the one you switch on/ light is the one underneath the saucepan. I didn't, but was thankfully corrected by @squiggle7. You may not be so lucky.
    - At the same time, get the rice going in another saucepan.
    - How much is, again, dependent upon how many you are catering for and the size of their gluttons. If you don't know how to cook rice at this point in your life, either find out quickly**** or shoot yourself.
6. Keep an eye on both saucepans***** until the food is done, ready, cooked and finished.
    - Give 'em a stir every now and then so the stuff at the bottom doesn't burn. It should be ready within 20 minutes or so, but the best thing to do is try a little bit now and then- don't be a dunce, and let it cool a bit before shovelling it in, though.
    - Rice is done when it's at a consistency that pleases you. I've eaten rice with people who like barely out of the crunchy stage and also those who believe rice is only properly cooked once the grains have lost their individuality and all become part of one great, mushy collective. The same is true for the curry- it's veg, so when it's hot, it's done. The only thing you really have to think about is how crunchy or soggy you like it. It's a free world, so do as you please.
    - One other thing to think about- if you like your sauce runny, no problem. If you like it nice and thick, you may need to let it simmer for a while until some of the water has evaporated off. If you do this, it should be at a temperature that will allow it to steam without actually bubbling too much.
7. Serve.
    - This can be done according to personal preference. The standard is, I believe, to serve the rice first with a depression in the middle into which the curry is spooned/poured/ladled/slopped. Variations include putting the rice on one side of the plate and the curry next to it; serving the rice and curry in separate bowls; putting the rice on top of the curry (unusual); serving both in a large cornet with a naan-strip 'flake' (very, very odd).
    - A curry always goes down well with pappadoms, pappadums, popadams, pompadums, poppadams and/or naan bread.
8. Eat.
   You can use any item of cutlery for this, but chopsticks may well mean that you're there for weeks, and steak knives can cause unnecessary personal injury without actually bringing anything positive to the experience. We both chose forks.

Of course, the above can be simplified to:

1. Chop veg
2. Cook veg in sauce
3. Serve with rice, poppadoms and/or naan.

But where would be the fun in that?

* Actually, to tell the truth I took over from her part-way through this step.

** Forget this 'less is more' rubbish. More is demonstrably more.

*** We luuuurves the kidney beans.

**** Either:

1. Phone your mum;

2. Ask anyone over the age of about 7; or

3. Boil it.

***** Not literally: this is painful and achieves nothing.

How to update twitter for free on your mobile phone - an update

This is an update to this post, made at some point last year. It gave a little bit of advice on updating Twitter on your mobile phone.

In summary, I pointed out that if you had a 3 mobile account (either PAYG or a contract) then you could use 3's special MSN Messenger software and send unlimited instant messages to your contacts for free (i.e. above and beyond any data or message allowances already on your contract). I then suggested that you could sign up (for free, of course) to ping.fm and use that as a go-between to send messages from your mobile to your Twitter account for absolutely no extra cost whatsoever (it doesn't even eat into your data allowance).

Now, having used that particular method for around five months, I have some comments to make:

The first thing I have to say is that I'm not that impressed with ping.fm's MSN Messenger bot: It's almost never online when I want to tweet, which makes it next to useless. So you may think that my original post has been rendered similarly useless?

Not so. You see, if you're a 3 mobile customer you can also use the Skype instant messaging (and internet telephony) software to send and receive unlimited free text messages (and internet phone calls). The good news is that there's also a ping.fm bot for Skype and, in my experience, it actually works. Since getting my new phone*, I've been using Skype to post tweets via the ping.fm bot and so far I haven't had any problems.


So how do I Tweet using Skype on my 3 mobile phone?
Yes, yes, yes, this has been mostly cut-and-pasted from this post, but the process is almost exactly the same so what do you want me to do?

1. Go here to find out how to get Skype on your phone.
2. Create an account at Ping.fm. Follow the instructions to add your twitter account to your social networks list.
3. Go to 'your dashboard' at ping.fm, scroll down and find Skype under 'Services / Tools'. Click it, and follow the instructions.
4. Log in to your Skype account (you can do this on your phone or on your computer; makes no difference) and add 'ping.fm' as a contact. This is a 'bot'.
5. When you set up Skype at your ping.fm account (step 3), it will have given you a verification code. Send this to the bot you have just added to your Skype list. The bot will appear to be offline, but send it anyway. You should get a rather polite message to say that your code has been accepted.

You're done! Whenever you want to update twitter while you're away from a computer, just open up Skype on your phone and send a message to the bot. It'll send a confirmation message back, and update twitter for you!


Why is this better than using my mobile's browser or a Twitter app, or posting via text message?
When you load a website on your mobile phone's browser, or when an app connects to the internet via a 3G connection, this counts against your monthly data download limit**. When you send a text message to Twitter this (at best) takes a message from your monthly allowance or (at worst) costs a premium amount to send. Using Skype (or MSN Messenger) on your 3 mobile phone has none of these effects.


But I don't have a 3 mobile!
One possible solution is to just go for a 3 SIM card, which you can pop into your existing phone***. You can order one for free here. If you order through that link you'll get all the benefits of being a 3 customer plus:

• Free calls to other 3 customers, free texts and free internet for 90 days every time you top up.
• £2 extra credit the first time you top up at least £10

Plus I get a little extra incentive for sending you there****!

* A Nokia E63
** Even if you have an 'unlimited' data plan, you don't actually have unlimited data usage. 'Unlimited' data plans have a 'fair usage policy' which means you're still limited with regards to the amount you can send and receive. My 'unlimited' plan is capped at 1GB; yours may be higher, but it will still have a cap.
*** You'll need to check that it's not locked to your current network first.
**** No, that's not the entire reason for this post (check out the original one- not a referral link in sight)- it's just a happy coincidence.

How to organise your Wii channels

This took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out this morning, so I thought I'd post briefly about it in the hope that I can save just one person from fiddling futilely with their Wii for quite the same duration.

If you want to move your Wii channels around, simply hover the Wiimote's pointer over the channel you want to move, hold A and B at the same time, move to an empty slot and let go. That easy.

You can move channels to one of the other channel 'screens' by performing the above and hovering over the + or - sign at either end of the channel screen for a short while until it changes, then dump it where you fancy in the usual way.

Bear in mind that the slot you want to move a channel to has to be empty, so you may have to move another channel out of the way first.

How to save money - Odeon Premiére Reward Card: worth it?

As always, please read my disclaimer before acting on any information contained in this post.

Odeon cinemas have recently introduced their own reward scheme. The idea is similar to other reward schemes in that you receive points every time you visit the cinema and buy tickets and food. You get 10 points for every £1 spent, and you can redeem these for tickets and food. Tickets give the highest return, so I'll concentrate on those in this post. The catch is that you have to pay for the card in the first place. However, you do get a certain number of free points depending on which level of membership you opt for:

• Classic membership is £1.99, and you get 100 free points
• Deluxe membership is £4.99, and you get 500 free points
• Ultimate membership is £9.99 and you get 1000 free points

Is it worth it?

That depends on who you are.

If you're an avid cinema goer and attend fairly regularly you'll build up enough points to redeem a ticket for a seat every now and then. If you're buying for a family, and you buy food each time you go, points will rack up more quickly than say, me going by myself and not eating anything, and you might get a few free tickets a year out of it. Having said that, even if you only go once a year, you'll still accrue points and as long as you keep going long enough you'll eventualy build up balance enough to redeem, even if that takes you 14 years.

In short, it depends on how often you go on average as to whether it's worth the time and effort, and there's no hard-and-fast rule for this.

Which level of membership should I go for?

That depends on where you are.

Different Odeons have different ticket price tarrifs, yet the number of points you get per pound stays the same. This means that the more expensive your local odeon is, the more worthwhile buying a reward card is.

How worth it is calculable using maths:

The price of a standard ticket at my local Odeon is £7.30, and to buy one with reward points would cost 800 points. This means that for anybody who mostly visits Kettering's Odeon cinema, each point is worth:

730p / 800 = 0.91p.

This means that:

• If I buy the Classic membership for £1.99, I get (100 points x 91p =) £0.91 worth of points for the price, giving me a loss of £1.08.

• If I buy the Delux membership for £4.99, I get (500 x 91p = ) £4.56 worth of points, meaning that I lose £0.43.

• If I by the ultimate membership for £9.99, I get (1000 x 91p = ) £9.10 worth of points, which is a loss of 0.89.

Bear in mind that any loss in the initial purchase will eventually be absorbed by extra points that you earn with your purchases (it's a one-off joining fee, but there's no limit to your savings), so if you decide to get a rewards card it makes sense to go with the membership level that gives you the lowest loss. So for me, that's Delux membership.

To work out your own, do the following:

1. Work out how much your points are worth:

Divide your local cinema's standard ticket price (s) by 800:

w = s / 800

2. Work out how much the free points with each level of membership are worth to you:

Multiply how much each point is worth (w) to you by the number of points you get with each level of membership in turn (f_c for classic, etc):

• Classic: f_c = 100 x w
• Deluxe: f_d = 500 x w
• Ultimate: f_u = 1000 x w

3. Work out the difference (d) between the price you pay for the 'free' points and what they're worth to you:

• Classic: d = £1.99 - f_c
• Deluxe: d = £4.99 -  f_d
• Ultimate: d = £9.99 - f_u

4. Pick the membership level that gives you the lowest value for d.

Note that getting a negative number for d means that you'll actually be making a profit. Getting a value of 0 means that you break even.

Extra tips
To save even more money:

•  Pay for all cinema ticket and food purchases with your cashback credit card.
• Go to the cinema on a Wednesday and take advantage of the Orange Wednesdays promotion (even if you're not with Orange!)

Final note...
If I'd checked my email an hour earlier, I could have just directed you towards this.

How to save money - Use free software - legally!

As always, please read my disclaimer before acting on any information contained in this post.

Certain software packages are considered essential for certain daily activities. These are premium programs, and you pay a premium price:

• For word processing, spreadsheets and presentations it's Microsoft Office (currently retailing at around £100-£300 for the standard edition);
• For security it's Norton (£15 - £30 ish, at a quick browse);
• For photo editing it's Photoshop (nearly £600 for a fully-functional edition);

And so on...

If I can take office software as an example, there is much pressure to buy the current market leader: Microsoft Office 2007. This pressure comes largely from the fact that many businesses and schools use it, and you need something that's compatible with it on your home computer. You probably also feel more comfortable with it because it's what you've always used, because it's always been at work or at school. This also has a bearing on your purchase decision. But when you take into account the different packages that you buy in order to fulfil your various requirements, the costs of kitting your computer out with the latest and greatest are disturbingly high.

But does it need to be this way? I think not.

Make the change and go free!

No, I'm not advocating software piracy or illegal file/ program sharing of any kind. As always with these money saving posts I'm keeping it within the realms of legality with regards to the law at the time of writing. 

There are two types of free software available:

Freeware

Freeware is software that you can install and use for free (although sometimes a donation is requested), and is often made by independent developers or small groups.

Open Source

Open source software is similar to freeware, but with one major difference: the code used to write the program is freely available, meaning that anybody with an interest can work on improving it. This has benefits over traditionally bought software in that it is constantly being updated and improved, but user support is often limited.

Why is it free?

There are two main reasons why individual software packages may be available for free:

1. Promotion: the piece of software in question may be given to spread the name of the company distributing it, either in the hope of making it the industry standard or with an intent to encourage you to purchase an upgrade to versions with advanced features (or a mixture of the two).
2. There are many reasons why individuals are prepared to give up there time to produce and distribute free software. These include a reluctance to be tied to the commercial giants of the industry and a genuine interest in creating functional pieces of software. Many free software packages suggest making a donation to the cause, either financially or in terms of time and expertise. Some include varying amounts of advertising to create revenue, which is then presumably fed back into the software's development.

Some examples

In this section I'll give a few examples of alternative software that I currently use in place of commercially available, paid-for programs.

Office software

• OpenOffice.org

An open source software package comprising word processing, spreadsheet, database, drawing, equation editing and presentation programs. I have this installed alongside Microsoft Office 2007* on my school laptop (and use it preferentially to MS Office), and it is the only office suite installed on my personal laptop. Whilst preferentially saving files in the industry standard Open Document Format (which Microsoft conveniently ignores), it can open and save files in many different formats, including those used by the newest version of MS Office, so compatibility is not an issue**.

In my experience, it's a little slower to load than MS Office and the menus are not quite as user-friendly, but the difference isn't so much that the MS Office's three figure price tag begins to look at all attractive next to OpenOffice.org's complete lack of a price tag. Some of the functions differ between the two suits, and it can take a little time to adjust, but again a saving of at least £100 in many cases makes this more than worthwhile.

• Google Docs

This is an online word processor and spreadsheet package - there is no software to download and you can access your files (stored at google's end, not on your computer) from any internet-enabled computer. Google Docs will open just about any word processing or spreadsheet and supplies the option to download files in a format that's compatible with both the OpenOffice.org and Microsoft Office software packages.

Email

Neither of the above office programs provide an alternative to Microsoft's Outlook, which comes as part of their Office suite, so I'll include a couple here:

• Gmail

The future of email is online, and Gmail, google's free web-based email, is embracing the future like a large, jolly aunt. Gmail allows you so much storage space that it's near-limitless (I have over 2000 emails stored, and Gmail tells me that I'm using around 15% of my allocated space) and has features that transcend those of Outlook. It might take a little bit of getting used to, but believe me when I say that it's worth it- Gmail will change your email experience for the better. If you like Outlook's calendar features, google also do an online calendar, again with features that are at the very least comparable with those of Outlook. Google are constantly updating both services, and a recent update includes the ability to access your gmail and google calender offline using your browser (i.e. you don't need to download any special software to read and respond to emails).

• Thunderbird

If you really must download your email, then this is an Outlook alternative that I have tried. It's from Mozilla, the same company that provides us with the Firefox web browser (see below). It does most of what Outlook does with regards to your email, but doesn't include a calendar. If you like your calendars offline, you could try Sunbird (also from Mozilla) too. I have used both of these programs, but don't any more having migrated online with my email and calendar provision.

Security software

• Zonealarm

This is a basic firewall program that does what basic firewall programs do***. I've been using it for years now, and I've had no internet security issues. It's updated fairly regularly, which is a good sign with internet security software. They do a number of different products and packages, so make sure you find the Zonealarm Basic free download.

• Avast! Anti-virus

Avast! is free for home users and requires registration that lasts for one year. When the year's up, don't worry, all you have to do is re-register and enter the new code they send to in the appropriate box in the program. This piece of software monitors your system for signs of viruses. It scans your system in the background, you can choose to scan individual files, and it checks your system for bad things on startup. You can also schedule a 'boot-time scan' which means that the software will interrupt your computer before Windows has had a chance to start, scan the whole thing, and then carry on with the startup. Again, I've been using this program for years. It's updated at least daily usually (a good thing) and I've had no problems, either with the software itself or with viruses getting through (even though it has detected a couple and shown them the door).

Image/ photo manipulation

• Gimp

This isn't as powerful as photoshop, but for most users will be more than adequate. I haven't used this program much (because I don't do much image manipulating), but I get the feeling that I have barely scratched the surface of what it can do.

Audio/ video

• Audacity

An open source program for recording and editing sounds. Again, I don't do much of this, but I have found the basic features easy to get my head round, and I was directed towards it by an audio-visual enthusiast friend of mine who does do a lot of recording and editing.

Web browsing

• Firefox

A free, non-Microsoft alternative to Internet Explorer. Similar functions, but open source and therefore more customisable and faster updating than the market leader.

• Google Chrome

Another product from google, this browser is still a beta****, but looks set to become the new big thing in the world of internet browsing. It's my preferred browser at the moment, although there are a few gremlins that annoy me now and then. It launches much faster than either Internet Explorer or Firefox, and has a menu style that allows more of the screen to be used for actually viewing websites. It also has an innovative combined address/search bar, which I really like.

Other alternatives

As I mentioned earlier, the software that I have just listed are just a tiny selection of what's available, and are programs that I, personally, have used in place of more expensive commercial software. There are plenty of alternatives available, and if you're interested in 'going open source', I'd advise talking to any of the geekier mates or colleagues you might have, and doing a web search for "open source alternatives to [name of software that you currently use]". To start you off, one website that looks like it might be both comprehensive and useful is Open Source as Alternative.

The biggie

The biggest and arguably most difficult commercial-open source change to make is that of operating system. The chances are that you're reading this from a computer running a windows- based operating system (XP, Vista, maybe even ME). I haven't made that particular switch yet, but next time I need to buy a new laptop or desktop computer, I fully intend to go open source with my operating system as well.

I'll leave you with a suggestion: have a look for a laptop or desktop computer that comes with Windows Vista. Then try to find a machine with similar specifications that comes with some breed of Linux operating system. Note the difference in price.

* The school paid for it, not me.

** This isn't strictly true: Whilst OpenOffice.org will open and edit just about anything, Microsoft Office can't read Open Document files. If this would be an issue for you, it's easy to set the Microsoft Office formats as the default for OpenOffice.org.

*** If you're not sure, here's a basic idea: a firewall is your computer's bouncer on the door to the internet. If it's not on the list, it's not getting in. It's your first line of defence against viruses, trojans, worms and hackers.

**** Put simply, it's not finished yet.

How to save money - Get a credit card!

First off, please read my disclaimer post.

With that out of the way, you can rub your eyes in disbelief at the title of this post: save money by getting a credit card? You must be out of your mind!

No. Well, maybe, but hear me out:

I'm talking about a particular type of credit card: cashback. There are a few providers that will pay you a small percentage (anywhere from under 1% up to around 5% with introductory offers) of whatever amount you spend on your card.


How?
Just follow these simple steps:

1. Get a cashback credit card
Shop around, and be mindful of fees. I signed up for an Egg Money card a couple of years ago, and whilst they're still giving cashback on all purchases, new customers will also have to pay a £1 per month fee to use the card. Depending on how much you spend, you can still end up quids-in, but for some people you'll be out of pocket at the end of the month, which beats the point. This page at MoneySavingExpert.com is usually pretty up to date with regards to the best offers available, but deals change so check the facts at source before signing up!

2. Set up a direct debit to pay off any outstanding balance in full every month
This step is crucial. It's so easy to do with most companies - mine was set up automatically and operational within a few days. Why bother? It means that you automatically clear your debt every month, therefore removing the possibility of incurring interest charges. The interest charges on any credit card will be considerably higher than any cashback offer, which means that if you pay any interest at all, you end up out of pocket.

3. Use your cashback card to pay for everything
Use your cashback card to pay for things wherever possible: where you would normally pay with a debit card, cash, cheque, I.O.U, string or gold pieces, use your cashback card instead. This might sound scary, but as long as you don't usually go overdrawn and you've followed step 2 above, you shouldn't have any problems at all.


Why?
There are a number of benefits to taking this simple step. I'll outline a few of them below:

• The biggest reason, and the whole point of this post, is that everything you buy will be effectively 1 or 2% (depending on your rate) cheaper: you'll never see this cashback in your pocket (it's usually applied to your credit card account on or near your anniversary), but less money will be leaving it in the first place.
• To put it in perspective, imagine you're spending £10,000 every year on your 1% cashback credit card. At renewal, you'll get £100 back on your bill. This might not sound like a lot compared with what you spent, but remember that this is £100 that you wouldn't otherwise have. Every little helps.
• You're better protected for two reasons: Firstly, the credit card is a buffer between criminals and your bank account. If a crim gets your debit card and the right details, he has access to your bank account. If he manages to get hold of your credit card, you can isolate him from your main money store much more easily. Secondly, if you buy anything over £100 on a credit card and things go wrong (including the company you purchased from going bankrupt) your credit card issuer is liable, and you have a level of insurance as standard that you just don't get paying by other means.
• Everything you buy will be listed in one place, making it easier to see where your money is spent each month, and therefore simplifying budgeting. My credit card issuer goes one step further and automatically categorises my expenditure so I can see at a glance how much I spend each month on, for example, petrol, eating out and supermarket shopping.
• If you regularly pay for things that you can reclaim from your employer as expenses, you'll actually make money out of this: pay for something, get cashback, then get reimbursed by your employer: Free money!

Some words of warning!

• Don't ever, EVER withdraw cash on your credit card or use the credit card cheques that some companies send out automatically. These work under different rules, and you'll probably end up paying a fee as well as buckets of interest that far outweighs what you're gaining from the cashback portion of the card.
• Don't transfer balances from elsewhere to your cashback card: many cashback cards have seductive introductory balance transfer rates, which is not surprising as any balance that's deducted from your card will come out of your transferred balance preferentially, meaning that you'll end up paying interest on your higher-rate spending debts.
• Keep an eye open for fees that may be introduced. Your supplier is legally obliged to tell you if  they are intending to introduce a fee, so make sure you read any letters they send you rather than leaving them to rot on the sideboard with the rest of the post.

A top tip for anyone who's read this far!

Many cashback credit cards have introductory offers that give you an elevated cashback rate for the first few months of use. If you're shrewd, you'll apply for your card at a time which means you'll be taking advantage of the introductory rate at a time of heavy spending- just before Christmas, for example.

Please feel free to post your comments, concerns, experiences and suggestions, and if you haven't already, please read my disclaimer post.

How to save money - A disclaimer

I'll be making posts from time to time about my experiences of cutting costs in various different areas. I must stress first and foremost that the things I write about are from my experiences only, and I will not write about things that I haven't personally tried.

Having said that, I am not financially qualified, so there may well be issues that I don't think to cover. You are more than welcome to follow my lead on any and all of the things I suggest, but please bear in mind that whatever you decide to do is your responsibility. Anything you do should be researched and considered: please don't take anything I say for granted. The world of finance is a rapidly changing one, in terms of rules and regulations as well as the market. I won't suggest anything that is illegal (to my knowledge) at the time of writing, but if you want to try anything out for yourselves, I suggest doing a bit of research and making sure that the rules haven't changed in the meantime.

In short, I won't be held responsible for anything that may happen to you (good or bad!) as a result of trying out anything I suggest in this blog. Your life is your responsibility, and "he told me to" just won't wash!

Having said that, I'd love to hear some of your success stories, as well as anything you've tried that I haven't commented on yet.

As I've mentioned before, a good place to start researching most matters of a financial matter is Martin Lewis's website MoneySavingExpert.com.

Happy saving!

How to save money - A good website

I'm a little bit obsessive over certain things. Anybody who knows me can confirm that for you. One of those things is not spending more money than I have to. Or, even better, spending less money than I have to. If I have to make a new purchase, especially big ones, I put inordinate amounts of time into researching the best route, financially, for doing so.

In time I'll make some posts about specific things I do regularly to shave off a few pence (even pounds) here and there, and maybe a few one-offs as I come across them. But for now, I'd like to introduce you to a website that has given me the inspiration to try a number of the money-saving things that I have, and is usually my first port of call when I have any of the larger financial decisions looming.

The website is Martin Lewis's MoneySavingExpert.com. Martin Lewis is an expert and enthusiast on all things financial. He has a regular Friday afternoon slot on Jeremy Vine's BBC2 radio show, which is where I was introduced to him and his website. The site contains obscene quantities of advice, facts and figures on everything you can possibly think of (and a few more besides) on the subject of money, with a distinct bent towards spending less of it.

From buying new cars to choosing a new credit card; from buying insurance to reclaiming bank charges; from calculating your budget to stashing your cash, it's all there. It's well worth taking a look whether you see yourself as financially savvy or a complete savings-novice- I can guarantee there'll be something there for most people that will open your eyes.

There's a mailing list that you can join, various online financial calculators, links to resources, and even a forum that you can join to talk to other avid moneysavers. The best thing about the website, though, is that although it's a brilliant, useful, accurate and well-researched resource, it's also absolutely free to use.

How to update twitter for free on your mobile phone

For information, this 'how to' will also be useful to people who just want to update twitter from Windows Live Messenger; just ignore the bits about phones if that's you.

Being somewhat behind certain parts of the ongoing technological revolution*, I have just this week signed up to twitter. At first, I quite enjoyed finding people I know who are already on twitter - so far I have reached the dizzy heights of 13 followers! Then I was pointed towards some celebrity twitter profiles. Now, I'm not one for celebrity culture**, but I have been introduced to the delights that are Stephen Fry's and Eddie Izzard's twitter posts.

Earlier today, Stephen Fry posted some brief comments about a new wristphone he was playing with, and a couple of hours later, Eddie Izzard posted a photograph of a rather nice butterfly he met as he continues with his Sport Relief Challenge for Comic Relief. The important thing about these comments, for me, was that they were about what they were doing at that moment in time. It was a window into their respective worlds, which is kind of what twitter (and other social networking tools) is about. They both tweet*** whenever they feel like it; whenever they have something to say or share. I wanted to be able to that too. They can do it because they both have iphones. I could buy one, but I don't want to. I just don't use my phone often enough to justify the (at least) 100% increase on my current monthly contract price in order to get one.

I googled the subject, and found out pretty quickly that twitter have a text update service, but that this was charged at international rates by most of the UK's mobile service providers (I understand that o2 don't treat twitter's update number as an international one, but don't quote me on that). This meant that I couldn't do something as simple as sending a text message to update without paying on top of my monthly contract for it.

But I found another way. And the best thing is that it involved zero extra expenditure on my part.


Will it work for everyone?
No. You need to have the following things in place to use my method for updating twitter for free via your mobile phone:

1. You need to be a 3 mobile customer (I pay £15/month and they sometimes have cheaper deals for new customers).
2. You need to have a phone model that will run Windows Live Messenger (go to this page, scroll down, enter your phone's make and model, click 'submit' and it'll tell you whether WLM can be used on it)

If you're o.k with these two conditions, read on (if not, sorry I can't help you!)


How do I update twitter for free, then?
Follow these steps (if you already have Windows Live Messenger on your mobile, you can skip steps 1 & 2, and I'm assuming you already have an account at twitter):

1. If you don't have one already, get yourself a Windows Live login.
2. Go to this page, scroll down and enter your mobile number. Click 'submit' and you'll receive a text message from 3 with a link in it (it arrived pretty quickly for me). Navigate to this link (on your phone) and download Windows Live Messenger. It should install automatically once the download finishes.
3. Create an account at Ping.fm. Follow the instructions to add your twitter account to your social networks list.
4. Go to 'your dashboard' at ping.fm, scroll down and find Windows Live Messenger under 'Services / Tools'. Click it, and follow the instructions.
5. Log in to your Windows Live Messenger account (you can do this on your phone or on your computer; makes no difference) and add 'pingdotfm@live.com' as a contact. This is a 'bot'.
6. When you set up Windows Live Messenger at your ping.fm account (step 4), it will have given you a verification code. Send this to the bot you have just added to your Windows Live Messenger list. The bot will appear to be offline, but send it anyway. You should get a rather polite message to say that your code has been accepted.
7. You're done! Whenever you want to update twitter while you're away from a computer, just open up WLM on your phone and send a message to the bot. It'll send a confirmation message back, and update twitter for you!

If you've found this useful, feel free to pass it on (retweet, share on Facebook etc- there are a couple of links towards the top right of this page!)


More information
Ping.fm can be used to update many different social networks from many different sources; the how-to above is just one application.

You could, for example, set up your ping.fm account so that when you send an update to your Windows Live Messenger bot, it sends the same update not only to your twitter feed, but also to Facebook, myspace, yahoo, photobucket, flickr... and many more.

Or, if WLM isn't your bag, you could update the same sites and more from google talk, jabber, skype, AOL or even via email or text message.

Also, as far as I understand it, you can set up different groups to do different things. For example, you could set up a bot that will update all of your blogs, but leave your social networking statuses alone. And then you could send a text that updated some of your social networking profiles. Or you could send a message from skype that updates all of your public profiles, and then a separate email that automatically updates your public ones. The possibilities appear to be all but endless.




* I put this down to being a teacher. Something about leather elbow patches just takes you back in time
** I don't care who Jordan is divorcing this week, or who has been getting out of a taxi without any underwear on. Nor do I care who Jenifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are not seeing any more, or whether George Michael's been caught driving under the influence of Lucozade again
*** Look, I'm learning the lingo!

How to save money on cinema tickets

I'm pretty sure most people know about Orange's 2 4 1 ongoing promotional deal, so I won't go on too long about what it is. I would like to talk about some of the less obvious parts of the deal, though, as well as what to do if you're not actually a customer of Orange mobile.


Just in case you don't know
"Orange Wednesdays" are Orange's way of acquiring and keeping more customers. It is, to be honest, genius. Movie prices are exorbitant these days, but simply texting the world 'Film' to the number '241' gets you a code that you show the ticket salesperson at your local participating cinema (check the cinema chain's website for this- I know most if not all Odeon cinemas are included, but I'm not sure about any others) when you're purchasing tickets, and it halves the price from (for example) £7.10 each* to £7.10 for two of you.


What's the catch?
A very shrewd question to ask! There are two catches:

1. It costs 35p to receive the text message with the ticket number in it. Compare this, though to the fact that you're saving £7.10*, and you're actually £6.75 up.
2. You need to be a customer of Orange.

My mobile's with 3 / T-Mobile / O2 / Virgin / etc, so I'm stuffed, right?
Not so. There are a couple of things you need to consider.

Firstly, you don't necessarily need an Orange mobile to qualify for Orange Wendesdays. If you are an Orange internet customer (either home broadband or dialup) you qualify too. Find out how to get your ticket here.

Secondly, it costs just £1 to get an Orange Pay As You Go sim card of your own. All you need is a phone to put it in. Most people have an old phone lying around the house, or know someone else who does, so this is worth doing in order to save money on cinema trips even if you only use it once. Even better, from time to time Orange allow you to request Orange PAYG sim cards for free. You can even get cashback on some requests, if you look in the right places (such as TopCashback- they'll pay you 60p for ordering one at the moment).


Any catches with this method?
Just the one. In the Orange Wednesdays T&Cs it states 'Text tickets are issued on a priority basis to active customers who spend over £5 per month with Orange. Orange may revise the terms of this promotion from time to time.' I haven't heard of any problems because of this so far, though.


So far you've told us how to get free cinema tickets and free Orange sim cards. Could there possibly be any more?

• Yes! This doesn't seem to be widely known at the moment, but if you've got your Orange Wednesdays ticket, you can also get 2 for 1 pizza at Pizza Express** to complete the package of your Wednesday night out. You just need to download the voucher from http://web.orange.co.uk/article/pizzaexpress/ and take it to your nearest Pizza Express restaurant. You'll also need to show your Orange Wednesdays text ticket.
• Also, Odeon now have their own rewards card. See my blog post for details and to find out if it's worth it.
• Finally, as with everything, don't forget to use your cashback credit card to pay for all purchases in order to maximise your savings!

*The cost for a standard seat on a Wednesday evening at my local Odeon cinema at the time of writing.
** Only on Wednesdays, hence being part of the Orange Wednesdays promotion.

How to save money when buying London Theatre Tickets

If you're desperate to see one particular West End production, then this post probably won't help you, and you'd probably better off buying your full price tickets in advance online or over the phone (try http://www.londontheatre.co.uk/ for info).
If, however, you're in a mind to go to London to see a show, but you're not really bothered which one, or you have a handful you'd be happy to see, please read on.

The best, cheapest and easiest way to see a London theatre production is, in my opinion, to hop on a train (might post about the best way to get train tickets at a later date) and head to the Capital. When you get there, head straight for Leicester square. Dotted around the square are numerous ticket booths which are selling off last-minute tickets for the vast majority of the shows available in the West End. Don't run for the first booth you see- take your time, wander around and have a look at the what's on offer (most of the booths have stands outside them current prices listed for a number of different shows). Prices for individual shows can vary wildly from booth to booth, but most will represent a considerable saving on full price tickets- sometimes well over 50%.


What time should I get to Leicester Square and start looking?

If you get there early in the day you'll have your pick of the shows and seating locations that are left over for that day's performances, but the prices may not yet have reached their lowest point. If you turn up a couple of hours before the evening performances are due to start the prices will be as low as they're going to get, but you run the risk of the shows you want to see being sold out before you get there. It very much depends on what your priorities are. One suggestion is to get there early, check out some of the prices, then if you feel it's worth leaving it for a couple of hours, do something else* for a while.


Anything else I should consider?

Two things spring to mind as I'm writing:

First thing: There are always differently priced seats available- sitting in the stalls gives you a better view than ducking under the rafters in the dress circle, but you pay for it. The same is true with the reduced priced tickets. They're all reduced, but upper circle tickets are still cheaper than dress circle tickets, which are still cheaper than seats in the stalls. Again, what you go for depends on your priorities: Are you looking for the cheapest evening out you can muster, or are you looking at getting a discount on more highly sought after seats? If it's the latter, bear in mind that cheaper tickets may be upgraded once you arrive at the venue if few of the more expensive seats have been sold. See the example of our Blood Brothers trip below.

Second thing: Be aware that the booths will charge a 'booking fee' on top of ticket prices. This is usually around £2, so doesn't push the price up too much- certainly not into the realms of the full-price tickets!


Examples

• Blood Brothers: Purchased upper circle seats for £20 each (full price: £44.65). Upgraded on entry to the Phoenix theatre to dress circle seats (full price: £60.60). Saving: £40.60 (67%).
• We Will Rock You: Purchased circle seats for £20 each (full price: £54.85). Saving: £34.85 (64%).

More information

Just some of the shows on in London at the moment:

• Blood Brothers
• We Will Rock You
• Les Miserables
• Oliver!
• Wicked
  

*Like what? If you've got to Leicester Square, chances are you have a travel card, so London is your oyster- there are free museums dotted here and there and various tourist attractions with varying levels of admittance prices. If you don't have a travel card and want to stick around for a while, there are cafés and restaurants galore in Leicester square itself.