Write a tweet mentioning "Spooks" or including hashtags like #BBCSpooks and one or more of the regular main characters from the series will follow you and may well reply to your tweets.
From the boss, Harry, to agents like Ros, Lucas and Dimitri and Ruth who rarely gets away from the Grid your favourite Spook is now just a tweet away.
Given the content of some of the tweets I doubt the BBC are running the campaign.
How's your working week? Your Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 routine? Can you last it out until your next couple of days off? There's a drivetime presenter on a local radio station near me who regularly counts down the days until the weekend.
At twenty past four today he said: "You're nearly through Monday, well done, only four more days 'til the weekend." Well, thanks.
I've heard him do similar links before, at various times in the week, and less than an hour later he again congratulated me for making it through Monday. Of course he's trying to connect with the listener, but isn't this a bit misguided and maybe even old-hat? What about people who enjoy their work, have a laugh with colleagues and escape from their families for a while?
To suggest that we all dislike work, and will feel solidarity with a man paid to talk a bit in between the records, seems to me to be underestimating your listener a bit.
And then what about shift workers getting ready to leave for night duty or who work over the weekend? Continuously counting down to the traditional weekend doesn't seem to fit in with the way that more and more of us are working outside of the nine to five.
And if you do work a vanilla five day week, do you really need reminding on a Monday afternoon that your week has only just begun?
Maps are cool. Being able to read a map is even cooler.
We're lucky in the UK to have the Ordnance Survey making beautiful, useful maps. Compared with maps elsewhere, such as the yellow covered Michelin maps available in France, OS maps are elegant and easy to interpret. Having a local map can make a day out so much more interesting, and you have the added bonus of being able to use the map to actually help you find your way around.
Being able to find places on a map, or tell someone else where a location is on a map requires you to understand and be able to use six figure grid referencing (link to pdf file). This isn't too tricky, and most of the time when you're outside you can use landmarks around you to work out where on the map you are and so get a grid reference. But when the weather's bad or it's dark or there aren't many useful landmarks it can be tricker. This is where GridPoint GB comes in.
GridPoint GB is a free app for the iPhone that takes GPS data and converts it into an OS grid reference. It's simple and easy to use. Yesterday we were walking on the coast between Whitby and Robin Hood's Bay, and I wanted to know where we were. I narrowed it down to two places a few hundred meters apart, and GridPoint GB confirmed which of the two spots we were at.
It's a good little app that simply does its job without trying to be too clever. Out and about with a map it's a useful extra tool to have in your pocket. Obviously, given that it uses OS data, it's only useful in the UK.
We were at the rather excellent National Railway museum in York yesterday. It's one of the children's favourite days out, and like most museum's entry is free* so it's also one of my favourite days out.
I'm always impressed by the red polo shirted Explainers who are on hand to tell you about the exhibits, whether as part of a formal talk or as they're accosted by curious visitors wandering around the cavernous exhibition spaces.
Yesterday we saw a performance of From Rocket to Bullet, a 30 minute long science talk explaining the physics that make it possible for different types of trains to move. It really was a perfomance too, with lively presentation from the duo of explainers involved.
The talk was a canter through Newtons 3 laws of motion, with interesting demonstrations of each and how they apply to getting big heavy hunks of metal (or trains) to move. Elephants were catapulted, (small) explosions were set off and Barbie was shot out of a steam cannon. Twice.
The watching children were absorbed by all this, and the Explainers involved their audience in most of the demonstrations - apart from the ones involving fast moving doll projectiles. The museum often has unexpected events and activities for children and adults to take part in, especially during the school holidays. Unexpected if like us you just turn up and don't plan your visit, but the Museum's website does have information about all the demonstrations and events. Summer may be over, but there'll be more at half-term in October.
Harry 
