329 days ago, I changed the masthead of this site. Today, I’ve changed it back.

The bold italic Verdana version I’ve reinstated today was always a key part of the site’s identity. Until 329 days ago, I’d used it for almost seven years. Barring a font and colour change, the logo had been the same since for almost nine years. As I’ve been tidying things up in the site design this week, I’ve been taking inspiration from some of the old layouts. Looking at them, it seemed clear to me that ditching that original logo was a mistake: the replacement was weaker, with fewer elements yet somehow less cohesion. So I’ve brought the old one back.

If you’re reading this on the site, you’ll notice that I’ve redesigned the “default” post template to a fairly radical degree. This includes bolder headlines (in the slightly quirky font used in the logo I’ve just ditched), and a plain white background (based on readers’ feedback). I hope too that it looks a little more formal. My thinking was that most of the casual content I post now has its own template, so the content using this template is likely to be my more formal news commentary and the like. This post clearly excepted…! I haven’t applied this design retrospectively, because elements of the contents of those posts were designed to fit the old template.

I’ve reduced the amount of advertising on the site, removing ad spaces that were only bringing in the barest trickle of revenue. There are countless other tweaks to the design across the site, too, and I hope the overall effect is that it looks a little bit tidier. I hope the font tweaks make reading the text a little easier, too. Feel free to leave any suggestions, observations, moans, etc in the comments.

If you’d visited this site four years ago, this is what you’d have seen. There are some elements of that design which I think are better than the ones I have today. And so… watch this space!

Mr Dispenser, Twitter’s highly entertaining anonymous pharmacist, has gone and written a book. He’s compiled just over 130 pages worth of pharmacy-based jokes, anecdotes, and blog posts – and the result is genuinely laugh-out-loud funny.

As a former hospital doctor, I didn’t really know what pharmacists got up to – least of all community pharmacists. The ward pharmacists were friendly folk who stalked the wards correcting my prescriptions in green ink, and putting up with incessant questions posed by curious junior doctors like me. They always seemed to know the answers. I guess my closest brush with community pharmacists came when I worked in general practice, and I’d occasionally get a phone call asking if I really meant to prescribe a drug – to which the answer was almost invariably “No”.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that pharmacists were generally the people, along with nurses, who routinely saved my ass, so I guess I’m pretty well disposed towards them. And from Mr Dispenser’s tweets, I was fairly sure they had a good sense of humour, too.

Pills, Thrills and Methadone Spills removed any doubt. Community pharmacists share a similar geeky and absurdist sense of humour with many GPs and hospital doctors, which means that the humour in this volume aimed directly at my funny bone. I laughed out loud repeatedly when reading this, most often at the pithy anecdotes of insane situations in which pharmacists find themselves – and even when the book is gently (or not so gently!) ribbing doctors. I even get quoted in there at one point!

More than just humour, though, Pills, Thrills and Methadone Spills gave me a better appreciation for what community pharmacists do all day. In that sense, it was even a little bit educational. And a proportion of the profits from the book is being donated to charity.

All of that said, this probably isn’t a book for a general audience. It’s very much aimed at pharmacists. As a non-pharmacist, some bits went over my head to some extent, and I’d imagine that those outside of healthcare would struggle to see the funny side of much of the book. And, if I’m being very picky, I’d probably have liked a bit of a narrative thread in there somewhere too. But Pills, Thrills and Methadone Spills is sure to raise a smile among pharmacists, pharmacy students, and perhaps some more of the medical community besides.

Pills, Thrills and Methadone Spills is available now from amazon.co.uk on Kindle. A paperback is coming later in the year. Mr Dispenser is @MrDispenser on Twitter.

In the interests of full transparency, I declare that I was sent a free electronic review copy of this book. In accordance with this site’s ethical review policy, I have not accepted payment for this review, I have written this review without regard to the source of the product, and I have made a charitable donation equivalent to the retail cost of the e-book.

Today’s the 8th January, one of the commonest days for New Years Resolutions to be forgotten. And, after a week, I’m fairly sick of posting pictures of my own face…

But hey, this is my scrapbook, and I can do what I want with it! And today, I want to post a link to this intriguing brief article by Time’s science editor Jeffrey Kluger about the risks of getting ill in space. It’s really very good!

Here’s me in the office at work. When this was taken, I was writing a lecture for first-year medical students about public health data sources, which isn’t the easiest topic to make engaging! I’m due to deliver it later this month.

I really enjoy teaching as part of my role, and do a fair bit of it. Having said that, this will be the first time I’ve presented to a big scary lecture theatre full of people since I left medical school myself…! Here’s hoping I don’t die of stage fright!

Here I am by Kielder Water, the UK’s largest man made lake. It holds 200 billion litres of water – that’s more than 3 million times what the average person drinks in their lifetime!

Wendy and I had a lovely walk through Kielder Forest – Europe’s largest man made forest – which stands on the banks of Kielder Water. It was a bit chilly, though! We also had a look at the dam and hydroelectric plant, which were quite interesting to see!

Here’s me with Crimbo, the smallest of the Metrocentre’s oversized reindeer! It’s almost twelfth night, so I guess they’ll have to be dismantled soon!

Here, I’m outside the Wolfson Building at Durham University’s Queen’s Campus in Thornaby – just a short hop across the river from Stockton.

This is a very important building. It is not only home to the North East Public Health Observatory, it’s also the building where an informal reception for new medical students was held (at least in my day!). It was at that very reception in this very building that Wendy remembers first seeing me across a crowded room… although we didn’t formally meet until a couple of days later.

The rest, as they say, is history!

This week’s article is one of Jon Ronson’s for The Guardian, looking at the disappearance of cruise ship workers, and Rebecca Coriam’s case in particular. It’s an article that asks more questions than it answers, and is really quite harrowing.

This week’s Pod Delusion is out now! In it, you can hear me wittering on about Captain Scarlet, and lots of really interesting stuff, too: an interview with the wonderful Gia Milinovich, the latest on the bizarre CBeebies Get Well Soon row, a bit of public health discussion of the census by Sean Davidson, and loads more good stuff besides. So why not make listening every week your new year resolution?