I read an interesting article on the BBC website today about a prototype cycle aid called the Copenhagen Wheel. This new project developed by MIT, with help from Ducati Energia and the Italian Ministry for the Environment promises to change the way we cycle, whether to and from work or just for fun.

The Copenhagen Wheel can be fitted to almost any bicycle and features an oversized central hub, housing various electronic gadgets designed to make it easier to ditch your car and take your bike instead. The wheels hub can store energy every time the rider pulls the brakes, which can be used to give the rider a boost when riding uphill or negotiating traffic; this is similar to the Kinetic Energy Recovery System (KERS) used by Formula One cars.

As well as giving riders a handy boost, the Copenhagen Wheel also has a series of sensors and Bluetooth connectivity, which can connect to a users iPhone giving information about the speed of the bike, direction and the distance travelled as well as collecting data on air pollution and even where the riders friends are.

The Copenhagen Wheel is expected to go into production next year; there is no information on how much it will cost at the moment.

Will this new product get people out of their cars and on to their bikes? It might sway a few people who are thinking about it, but I can see a bigger benefit to the people who already ride their bikes to work and the fact that you can fit it to almost any bicycle makes it even more of a beneficial project.

Although I don’t listen to a lot of music or radio, apart from driving to and from work, I have been intrigued by the fight for the Christmas number 1 this year.

For the last few years the coveted Christmas number 1spot has been filled by the winner of X Factor (a TV show that my wife watches while I play the Xbox normally), but this year a Facebook group is hitting back at manufactured pop, asking people to download Rage Against the Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’ instead of Joe McElderry’s Miley Cyrus cover ‘The Climb’.

Most of the reports I have read say that the Rage Against the machine track is in the lead at the moment, but the X Factor song is favourite to win at the end of the week as the CD version of the song becomes available on Wednesday.

Who will win? Well we will just have to wait and see, but it would be nice to knock Simon Cowell off the top spot, even if it’s just for a little while!

When I say my wife goes shopping, I mean I get dragged along as well Now like most men I don’t really like shopping and don’t see how my wife can spend nearly 5 hours on the high street looking in every shop and through every clothes rail, but each to their own.

My wife wanted a new dress for her Christmas party, which is quite a formal affair where the men wear tuxedos and the women wear long dresses, but luckily I already have a tuxedo so it was only my wife to sort out. We left the house at 11am on Saturday and started trawling the high street looking in brand name stores as well as boutique clothes shops for the perfect dress.

After a couple of hours of shopping and becoming increasingly irritated at the amount of people blocking doorways and isles, my wife finally found a dress she liked in the Republic. She tried it on and asked me what I thought, which I replied ‘it looks great’ as I had been saying all day in the hope of ending the shopping early and watching the football.

She decided to get it and I was surprised to find out it only cost £30 for the dark blue formal dress (like this one). We loaded up the car (I bought myself the Band of Brothers box set on Blu-ray from HMV) and headed home.

I got back just in time to see the Man Utd match, they lost 1-0 but at least the Christmas party is sorted!