This week we were

PlanningTo work through the winners of the Hugo Prize for sci-fi literature. The main award went to Connie Willis's Blackout/All Clear.

EnjoyingIan Burns's Supreme Fiction at the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny. Inventive sculptures produce surprising images. Ignore the artspeak on the gallery's website: just delight in the art.

GivingOne star to One Day, the new Anne Hathaway film. It'll make no difference to its box-office takings.

ReadingSean Hood, a scriptwriter for Conan the Barbarian, on what it's like when your movie flops. Not good, apparently. url.ie/cxhq.

GoingTo DLR Mountains to Sea book festival. There are some faces familiar from other books festivals, but it will be worth going to just to see the US writer Robert Coover delivering the Beckett Address, and there is a host of workshops and other events; mountainstosea.ie.

NotingThat Electric Picnic won't be the only festival on this and other islands next weekend. For something altogether different, try the Cape Clear Island International Storytelling Festival; capeclearstorytelling.com.

PlayingFor Ireland at the Aviva through the Rugby World Cup 2011Xbox/PS3 game. Crouch, touch, pause, etc.

SiftingThrough the pages of magazines past at Brand New Retro (brandnewretro.wordpress.com). Our favourite is the 1982 issue of Bullmagazine, in which it's claimed Senator Shane Ross demanded that the IMF be called to solve our problems. A little bit of history repeating itself, with some fantastic images to boot.