Well, come capital of culture year everything will be 08 this and 08 that, and the city will be bedecked in the figures 0 and 8. There's doubters saying the city won't be ready, however earlier this week the webteam took a short stroll around town and were able to spot one or two 08's already in place.

It's difficult to explain what I'm on about without having a quick look through the flickr gallery of the results (slideshow available), it's fun to spot them (honest) and if you see one, send it to us. If you are a flickr member you can send images to the group automatically, everyone else will have to use our photo upload function to send us their images.

We've also created a google map showing the locations of the 08 photos.

What a miserable start to the day, to rush downstairs and turn the cricket on to hear England all out Downunder and Australia progressing tidly towards an unlikely victory 'against the head' in the 2nd Ashes Test.

Clicking just anywhere to get the cricket off of my web browser, my mood was slightly cheered by stumbling across Sam's post about the excellent decorative arts selection of vintage christmas e-cards and then depressed again to find a cricket related one (pictured).

This card entitled 'Anxious moments' (1.30am this morning anyone ?) was posted on the 24 December 1884 to a Robt Thomas Esq with the message 'with David's sincere wishes that you may "score one" this xmas'. Maybe you have an Australian colleague that you could use the e-card to send some sporting congratulations to (I did say maybe) and at the same time perhaps hand them the ashes.

The only crumb of comfort I can find in this card (other than that little cricket insect finding some late reverse swing with the kookaburra ball) is that when it was sent during the 8th Ashes series in 1884/1885 also in Australia: England had just won the first test and went on to win the 2nd, then Australia came back from two tests down! to level things up (so it is possible) before err England completed a 3-2 series win.

You can watch highlights of each day's play during the ashes series on the BBC website, and keep up with latest stories from the Test Match Special team on The blog from the boundary blog.