Welcome to this week's Picks. The continued deluge has prompted us into several unhealthy areas of speculation. All this week the office has been full of tepid conversations which start: "Wouldn't it be fun if ..." and end, almost invariably, with the curt response "no!" So, without further ado, here are this week's Picks:

We have occasionally speculated that, if owners eventually come to take after their pets, websites come to resemble their subjects? Take Petcat.com for example. Devoted to what we here at Picks know simply as dogfood, Petcat.com is the kind of website that doesn't feel it has to like you -- which probably explains the long wait for an animation that you can almost certainly live without -- though it demands that you like it. And, funnily enough, there's a moment (probably while your creating you're own cyber puss) when you realise that you do.

Quite frankly, gentle surfer, you can keep your tamagotchi (which is P. T. Barnum's phrase "There's one born every minute" translated into Japanese), this is much more fun. In no time at all we had generated our own web-mog. It's a British Blue shorthair called 'Thing', which, just to be nasty, we forced to live in Bulgaria. It has its own webpage, filled with cat-stuff about spraying, mewing and the effects of neutering. It looks great in a pinky-yellowy way and we'd probably be interested in it, if we were genuine cat-lovers. But there is a limit.

Still, it's a well known fact that cats are better than moles and that moles are (marginally) better than students. Except, as is less well known, when the latter two morph into Red Mole, which would be a lifestyle guide for students and the recently graduated, if they actually had anything so aspirational as a lifestyle. Run by the National Union of Students, this is packed with solid information on getting jobs -- working mole -- being poor -- mole skint -- and drinking yourself stupid (sorry, that's typo -- it should read: going out for the evening) -- mole about town.

Now that we are old enough to look back on our student days with slightly uncomfortable nostalgia, we can say that we have learnt that sometimes the world will remind you that not all change is for the worse, despite appearances. The matter of nuclear bunkers, for instance. When we last trampled the sapling of knowledge in the groves of academe, nuclear bunkers were something you marched in protest against. Now Scotland's Secret Bunker is giving away "an amazing family ticket" to the winner of its monthly competition.

Our first question -- what can possibly be amazing about a ticket? -- subsides quickly. The front page animation shows a nuclear family being obliterated in the white heat of a technological explosion rather more violent than that advocated by Harold Wilson. Then the air fills with the unearthly caterwaul of a siren and the tour of a place, that was only taken off the Official Secrets list in 1993, gets underway. Visit the Plant Room, the Switchboard (2,800 external lines, protected from the electromatnegic pulse of an atomic blast by an enormous Faraday cage), and the RAF Ops Room.

We suppose that it is a sign of progress, when this rather sinister building feels free to market itself with the semi-jokey tagline "Scotland's best kept secret". Although, such are the machiavellian minds of our military men, we can't help wondering if it's just some official bod's way of sticking two fingers up at The Sunday Post, which would certainly have loved to plaster it all over their front page.

Nowadays they go for rather less controversial stuff. Last weeks News section headlined a man who banned a "15-year-old Netaholic" from his cybercafe (we love it when journalists write about the Web), fuelling fears raised by "shock new research" that "countless computer users" are hooked on the net. When you read on you find this "research" is that the Netaholics Anonymous website has recorded 400,000 hits. A "Swiss Internet addiction researcher" is thoughtfully on hand with a soundbite.

So, in the interest of research, we looked at that Netaholics Anonymous site and several others we found under the Yahoo! category humour: internet addiction. It's quite good ,really. You can post your favourite weblinks or have a look in their support group. Here are two postings in which "Netaholics" tell their terrible tales:

• Netaholic 1: I'M ADDICTED TO CHAT GROURS,A REALLY GOOD ONE IS AT MR.SHOWBIZ, IT'S CALLED GROUP THERAPY. I HATE BEING ADDICTED, I'M NOW ONLY ALLOWED ON THE INTERNET BETWEEN 4-5P.M., IF YOU GO TO GROUP THERAPY, TALK TO ME, I'M KNOWN AS KITTEN. IF YOU CARE, I'M 17 YEARS OLD, FEMALE, AND I LIVE IN SOUTH CAROLINA, IF I HAD E-MAIL, I'D GIVE YOU THE ADDRESS, BUT I DON'T!
• Netaholic 2: The first 50 E-Mails I receive will get their own pages put up for FREE...

To be fair, other sections of the paper are well presented and the rest of the content is good, but we think the Sunday Post editor needs to get out a bit more. So we recommend Eurobus. This is a form of transport offering young independent travellers an inexpensive, safe, fun and flexible way of seeing Europe. You can plan an itinerary, look at timetables and then book your travel tickets online.

Finally, we end with another quote from the Netaholics Anonymous Support Group, which we think sums it up pretty well: "I spend way too much time on the computer ... on the other hand, I don't have enough time to spend on the computer!"

Sites featured in Picks of the Week

• Petcat.com - create your own feline friend.
  
• Red Mole - help, advice and lifestyle tips for students.
  
• Scotland's Secret Bunker - history is Bunker (Henry Ford).
  
• The Sunday Post - News and views from Scotland.
  
• Netaholics Anonymous - "Netaholics" tell their terrible tales.
  
• Eurobus - see Europe cheaply by bus.

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