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What do I want from life? What indeed. "You want to give creative expression to your feelings". (I do?) Thus spake the "Love Oracle" - a new, electronic version of another old literary favourite, the I Ching. "What is the most important attitude to adopt?" I asked, humbly. "Do not underestimate evil," came the reply. Ow.

The ancient Chinese I Ching is a tome composed of many different descriptive vignettes or 'hexagrams'. Inside its leaves float unseen spirits of sages. In order to consult these dead experts, you throw a series of coins. It is the resulting pattern that gives you your personal hexagram.

All this makes the Ching a natural candidate for translation. A mammoth sorting job that computers excel at. And if the one-liners that purport to seal your fate on-screen seem a little trite, you can always expand on them by looking them up in the hard copy that comes in the package.

But all does not bode well. The opening dedication to the book ranks as one of the most convoluted tautologies I've ever read. "Affection as the essential principle of relatedness is of the greatest importance in all relationships..." No kidding?

So: a fairly smooth rendition but not a patch on the erudition of the original I Ching. Even if you didn't 'believe' in the original, it was still a dashed good read. Could this error have been the same? I'm not sure.