Archive for July, 2006
Don’t let your Mum catch you doing this . . .
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006The monster from the ID
Monday, July 17th, 2006Well, we can live in hope: the ‘voluntary’ ID card scheme is being increasingly reported as in trouble. A giganitic white elephant of a project, so wrong, unpopular, and ill-concieved the only way to get it past the House of Lords was to threaten to neuter the rights of the Second House, and the only way to obtain the required information was to steal it off of another project – when you ‘volunteer’ to renew your passport, your information is automatically added to the National ID Register, and you can’t refuse. Data capture by redefining the meaning of the word ‘voluntary’. How Orwellian is that?
Obsessive/compulsive? Moi?
Monday, July 17th, 2006Well, several years after I managed to ditch the last obsession I had, here comes the new one – Perplex City. A set of 256 puzzle cards of increasing difficulty, leading to a grand mystery (and a potential prize of £100,000) at the end. The clues themselves can direct you to characters’ blogs, answering machines, banks, and all sorts of interweaving information. It’s all a bit fun, really. Honest.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to my cards . . . If you’re interested, here’s my score so far.
And Thag makes three
Monday, July 10th, 2006It’s official: the spiky club at the rear end of a stegosaur’s tail is really called a Thagomizer, named from the Gary Larson cartoon. The Smithsonian Institute has agreed it. Larson’s popularity has now spawned a name for a beetle and one for a louse.