Slashdot is asking about ID cards. Suprisingly, many comments support ID cards (in America). However, someone linked to Bruce Schneier's Crypto Gram on the subject. There are few security experts who are respected more in the field than this guy, so what he says has some gravitas.

Please vist http://www.helpwinthisbet.com/404/ (safe for work, no popups or any funny business).

The guy reckons that he can get his girlfriend to have a threesome if he gets two million hits. There doesn't seem to be a timescale for it, but hey, it's a worthy cause, so get over there.

Of course, that pails into insignificance against the mastery of bombinathong.com!!

Update 28/4: He's done it. When I posted this, he had about half a million hits, now it's up to about three million.

smile (part of the Co-Op Bank) are the Best Bank in the World, ever II.

This week, due to my disorganisation, my rent went out of my account without sufficient funds. The Genius that is smile realised that it was really just an oversight on my part, and paid my rent anyway (leaving me about twice as overdrawn as my limit allows). I dropped them a line to say thanks for doing that, and to assure them money was on the way (which it is). To 'resolve the current issue', they've increased my authorised overdraft four fold, thus avoiding me any charges, and solving my problem. Brilliant! How cool is that? I think that's great - a bit of no-nonsense service that uses a bit of intelligence rather than blindly following 'the rules'.

You can't buy this sort of thing - smile - you won't regret it.

I've talked before about how rubbish Haart Residential Lettings are [2 [3]. They're proving me right time and time again. I moved out of a property they collected rent for on the 28th March. I've since had three letters stating I'm in rent arrears (each saying that they've notified my landlord and recommended legal action against me!). I've made three phone calls - the first to Jackie Gregg, the Branch Manager (and the signed sender of the letters). She assured me it was simply an automated letter and would all be sorted out, but never called me back to confirm it was. I spoke to a temp who "made notes on the file" and now someone else who says she's going to sort it tomorrow and call be back. If I don't hear back tomorrow, I'm going to camp out in their offices on Wednesday until it's done.

Utter rubbish - avoid them if you can.

I'm all signed up and ready to go on the BHF Tower Jog. It's a 10K run around the Tower of London, for the British Heart Foundation. Please sopnsor me (ahem, sponsor me) if you can. Cheers!

(Right now, I'm struggling to run 5K, so 10K in a couple of weeks should be 'interesting'!)

Thanks Knobs for pointing out one of a go-zillion typos on this 'ere 'blog!

I first got my Oyster Card in early 2004. I've long since worried about the privacy issues involved. I've since tried to get an unregistered card, with varying success and found some weird procedural things that mean you end up giving away your personal details to TfL, even though you're using an unregistered card. Finding very few verifiable facts on the Internet, I decided to (formally) ask TfL about it.

Anyway, it's all written up on the OysterCard wiki page, and the TfL request/response information is at OysterCardRFI. If you use Oyster, it's an interesting read.

I'm recovering from a week long party. It was the wedding of two very good friends of mine in Stoupa, Messinia, Greece. Congratulations to them both (now away on honeymoon, of course).

Other highlights of the week include getting a tan without (much) burning, swimming in the sea, eating more cheese than I ever thought possible, and being able to say I know a girl who, along side a chap playing acoustic guitar, can sing Coldplay's Yellow far better than they can.

I have a PO Box for my work mail. A PO box seems like a great idea - get an address that's independent of where you live (or where you work). You can either go and collect the mail that gets sent to your box, or have it delivered to you. I opted for the latter (at an extra cost of about £50/year).

I've now moved about 5 minutes walk down the road. That puts me in a 'different postal zone', so the mighty Royal Mail can't manage to deliver my mail to me, so I have to apply for a whole new PO box. What the hell was the point of that? If I've got to reprint all my stationery every time I move, I might as well not bother with the PO box!

Sorry for everyone who missed their dose of The Cat over the past week and a half. My house move has resulted in a number of telco related problems (mostly surrounding BT). Some are still on-going, but more about that in a mo. The important thing is that F2S got me back on the air early!

Meantime - welcome back!