The Government’s cavalier handling of our personal data is now well publicised. What mystifies me is what’s keeping the phishing scammers from taking advantage of it. I haven’t yet seen any emails purporting to be from the Government trying to get people to register to protect their details.

It’s just a matter of time before some scammer realises that they don’t need the HMRC discs, just enough people who are so worried about the HMRC scandal that they don’t think straight when reading about a way to protect their personal information.

Looks like the birds in this area are wise to the old “peck the milk bottle tops” trick. But do birds like milk? I’m not sure I really see what’s in it for them except to annoy people.

Of course, I’m assuming it was done by a bird and that the milkman didn’t put his thumb through the top by accident — but if you look closely, it looks like there is a small hole that’s been pecked (see exhibit A, left).

Anyone know what sort of bird does this, and why? Perhaps magpies, trying to collect silvery things?

Not long to wait now for the DVD box set of The Wonder Years. You can pre-order it now at Amazon… but can that release date really be right?

“The Golden Compass” is the name of the film of Northern Lights, the first of the trilogy His Dark Materials. I’ve been persuaded to take the “meet your dæmon” test from the web site. Creepy result below…

(more…)

Communal bins can be a pain. Round here, there are bins for recycling and bins for “normal” (non-recyclable) rubbish, and the bin collectors are particularly picky — if they spot anything that has been sorted incorrectly they will just leave it the whole bin. One of the households sharing the bins mistook the “normal” rubbish bin for the recycling bin (they’re new), and started putting bottles, cans, bits of paper etc in it, leaving me with no room for my bag of “normal” rubbish.

(more…)