Ex-policeman jailed for indecency. Towards the end of that article: “Swabs taken from his webcam showed evidence he had been pleasuring himself, the court heard.”

Oh how lovely, the Duke of Gloucester, who happens to be President of the Institute of Advanced Motorists is banned from driving for speeding.

OK, so you’ve nicked 22 million quid. Now comes the hard part: laundering it. Actually I’m glad to see the Police have said that “professional” criminals planned the robbery, I’d hate to think that just anyone could do a robbery like that.

My faithful artificial tree (11 years service) is up in Orkney so we bought a real one for the Cambridge flat. My first real tree since I was a child. Here it is all nicely decorated.

So, Blunkett has resigned. Could this be part of the real reason why? “It’s a good day to bury bad legislation”.

Quoting liberally from a cam.misc post we can see how Blunkett changed his tune as time went on:

- I had no contact with the IND letter and only checked the application myself. It did not go through my office.

- I brought the application in to the office and got someone to read it to me there (for some reason) but it did not go through my office.

- Someone in my office must have got it and acted on the application anyway (how would they know the link with Blunkett though?). But I had (definite statement) no contact with the IND letter.

- I was always aware of the letter.

And then he starts using the fatal words “I have no recollection…” which is a key phrase to use when you’ve been caught bang to rights; especially when what he fails to recollect has evidentially been shown to be true.

Over a year ago Vodka knocked a glass of water over my Sony laptop. After a few hours in front of the fire the laptop dried out enough to boot up but the keyboard never worked properly again. Until I got the new Toshiba P-25 earlier this year I struggled to use that Sony with a thumping great USB keyboard. At the time of the accident I was based in Orkney and didn’t want to post the laptop to Sony for repair (although under warranty I couldn’t really expect them to fix it for gratis) so I just put up with external keyboard. Since returning to England I discovered that Sony no longer supply new keyboards for that model and second hand ones would cost between �50 and �95 +VAT + delivery from companies if and when they became available.

Last Friday I got lucky. I saw a broken model on Ebay. I contacted the seller who sold laptop spares and he offered to sell me a keyboard for �50 inclusive (the one on Ebay had been stripped). It arrived today along with a DVD-R/CD-RW that I bought from him (mine couldn’t burn CDs either) and both items were fitted in less than 15 minutes, easy-peasy.

It seems strange to have that laptop working again. But what shall I do with it now? It has been the server for my home network and could remain so although I have an old desktop (purchased in 1998) that would probably do that job as well as another desktop purchased in 2000 that would definitely do that job. Should I use it as a second, smaller laptop or should I just sell it while it has some real value still? Decisions, decisions.

Other recent Ebay purchases include a tiny Belkin wireless mouse for �20 (half the PC-World price) and a Belkin KVM switch. I’m also pursuing some SAAB parts.

It doesn’t get much better than this: Kilroy-Silk attacked with slurry.

Day

Night

Here are 2 pictures of a house in Balham. They put up their decorations at the end of October. Charming aren’t they? So discrete, so tasteful. I’m also interested in why such a modest house has CCTV and an iron grille in front of the main door.

“Yes, you want something?”

This is why I am often late meeting deadlines.

I just bought another DVD player (my third since 2000). This one cost a mere £29.99 from Amazon. I’ve seen some in the stores for less than 20 quid but wanted a multi region model. Can the companies selling the for £20 really make any profit on them. The new player, seems to play anything that you put in it (CDs, MP3, JPEG, etc, etc) and stands just 1.5 inches high. Amazing.