January 2006

The moment of decision in the Government’s atrocious ID cards scheme is fast approaching. On the 16th and 23rd of January, the Bill goes into its report stage in the Lords (where the House of Lords will debate and vote on the outcome of the committee hearings on it). Every amendment that passes here will…

Der Schockwellenreiter can tell you how to integrate GMaps into other web applications using the Google API. (If you speak German, that is.)

Christ. So Ariel Sharon just had a stroke through eating the world’s supply of falafels and Jack Straw says “it’s showtime for Syria”? Please. Can I go to bed?

Over at Airminded, Brett Holman’s PhD blog, we were discussing Rudyard Kipling’s rare excursions into science fiction, With the Night Mail and As Easy as ABC. Both of them deal with a future dated to round about now, aviation, and the integration of the world’s political economies into one seamless technocratic whole. They are cracking.…

Today, my railway season ticket went up by 7.5%. And, as if to thank me, tonight I returned home in a seat next to this charming pool of unidentified dark liquid! Mind you, at least I’m not yet as stupid as Conservative transport spokesman Chris Grayling, who found his plaice in history yesterday by announcing…

Well, the Great Gas War of 2006 seems to be over before it started. The Russians and Ukrainians composed their differences and now, it’s back to sleep at the back. What on earth was up? The first thing to remember was that, whatever the Russians said after they announced the crisis, almost all the gas…

The Grauniad interviews the new political editor of the Sun, George Pascoe-Watson. (Note – unlike everything else on the Guardian’s website, this article is trapped in a futile registration ghetto. Use Bugmenot). Murdoch press people are usually at pains to point out that the big boss, the Dirty Digger, call him whatever you like hardly…

We had something of a hit last autumn with our detailed guide on how to control other people’s CCTV cameras online (not, of course, that I’m suggesting you actually do that. Nuh.), here, and here. Recently, there has been a wave of people searching Google for the axis/cgi string that signals the presence of one…

All the US reconstruction funding for Iraq, all $18 billion, has now been spent or committed and there will be no more. What sticks out, though, in the light of the great pay-for-play journalism affair, is this: “It is easy for the Americans to say, ‘We are doing reconstruction in Iraq,’ and we hear that.…

The ever-helpful Sharjah Airport website reports that old friends British Gulf International’s flight BGK1222 from Bagram AFB is delayed, expected in at 1630. The Irbis flight from Riyan is also running late, but the corresponding BGK1221 to Bagram got off all right, as did another to a destination given as “unknown”. Would passengers for the…