Stuff from the past week:

• My arch nemesis, Big Ears/Darrin, often hangs out with his mates having a coffee outside the Collins Street (Paris End) McDonalds on weekdays about 9:30am. I wonder if I can bribe the McPeople there to do the same thing to him as he did to me?
• After much hunting, last Sunday I found “Safe” brand recycled tissues at Caulfield Coles. I bought four boxes. The checkout-bloke must have wondered why.
• On Wednesday I got my tax for 2004-05 sorted out. Normally this doesn’t happen until much closer to the deadline at the end October, but I got it out of the way for two very important reasons: firstly I’ll be moving then, and don’t want the extra hassle; and secondly by my rough calculations, I reckon I’ve got a pretty big refund coming my way.
• I also stopped past my new post office box on Wednesday, which was christened with its first letter. Woo hoo. A credit card bill. D’oh!
• Not that I expect anybody cares, but the very slow process of moving my old diary content into WordPress continues: I’ve moved all of 1999 across. Plenty of memories in there, including the trip to Italy and England, and in particular the memorable final day.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson — I finished this some time ago, but realised I forgot to rate it. A multi-stranded adventure through modern technology and WW2, following numerous related characters. Obviously codes and cyphers and other geeky sciences form an important part of the plot, but it doesn’t get too bogged down in mathematical detail, though one lengthy “email” printed in a tiresome font wasn’t a bit longwinded. One of those books I would pick up at every opportunity to find out what would happen next. Terrific stuff.

Freakonomics by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner — A fascinating journey through the tidbits of western (okay, American mostly) life, via statistics. It doesn’t set out to comprehensively study anything in particular, but hits a number of partially-related topics. If you’ve ever wondered if kids lumbered with “Moe” names have problems progressing in life, this answers the American equivalent.

Now, who was it that wanted to borrow these next?

Today I rang up my accountant to make an appointment.

“Don’t tell me you want to do your tax.”

“I want to do my tax.”

“I asked you not to tell me that.”

It seems the influence of Maxwell Smart has even reached accountants. Vale Agent 86. (How come Gilligan didn’t get this much attention?)

Confirmed geek telecommunications specialist David Mery was arrested at Southwark tube station in London. What had he done? Among other things, he’d failed to look at police on the way into the station, was wearing a jacket they decided was ‘too warm for the season’, had a bulky rucksack, and two other men entered the station at about the same time.

After being searched, he was almost released relatively quickly, but a series of unfortunate coincidences including records of loosely security-related events at his workplace, the electronic bit of an old work pass on his person, and various telecom gadgetry in his flat, meant that he was held in custody for about 10 hours before finally being released at 4am the next morning.

Obviously the UK has been on a heightened sense of paranoia since the Underground attacks (and apparently this incident happened in July, just a few weeks afterwards). Perhaps Mery can thank himself lucky that he didn’t run and they didn’t shoot him. But what they appear to have ignored here is the presumption of innocence, even after he and his rucksack had been searched.

I know the transport enthusiasts are starting to worry about being hassled by security when pursuing their hobby — though they’re some of the people most likely to notice when something on the system is amiss. And apart from innocent people getting caught up in the net, there’s the obvious concern of enormous amounts of police resources being tied up on incidents like this for no good reason. Obviously a balance needs to be found, but it would seem in London at least they’ve swung too far towards the paranoid.

Robots — This had its amusing moments. It didn’t suck. But it fails my “if it were the only thing playing on a long plane flight, would I watch it?” test. It wasn’t engaging. It wasn’t interesting. I felt little sympathy for the characters. It felt like a poor man’s Monsters Inc. Uninspired.

Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit — There was so much detail, and so many references to pick up on (but not so they got in the way of the story). One review I read suggested it was too long, but it didn’t seem that way to me. Very funny stuff, had the cinema audience laughing out loud right the way through. Stick around for the credits; the bit at the end is worth it.

Since Rob, not I, won Tony’s footy tipping competition this year, yesterday it was my melancholy duty to give Rob the World’s Ugliest Trophy. You can tell from the look on my face how disappointed I was to give it over. (Pic by Tony)

In happier news yesterday, my friends Josh and Cathy’s baby arrived. Young Owen arrived in the world just before midnight, and all three of them are doing well.

I note that of the two sets of friends I’ve helped move house in the last couple of years, both have gone and had babies, thus reducing their capacity to reciprocate when I move next month. Not that I think it’s a conspiracy or anything.

I’ve given notice on my rental house (by registered mail to avoid any problems like previously). Moving day is Monday the 24th of October — one month from tomorrow. I’m hiring Gronow’s again — they were good last time.

Also sorting out dates for services and things. Should be no problems with power/water, but the comms… egads. ADSL moves take 5-10 days after the request. The request can be until the phone connection is on. The phone connection can’t be on until two working days after the request goes in. The request can’t go in until the previous tenant has moved out/disconnected their line, which I guess means on settlement day (October 13th). And that’s if it all goes smoothly. God help me if it turns out the new place is on pair gain or something. I haven’t added up all those days yet, but I’m betting there will be some time (gasp) without broadband.

Another timing issue is the local council elections on 26th November. I’ll be in the same (sacked recently) council at both the old and new addresses, but I’ll be changing wards. The elections are well after I move, but the electoral roll closes on October the 7th, before I move and before I settle/own the new house. Hmmmm. I think I’ll just send the form in early October, and assume it takes them at least a few days to process it and send out the new voter registration card etc.

Meanwhile… if web sites were people, they might want to stick with the sunny weather, but they’re not, they’re just bits and bytes zooming around on electronic boxes. This weekend, my web provider is moving servers from Brisbane to Canberra. The servers themselves won’t move, but my site will. They don’t expect the site to be down, but to help moving stuff across, they’ve asked for all interactive features to be disabled from Friday night to Monday morning. So comments will be switched off on all posts tonight; back on Monday. So hold that thought!

Update Sunday 9:45pm. All finished now, comments available again.