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Christmas cards are lovely. A small personalised message from someone you know, providing assurance that they appreciate you and think enough of you to select, purchase and deliver a card all the way to your home.

So everybody near and dear to us will be wondering where the hell our card has got to. Well, ok, we admit it, things have been too hectic and we’ve run out of time. More…

Sometimes nice things come back and surprise you. Last year, just after I’d upgraded to Google Earth Plus, I was looking for some good Santa-stuff in Google Earth (so I could show my younger relatives something interesting on what is otherwise a very dull computer), and I spotted a shape: looking around Northern Europe I realised the nice crinkly edges formed a good pair of antlers. More…

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What are the best alternative presents for a geek?

The typical geek has carefully selected and purchased their gadgets of choice, has a computer that’s tuned to perfection and needs no software purchased (because their entire suite is open-source) - so aside from comedy tee shirts with clever slogans that can only be understood by other geeks, buying for geeks is difficult, especially if you’re not a geek, because you can’t even understand if the tee is funny or not. More…

If you’re a pigeon, avoid Kingston Upon Thames until the pigeon cull is over. If you’re a human, don’t miss the comments on this Surrey Comet story about the pigeon cull, they’re internet gold. More…

Can everybody please stop sending me Thresher Discount vouchers? Ok thanks for thinking of me, I very much appreciate that bit; but it seems everyone I know is intent on passing me this little “under the counter number” and hasn’t twigged that they’re just part of a huge viral advertising campaign. More…

I’m doing a lot of work with SVG at the moment, and something that would be very useful to understand is exactly which parts of a diagram are taking the longest to process and render. More…

I just got called by another TPS-ignoring baby-eating evil telemarketing sales company - it must be my lucky month.

Picking up the phone and answering to find musak playing I thought I might be in for the deal of a lifetime, or maybe an offer that was too good to refuse, so I grabbed a pen and paper just in case. More…

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen complete mindless determination in the face of utterly overwhelming odds, but Satellite Direct have shown a lack of comprehension that is quite staggering in their recent marketing campaign. Today, they have raised the bar of ineptitude. More…

The Nintendo Wii has now enjoyed it’s first week of sales and stories are floating around the net that the wireless controller (mentioned previously) has been finding itself airborne due to players getting sweaty hands. Videos of the problem are already surfacing. More…