Every time I get sad about the illiberal attitudes of the public sector in the UK, at least I can reassure myself that I don’t live in France.

NatWest have recently introduced a one-time pad device on their on-line banking system, which I’ve just got my hands on. As someone who travels a lot, it’s going to be an inconvenience to carry around, so I phoned up NatWest to see if I could have it disabled. The chap I spoke to implied it was being introduced by all UK banks in one form or another and wasn’t going to be optional. Does anyone know if this is true? I wonder if they have really thought through the implications for their customers. Online banking is often of the most use when you are away from home, and carrying a physical device seems like a very stone-age method of providing security. Why can’t I choose not to have it?

… find good food in Madrid? I’m obviously doing something wrong.

I’ve been in Madrid for just over a week now. My first mistake was to assume that restaurants would be open when I wanted them. Unfortunately, it appears that the local convention dictates that you don’t eat till about 9pm, so most don’t even open till 8.30pm. It took me a few days to give in and toe the line. The places I was forced into when I ignored this convention were not pretty (a cheap and nasty buffet being one of them). Although I’m now resigned to it, the habit of eating so late really disrupts my sleep (please, no comments about siestas. It’s close to freezing here some nights, and most people work 8am-6pm - with lunch at 3pm).

Amazon have obviously got just as sick of Royal Mail as I have. They now seem to be using the Home Delivery Network instead for large parcels. I’ve just had some network kit delivered - on a Sunday! What’s even more impressive, I picked the cheapest delivery option available.  There’s also online tracking available.

Roll on postal competition.

Well, it took me a while, so both of my travelling companions already got their photos up. But I finally got round to posting up a few select snaps from our Lake District trip a month or so back. As I expected, most of my interesting shots were of the tragically recursive variety: photographs of photographers.

Thinkpad problems mean that I’m currently borrowing a T42 from work. It took me a while to get WPA working with Knoppix 5.1.1. Here are the magic incantations required:

wpa_passphrase YOURSSID YourWPAPassPhrase > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
wpa_supplicant -ieth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf &
ifup eth1
pump -i eth1

Replace eth1 in the list above with whatever network interface name Knoppix has assigned to your wireless card (reading through the output of dmesg should help you with this). Don’t forget to double-check that your router has the MAC address of the card (use ifconfig to find this) if you’re using MAC address filtering.

I’m home for the weekend after spending last week with an IBM customer in Zürich - I return on Monday. It’s my first time to the city, and my impressions are certainly mixed. Swiss efficiency is present throughout (with the exception of the so-far variable Swiss airline), with trains exhibiting to-the-second precision and an airport devoid of queues (Heathrow, you have a lot to learn). But my supposed 4-star hotel is a little lacklustre, and the city itself rather concreted and dull. Nevertheless, I had the best falafels I’ve ever eaten the other night, and next weekend I stay in Zürich, so maybe I’ll find something to change my opinion.

David Hill wrote recently on a Lenovo Blog about the design qualities that make Thinkpads great. Whilst some of these are shared by other laptop manufacturers, I have to say I largely agree - even if mine is supplied ‘free’ for use on company business. After dropping it again the other day (yes, I’m clumsy, sorry boss), it took a huge chunk out of my wooden floor. But after the battery had been popped back in, it spun back up and back to life. Truly amazing.

R.I.P. Colin McRae.

I’ve been getting a lot of spam comments on my blog recently, which even Akismet isn’t catching.

So I was amused to get this comment today:

hello , my name is Richard and I know you get a lot of spammy comments , I can help you with this problem . I know a lot of spammers and I will ask them not to post on your site. It will reduce the volume of spam by 30-50% .In return Id like to ask you to put a link to my site on the index page of your site....

I think you can see where it’s going. One can’t help but feel that just maybe he knows a lot of spammers and knows I get a lot of spammy comments because he is a [fill in the obvious blank]. How frustrating.