John Hemming identifies clauses in the Identity Cards Bill governing the information that must be kept up-to-date on penalty of £1,000 fine:

(a) his full name;
(b) other names by which he is or has previously been known;
(c) his gender;
(d) his date and place of birth and, if he has died, the date of his death; and
(e) physical characteristics of his that are capable of being used for identifying him

(e) is probably the most exciting. If the campaign against ID cards fails and they are introduced, perhaps the system could be overwhelmed by thousands of people writing every day to the Secretary of State to update him on changes to their physical characteristics?

Dear Home Secretary,

I’m just writing to let you know that I cut myself shaving this morning and now have a clearly identifying mark on my right cheek.

Yours,
I.D. Card-Holder

or

Dear Home Secretary,

Just thought I should mention that I’m feeling really rough today. I drank too much last night (don’t worry, I wasn’t in an Alcohol Control Zone) and this morning my hair’s a mess, my breath stinks and I’m too hungover to do anything about either. These distinguishing marks may be important should I be today suspected of terrorist involvement.

With love,
I.D. Card-Holder

or

Dear Home Secretary,

Contrary to my letter last week, I have decided to wear contact lenses only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. not Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays as previously notified. I like to go out on a Saturday and I thought the contacts would make me look less speccy but the bars I’ve been frequenting are quite smoky (they don’t serve food, y’see) and the tobacco has been playing havoc with my corneas.

The upshot is that if someone tries to claim benefits in my name on Saturdays, you’ll know it’s not me if they’re not wearing glasses.

Yours sincerely,
I.D. Card-Holder

So I was looking at the Star Wars lego in the flat last night and thinking “I wonder if I could make an animation with this stuff.”

Not having a film studio to hand, I grabbed my digital camera and took some fuzzy shots which I then knocked up into a short movie file while Gordon Ramsay argued with someone on Channel 4 in the background. The result is this dark and blurry Boba Fett animation.

If my rudimentary technology is up to it, I’ll try something a bit more complicated. And hopefully better lit.

Sci-Fi unveils the ‘geek pound’

…they number a seven million strong audience for ad agencies and estimates that the “geek pound” is worth a staggering £8.2bn a year.

No, not when it’s a jar. When’s it’s an “exit and entrance”, specifically on First Scotrail trains.

Passengers safety information is located at the exits and entrances of this train.

Unless I’ve been using the train wrongly (and perhaps I have because I don’t always arrive at my destination on time), there are not separate “exits and entrances”. Passengers boarding and alighting use the same sliding doors, and as the message is intended for those on the train, for whom the doors are no longer entrances, spare us the already overlong train announcements and say:

Passengers safety information is located by the exits.

And while they’re fixing that they might like to look in to the inability of the automated announcer to say “Haymarket”. It’s not a mispronunciation – the word is always completely omitted. As in “This is —” and “This train calls at Linlithgow, — and Edinburgh Waverley.”