In the past I have bought some of the finest iPod accessories to your attention, now I bring you this, the iCarta iPod dock and toilet roll holder. Yup, you read that right, this device solves that ongoing problem of where you plug your pod in when you need to take an extended trip to the little boys room. 

According to the blurb it includes four high performance moisture-free speakers, a built in charger, and an “Integrated Bath tissue holder that can be easily folded as a stereo dock”,

Something smells a bit funny about it though, and I don’t mean the kind of odours that normally hang around in bathrooms either. 

It just looks too stupid. 

The Icarta is due for release next month, I’ll await that eagerly.

The UK's driving licence issuer the DVLA has sacked fourteen staff and disciplined a further 101, we don’t know yet if they were Dalmatians, for distributing pornographic material via the agency’s corporate email and web systems.

Frankly , having read the details of the incident - staff were advised that they were being monitored - I’m shocked. We all know how important it is to have comprehensive and acceptable usage policies in the workplace, so an incident like this is particularly shocking.  Nevermind what all that funny business might be doing the eyesight of those involved.

So the next time you are having a driving lesson and your instructor asks whether you can read a number plate in the near distance, it might be worth checking if they can first.

I really do wonder about spam and scam emails. I can’t help but feel sorry for people that get suckered by them, but they really must be the sort of people that would buy a carrier bag full of air if you told them it was a bargain. 

This week I was sent a mail that demanded my “most urgent of attentions”. Not only is it brilliantly personalised, but it is also rather excitable. 

“Dear Ladies and gentlemen!
Draw attention to our bussiness proposal in Germany and EU.
At this moment, it is necessary for us to increase our potential for our further development in Germany. Our offer is a unique opportunity earn about 2500 EUR per week!
You can earn real money without special skills, higher education or investments.
Special interest to your country!”

I like the sound of the special interest to your country, and also the reference to Germany. If it wasn’t for the fact that it says you need 'no special skills' I might have assumed it was Sven calling me into the England squad to fill the hole left by Micheal "gone in 60 seconds" Owen. Sadly, I don't think it is.

Oh well, there is always the European Championships.Or that Spanish Lottery that I've won. Oh, and there was that Widow from Nigeria. I've not heard from her for a while.

Bill Gates is to step down as Microsoft's chief software architect in July 2008. Bill, to his friends, Mr Gates sir, to you, me, and just about everyone else,  said that he would focus his energies on spending more time with his wife, specifically in their work for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. "This is not a retirement, it's a re-ordering of my priorities," he semi-explained.

Melinda Gates is suspected to be looking into finding a part-time job for herself, and Bill a hobby.

It can't be easy being a professional footballer, not least of all one chosen to represent his country in the World Cup. You face not only the weight of the world on your shoulders, but also the weight of your body on that little meta-whatsit bone.

So well done to Michael Owen the twenty-six year old striker who is both playing in the games, and offering his opinion on them on the MSN web site.

It's just a shame that everyone is a critic, eh Michael...

Like anyone with an email account I get quite a few offers for things called V14gra, and a lot of requests for my bank account details. These requests usually come with the tempting promise of access to millions and millions of dollars, but rarely come to fruition - all the Ni4gra V1agra did was give me was a neckache, and I am still waiting for the charming Odibeye Nakamewao (Mrs) (Retired) and (Widowed) to send me the $4.2bn that she promised she would. It's probably not worth mentioning that European lottery that I won, but still don't remember buying a ticket for..

Oh well, I've lost nothing except my life savings and my ID.

If you do fancy giving a bit of money to impoverished Nigerians you could do worse than to buy a CD penned by an artist called Osofia and called I go chop your dollar. The eponymous title track is a celebration of the bank accounting baiting Nigerian pastime the 419 scam, and includes the refrain:

I go chop your dollar

I go take your money and disappear

419 is just a game… you are the loser, I am the winner….

I can’t get it out of my head now, and damn, is it long! I am tempted to send them some money just so that they stop playing, making, recording, or even considering more songs like it.

Google has launched its spreadsheet service today. Well, I say launched, its made it available to a few users who heard about it through word of mouth, pre-registered an interest, and were sent an invite to sign up. Sounds pretty complicated, a bit like going along to a swingers party.

 Anyway, I was one of the lucky few so I’ll be spending some time on the site having a look at what it does and how it works.

 I have a couple of questions first though, what’s a CSV file and why would I want to import it? And, er, what’s a spreadsheet and what do you do with them?

Well, it’s that day. The sixth of the sixth of the sixth. Or to put it in a slightly more sinister way, 6/6/6. Oooh, spooky eh. 

If the Lord of the Flies is to turn up on this mortal plain and start making a nuisance of himself, then chances are it will be today. They say the Devil could come in any form, even as a monkey as cute as this one , so we must start looking for clues. 

No eels have fallen from the sky, geese are not flying backwards and as far as I can ascertain no seas are boiling with blood, so I was just starting to think that 6/6/6, like 14/02, was a made up date, when nothing really happens. 

But, then I saw this, which surely is the Devil’s work. 

MagicCube5D is a five-dimensional analog of the Rubik's Cube puzzle, you have to install it on your computer and, as far as I can see, spend a good proportion of the rest of your life trying to do it. So far three people have been successful – we can only assume that like me, they don’t have girlfriends.

For those of you that found the original Rubik Cube too hard there is this, which is Identical in everyway, except for the fact that it is online.

This 'virtuality' makes the thing much harder to solve because you can’t just smash it with a hammer and put it back together again. 

So, here I am on the front page. I've been blogging for a while now, Ooh, it must be two weeks, so it seems a bit odd saying hello again to my fan club, but I will. Hi mum.

Not only have I been eating my greens I have also been thinking about the infinite monkey theory - that one that says one thousand monkeys on one thousand computers could eventually come up with a watchable script for Neighbours. And as much as I would like to, I just don't buy it.

For one thing, who would ever want to go into a room with thousands of monkey digits hammering away on tiny clangy keys? I wouldn't. There would be a lot of screeching, and – if you were unlucky, a fair amount of slinging. Then, imagine sifting through all the grubby, torn pages only to get excited on false starts such as, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of Aquarius” or, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of an Ishmael.” And I like monkeys.

Slightly more relevant is the Amazon Mechanical Turk service, which has been in beta since November, and sounds weird. Actually, the Mechanical Turk is tens of thousands of people with some time on their hands, a computer at their fingertips and the desire to earn a tiny sum per item of piece work.

One early example is this page of sheep, which really defies any more explanation but offers hours – sorry I must remember where I am, minutes of office based fun.