HT: Grumpy Twin

The UK Government's obsession with knowing what we've done, what we're doing, and what we're planning on doing is not only intrusive but borders on the dangerous.  The Daily Telegraph reports (ID cards: taxman allowed access to personal data) that tax official will have access to data held by the ID card system.

HM Revenue and Customs staff will be able to examine people's financial transactions on the scheme's database and search for evidence of undeclared earnings or bank accounts.

The Internet seems to be abuzz with a new "natural language" search engine called WolframAlpha, widely touted as a Google-killer.  But what the heck is it, and how does it work?  More to the point, how much will it cost?

There's a video from WolframAlpha which seeks to explain it...though it looks pretty spiffy, I guess they've chosen topics they know will produce visually arresting output.   Cnet News has a useful article (Wolfram Alpha shows data in a way Google can't) featuring opinion from several users.

Sunshine and showers today...and flipping strong wind!  Intrepid as ever, I set off in good time to ride over to the race HQ in a Scout hut in Leighton Buzzard.  Unfortunately, this ride came to an abrupt halt half a mile from the house, as I suffered a front wheel puncture.  To add insult to injury, a shower passed over as I was replacing the tube!  Since this was the only spare tube I had with me, I returned home, where I pumped it up properly with the track pump and grabbed two new tubes (and, in a fit of paranoia, some preglued patches).

Off once again, with a bit less latitude in timing.  The wind was really rather strong, and was causing a bit of trouble with the front trispoke.  I was quite confident, based on pat experience, that the wheel woudn't prove too much trouble when racing (higher speed and more weight on the front).  Fortuitously, Alan "Tintin" roared by in his big 4x4 and offered me a lift over to the race HQ, an offer that I accepted after about two nanoseconds of thought.

I've had pretty good exchanges of letters and emails with my MP, Nadine Dorries over the years. While I don't share political beliefs with her, and disagree pretty fundamentally with her on a number of issues, I've found her quite responsive as an MP.

Of course, I'd been wondering when she'd get a communication from The Daily Telegraph as part of their investigation of the sleazy expense claims that MPs make - and I see from her blog that she has indeed received such a letter (Dorries Blog - The Daily Telegraph). Ms Dorries exudes a palpable sense of outrage in her response, which I suspect she wrote in a bit of a rage and in haste! It reads as though the letter was accompanied by a list of accusations, some of which would appear from her response to be errors.  The Daily Telegraph article is available online (MPs' expenses: Tory MP Nadine Dorries admits she only spends weekends and holidays in her 'main home').

The Grumpy tandem will be making its usual Scottish expedition this summer - the usual pattern is to be away for a fortnight and be cycling for about 10 days.  We typically tour in Scotland as that allows us to keep in contact with friends there.  You can read about some of our previous tours via the Cycling menu on the left of this web page (click on "Cycle Tours").

With our 2009 tour only a couple of weeks away, the grumpy tandem reckons it's about time we  firmed up our plans (we often deal with this only days before we go).  So far the plan looks like this:

After forecasting horrendous weather for today, in actual fact the conditions weren't too bad.  The wind has been coming from the east all week, which has made it rather cool.  The other consequence being that the outward leg of the event should have been pretty quick, and the return somewhat harder.

I was feeling a bit wobbly in my stomach as I lined up at the start - probably due to the excessive consumption of fried finger food at lunchtime.  It was also much colder than last week, which wasn't great.  Fortunately, I had Tony P a minute behind me, which I hoped would spur me on a bit!

The forums at nodpi.org are an extremely useful source of information on Phorm and allied aspects of internet privacy issues.  In particular, I've recently found that their coverage of the appearance of the Phorm website which aims to smear their opposition has been fun, particularly the whole "privacy pirate" schtick.  More seriously, some of the accsations on that site have proven to be untrue.  Clearly the nodpi website continues to be a thorn in the side of Phorm - I strongly recommend that broadband customers of British Telecom have a look at the discussions there.

Supporters of Phorm sometimes post on a number of discussion forums around the web, including nodpi, leave comments on articles critical of Phorm (it must be an uphill battle, as most of the articles I see on the topic seem to be critical of Phorm), etc, as it their right.  Last night it seems that a concerted assault on the nodpi forums took place, with Phorm supporters posting articles containing pornographic material and personal attacks on members. As usual, these passed me by (as I was in the land of nod), but I think it took a lot of time for the admins to clear it all up.

It's been a while since I last blogged about peer-reviewed science.  In a recent Departmental Journal Club, I discussed a paper outlining the use of transgenic RNAi in Drosophila.  In this paper, the authors utilise the power of Drosophila transgenics to use RNAi mediated gene knockdown to identify components of an important developmental signalling pathway.

In contrast to other systems, such as mammalian cell culture systems, in which RNAi mediated knockdown of gene expression is mediated by the introduction of short double-stranded RNA molecules, in Drosophila researcher use longer double stranded RNA molecules.  There are two method of using RNAi to investigate gene function in Drosophila.

This time trial is an annual event for me - and in fact Richard (the organiser) this year emailed to remind me of it!  As has so often been the case this year, it was a pretty windy day, with all the signs indicating the race would be a flyer on the outward leg, but a real grovel back to the finish.

And so it proved.  However, to backtrack slightly.  It became immediately obvious that there were real problems with my HRM bike computer.  For a start it was registering about twice my actual speed.  This was (and remains) something of a mystery.  I've checked in case it was some kind of prank played by a clubmate - but no.  I can only assume it's the transmitter on the fork blade playing up.  And to cap the dismay, the heart rate display kept leaping up to unfeasible levels, such as 228bpm.  I was using a chest transmitter unit that was really rather old, and I suspect that the battery life was pretty much expired.