A seemingly short while ago, there was light in the sky ’til 10pm or so, and the chickens didn’t get put away ’til then.

Tonight they were in their coop and all locked up by half eight. Soon it’ll be seven, six, and they’ll be away before I’m even back from work.

Winter’s coming.

Today though I had a small dollop of success – allbeit in a silly and sweary way.

Yep, I got to swear properly in Scrabble. Aces.

Yes, the word ‘cunt’ in scrabble. And it was allowed! (Scored OK too…)

The full board here…

Can you tell what it is yet?

In the story, about £2bn has been underpaid – but about £1.8bn has been overpaid. Now to me, that’s a case of “Oh sod it, it kind of balances”. But no, in a fit of efficiency (or at least Inland Revenue’s version of efficiency – which isn’t efficient at all) they’re going to send out six million letters telling people that they’ve over- or under-paid, and the differences will be refunded or paid back in the new tax code.

So. Six million letters. Even in second-class post, that’s a minimum of 32p per letter. Which makes a cost of £1,920,000.  Doing the letters first class would be a cost of £2,460,000.

Let’s look at this sensibly.

We’ve underpaid £2bn in tax.

We’ve overpaid £1.8bn.

Which leaves £0.2bn to pay.

And Inland Revenue are going to spend £2 million to get back that £0.2 billion.

Is it just me that sees the idiocy in this? Talk about throwing good money after bad.

And actually, why the flying fuck should the people who have underpaid – through no fault of their own -  be penalised by having to pay extra this year for a mistake made by Inland Revenue itself ?!?

Pulling out in front of me was a truck with a load of topiary pigs. Yes, topiary pigs.

So half my journey home last night was spent looking at the arses of three green pigs.

Three Pigs Backsides

It’s not the best of photos – taken while waiting for traffic to sort itself out – but you get the idea.

Setting up the account should be easy. Except it’s not – bearing in mind that it’s not something that just techies do. Maybe as a techie I read too much into the entire thing. I don’t know. The main issue was with setting up a password, believe it or not. I tried the first one – say bumbag99 – , and got this error…

The full error message - click to embiggenify

The first part, by the password itself, looks like this…

Information about the format of the iTunes password

Fine. I’ve got letters and numbers, maybe I can’t type. So here we go again, ‘bumbag99′.

And lo, the error returns.

Then you finally see the bit at the top – completely separate to the main password error…

An extra error - nice to know about it

Nice of them to let you know everything at once, and in one message, isn’t it?

Bumbag99, and all done. Only took three goes.

Batman vs. Penguin

I love images like this, where you can turn them round and see something else. I can’t remember the precise name for them – but they’re cool as hell.

In a similar vein, the 20th Anniversary collector’s edition DVD of  Princess Bride was equally cool.

The lettering is the same both ways

I don’t know why they chose that name, but it always makes me think that they’re the third option – like you’ve tried Team A and Team B, so now it’s time to go with the C Team.