When I returned from evensong last night, after I had ironed five shirts and read a bedtime story to my loving (but strangely uncommunicative) teddy bears, I sat down with a hot cup of Horlicks to enjoy two hours of high quality Sunday night viewing. I don’t know why but I have always had an interest in ‘conspiracy theories’. When I was a lad, I was convinced that Marilyn Monroe was killed by the Kennedy brothers. Ashley Grimes was a undercover Manchester City spy. JFK was assassinated by Norma Jeane Mortenson from the grassy knoll. UFO’s had landed at Roswell and probably deposited Ashley Grimes. Of course, that was then. This is now. Back then I was a boy. Now I am a man (sort of). With the passing years, I have matured and changed my beliefs accordingly. ...

‘OK. OK. I give in. Please stop hurting me, Brin. I now realise that resistance is futile.’ ‘Look I did what you asked. I have now converted to Google Reader. Please, no more. I will do anything you want. Please, Sergey - let my wife go.’ Even my son (newly hired Google enforcer) has now installed Google Desktop and is busy indexing the entire contents of the PC. Just about the only remaining product in the Google portfolio I don’t use is Adsense. ...

I am a big fan of Netvibes but also follow the ongoing development of Google Reader with interest. Increasingly, I find myself tempted to convert to Reader permanently. Speed - Google Reader has a set of keyboard shortcuts that make scanning a large number of feeds quick. Really quick. While Netvibes also offers keyboard shortcuts, out of habit, I tend to use mouse-clicks to navigate between tabs and articles. Flexibility - You can read related blogs that are grouped together (e.g. Oracle, Wordpress), read an individual blog or quickly skim over a river of news. Sharing - Occasionally, I want to save an article for future reference or potentially sharing with others. These items might be interesting or useful snippets of information quickly noted in passing which I wouldn’t necessarily blog about. The most obvious place to mark these items is right here in the RSS reader as opposed to a static bookmark. The list should (obviously) be visible as an RSS feed. Google’s shared and starred items make this easy (single keystroke). Flexible interface - I really like the full screen mode and the options for ’list view’ where articles are condensed apart from the current article and ’expanded view’ (all articles are expanded). Statistics - I can’t decide whether the trends page about your personal reading habits may actually be useful or just a gimmick. Here’s a Flickr set of annotated screenshots to illustrate the functionality in Google Reader and the flexibility of the interface. I think the recent addition of subscriber counts to Google Reader will show that Reader has a substantial and rapidly growing share of the RSS reader market. Stowe Boyd and Tom Raftery are already noting a Feedburner spike as a result. ...

In recent weeks, I have been peppered with increasing amounts of spam to my Blueyonder account despite the fact that I rarely use or divulge this email address. I guess I have become spoiled by Akismet and Gmail which both do such a sterling job of automatically detecting spam. Anyway, it turns out Blueyonder do have a spam filtering capability. If you log onto Webmail, under Options, there is a section called ‘Anti-spam and Antivirus Preferences’. ...

Yesterday afternoon at 16:09, in Surrey, a sales rep in a red Vauxhall Vectra shunted a plumber driving a white van on the middle lane of the M25. Twenty years ago, the following cars would have quickly stopped to allow the protagonists to pull over to the hard shoulder. Twenty years ago, a heated exchange would ensue. Then both parties would calm down and exchange insurance details. Twenty years ago, the white van driver would resume his journey while the Vectra owner waited for a tow from The AA to a local garage to replace his pierced radiator. ...