So, it's January, I'm horribly busy, and I see I haven't written anything here for over a month. Sorry about that. I'm actually too busy to write a proper piece (but I am still recording things to write about in my little notebook, so don't think you've got off scot-free).

Or to put it another way: it's late January, it's fucking freezing outside, and the Standing Committee on the ID Cards Bill is now almost half-way through the generous nine days which they have been given to consider a Bill so complicated that none of the ministers in the Home Office understand it at all. What better to do than come to NO2ID Cambridge's public meeting on the ID Cards proposals, next Tuesday (25th January) at 7:30 pm at Fisher Hall, Cambridge. The speakers will be,

• Peter Lilley MP, who, as Minister at the DHSS in John Major's govermnent, was responsible for killing the last stupid ID cards proposal;
• Ross Anderson, everyone's favourite expert at distinguishing security from ``security'' (hint: the government's plan is the latter);
• Tauhid Pasha, from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants; and
• David Howarth, Lib Dem candidate for Cambridge.

We also invited Anne Campbell MP, who is too spineless to come and numerous other candidates and MPs from hereabouts. Perhaps some of them will turn up.

If you're in or near Cambridge on the 25th, please come along. The meeting will be interesting, and it will be followed by an evening in the pub. Whatever happens, it's got to be a lot more fun than other traditional January entertainments like freezing to death or filling in your income-tax return.

And in other news

And to avoid further discussion of ID cards, `Chip-and-PIN', and other such idiocy, let me have a more positive moment and write for once in favour of some things. So here are a few oh-so-rare episodes of Chris Lightfoot Heartily Endorses...

1. the splendid (and, let's be honest, completely bonkers) Bathtime in Clerkenwell by Alex Budovsky and the Tuesday Weld (neither of whom, I regret to say, I had heard of until a friend passed this link onto me). If you can't play the version of the film on that page, there are various other versions which can be found with a quick Google search.
2. Audio Scrobbler, a service which attempts to learn your musical tastes by seeing when you skip tracks in your music player rather than allowing them to play to completion. Then it uses an Amazon-style ``people who liked ... also liked ...'' heuristic to suggest other music you might want to listen to. Even better, they've got an internet radio licence and have set up a service which will play you music according to the preferences it's stored for you. You're supposed to use this with all sorts of crazy music players and plugins and Javascript and whatnot, but it turns out that a trivial perl script to play the radio stream can be hacked together in a matter of moments.
3. Scary Go Round is a surreal web comic (start from the beginning for the backstory behind the characters).

Right, that's enough Hearty Endorsements for the moment. Go back to your simple lives (but please come along on Tuesday, if you can).

Update

It's been drawn to my attention that I wrote about ID cards without posting any holiday photographs. Apologies, and the missing photos: