Last Thursday 14th August I drove to IKEA to buy a desk for our new LAMP Developer Damien Gaillard. I stopped outside the Nationwide’s hole in the wall to withdraw my customary few pence, but there was a queue, so I used the ATM outside the Abbey next door instead. I put in my card and punched in my PIN number. Nothing happened. The screen said “Welcome. Please insert your card.” A man with a foreign accent (there is no other in Green Lanes) came up behind me and said “Don’t put card in that machine. It not working.” Another man rushed up and said something broadly similar. I began to suspect a scam, so I stayed by the machine, which still had my card. But the screen was saying “Insert your Card”. There was no sign of my card being returned. I lingered by the machine irresolutely for a minute; the men had vanished (I think —  I’m not at all observant) and a small and mildly hostile queue had gathered waiting to use the cash machine. “It doesn’t work!” I yelled at the uncomprehending line.

I went into the Abbey and told the counter staff their machine had swallowed my card.  They could not have been less interested. “You’ll get it back in a few days,” they muttered laconically.”But I need the money now!” I protested. “It’s the fault of YOUR machine!” The manager appeared. I grabbed him and hauled him off to the Nationwide next door. I wasn’t particularly concerned for my card, because I assumed it was buried safely in the bowels of the Abbey’s ATM. Together with the Abbey’s manager, I explained my plight to the woman at the counter in the Nationwide. “I need to withdraw some money. Oh, and I’d better cancel my debit card so you can send me a new one.” After checking my ID she let me withdraw some cash and I signed a piece of paper cancelling my debit card.

Freshly recharged with cash, I went off and bought Damien’s desk. On Tuesday my replacement card arrived. Yesterday I used it to withdraw money. No problems.

Today I went on to the Nationwide on-line banking site to pay my credit card bill — my monthly visit —  and discovered that on August 14th as well as the meagre amount I’d withdrawn over the counter, I’d been hosed down for £300.

THREE HUNDRED POUNDS.  That may not be a lot to most people, but to a humble fotoLibrarian it’s a fortune. It’s the maximum you can withdraw in a day, and it also happened to be all I had in my account. I rang the Nationwide and they confirmed the money had been withdrawn from the Bank of Ireland, not the Abbey, but they didn’t (couldn’t?) tell me at what time or where?

How did the thieves get my card out of the Abbey machine? How did they capture my PIN number? Why were the Abbey staff so unconcerned? (though the manager did come with me to the Nationwide).

Why me?

And I’ve been struggling since November last year to get back £41.04 from O2 Carphone Warehouse. I’ve even resorted to writing to the MD Charles Dunstone, who simply ignores my letters, which is unforgivably rude for a man at the helm of a public company, and his ratbag of a company has appointed a debt collection agency to chase me, claiming that I owe THEM money for a monthly rental since January for a phone contract I cancelled the previous November. It is irritating beyond belief, and very very debilitating.

These little things really wear one down.

I’ve just come across this riveting software program called Delicious Library 2, and I’m totally, completely hooked.

You hold up a book to your computer, and within 5 seconds the book jacket, the blurb, the tech spec including publisher, ISBN, price, format, reviews, other reader comments and recommendations for further reading simply appear on the screen.  What’s more the graphics are fun — the books are sorted by author and displayed on wooden ‘shelves’, with tabs below for Synopsis, Details, Reviews and Recommendations.

So last night I sat in front of the computer with a pile of my books and fed them in. It handled about 12 a minute. So clever! Then it ran out, because the trial version is limited to 30 inputs. Fair enough.

I think I’ve got about 4,000 books in the house, so that’s my rainy days sorted. Everyone else has probably known about this program for years, but I’ve only just discovered it. Why didn’t you tell me?

Once everything else had been invented, the program was simple and obvious — it’s just that somebody had to think of it. That’s not unlike the gestation of fotolibra.

You just need a computer with a videocam and broadband. The camera built in to the computer acts as the scanner. It reads the book’s barcode, queries 6 databases (obviously Amazon, among others) and immediately delivers the results to the screen.

Ingenious, smart and useful. At last I can catalogue my library. The only downside is the weird disembodied voice that says “Follies Grotto-eez and Garden Buildings by Gwine Heedley and Wim Mimmelkimp”. Maybe I can turn it off. Another fascinating infosnip is it gives the current secondhand price for each item — a surprising $88 for FG&GB. Anyone want a signed copy for $50?

They want $40 for the program. What the hell. That’s only £20; I can pay that. There’s a trial version on the cover CD for the September Macworld.

This is how the makers describe their own program:
“When we demo Delicious Library to people, about ⅔ of them instantly say this:
“Wait, I just hold a CD or DVD or video game or book or whatever up to my webcam, and it magically reads the UPC and downloads that item’s cover and all pertinent information about it, and displays all my stuff on photorealistic shelves? I’ll take it! Right now! This is why I bought a computer in the first place! ”

But a few people are skeptical, or slightly less obsessive. “Ok,” they say, “then I have my stuff in my computer. Big whoop. I can just look at my real shelf, right now, for free.”

And we say, “True, but have you ever had someone break in and steal all your CDs or DVDs? Your insurance company wants an exact list of what you had, but you can’t remember every last thing, and so for years afterwards you think, ‘Drat, I forgot to list Rocky Horror Picture Show, and now it’s too late!’ Well, with Delicious Library you always have a complete inventory of your stuff, with replacement costs. You can print it or back it up to the web, so it’s not going anywhere.

“Or, have you ever loaned a book or DVD or $200 DeWalt Cordless Driver to a friend, and forgotten which friend? And then bought another? With Delicious Library you just drag any item onto any friend from your Address Book, and it’ll remember the loan for you — and even put an entry in iCal reminding you when it’s due. Or maybe you have something lying around you don’t use, like an out-of-print book, that’s worth serious bucks and you don’t know it? Because with Delicious Library 2 you always know the current value of your things, and can put your used items up for sale with three clicks. Or maybe you just want to publish your library to the web and share it with your friends…”

At this point, usually the only people who aren’t buying are the ones who don’t own Macs. To them, we say: we’re sorry. For the rest of you… enjoy.”

I totally concur.

http://www.delicious-monster.com/

Dogs, specifically. My old pal Chris Holmes (haven’t seen him for 20 years) is a professional blogger holed up in Corfu, poor sod, and has just acquired a new mutt which he hopes to call Argos if his mama so permits.

Mama, being inconceivably grand, will not have heard of the cheap as chips catalogue store in the UK which prevents any classically educated bod calling their dog Argos. Might as well call it Woolies or Primark.

Which reminds of a lady I heard on the radio a while back, who was saying “I had a lovely cheap holiday, I had two weeks in Iceland. You should try it; there’s one in Wood Green.” I would certainly credit her if I could remember her name.

Von chose to call GR3 Milo. Now Milo is a fine, inoffensive name for a golden retriever. Even pet names mutate, and he gets called Milometer when we’re out for a walk and Milosevic when he is unspeakably evil.

When we signed up for puppy training class there was another golden retriever, one year old, called Milo. Then a spaniel puppy arrived last week, called Milo.  There’s A Lot Of It Going About.

On Tuesday we had dinner with Roger and Angèle. A fun evening, destroyed later by our Milo choking to a slow, agonising, noisy and vomit-spattered death between 2am and 9am. There were faint signs of life when we got him to the vet at 9 who instantly diagnosed Kennel Cough (There’s A Lot Of It Going About), and he’s now absolutely fine. I managed to catch one hour’s sleep in 48 hours.

Thinking of Milosevic and the appointment of Kevin Pietersen (born 27 June (my father’s birthday) 1980 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa) as England cricket captain against South Africa — would we have appointed a Serbian general to lead the British contingent in the Balkan conflict?

Check out Corfucious if you want to watch a master blogger at work.