On the off-chance that you are considering buying me something for Christmas, I have an Amazon wish list you can check out. I've just brought it up to date (mainly by pruning items I've already bought) so feel free to go nuts.

Contrary to the spirit of giving of the above, however, I have recently been forced to be selfish. For months we've known that one of our neighbours has been "sharing" our Internet connection -- odd IPs returning pings, that sort of thing. Recently this has got totally out of control though, with our access speeds reduced to a trickle as he or she hogs nearly the whole pipe. Over the last day I've been trying to subtly get the point across by restarting the wireless every hour or so, which shakes them off for a few minutes and indicates they're unwelcome. But that did nothing, so today I was forced to do some research into our router configuration and turn on the security, locking our intruder -- and any innocents, who just wanted the connection for some light surfing -- out. Which is a shame.