The wonders of Garlik!

GarlicNo, it isn’t a typo. I’m actually extolling the virtues of a relatively new start-up, called Garlik.

It’s basically an online version of Experian or Equifax, in that it does a report on you and where data about you is available online. Oh, and it runs a credit check, too.

It’s been set up by people behind egg.com and firstdirect, so it has a pretty good pedigree. I’ve been using it now for a good few months and have been mightily impressed.

You give it a few basic details about yourself and then it sweeps the world wide web and reports back on where you might be featuring online, giving a risk assessment of how much is out there about you.

Sounds fairly simple, I grant you, but for those of out there who use the internet a lot, it’s quite scary to see how much you’re visible online.

Fortunately, many of the Rob Mansfields in the world aren’t always me online and my online moniker which I use to sign up with doesn’t give much away.

Which leads me onto something else I did recently online. We’ve all Googled ourselves (come on, you know you have), but I did a Google image search the other day to check if my face was anywhere.

Thank goodness it’s not. My avatar is out there, but genuine photographic representations are almost non-existent. Something I’m very happy about!

Dog shoots man

Yup, you have to read it twice, but a dog has genuinely shot a man in America.

You can imagine the sort of stick that James Harris is going to get when he gets out of hospital, can’t you?

It puts me in mind, though, of other people who have been inadvertently injured by animals.

If I remember correctly, William III was indirectly killed by a mole, when his horse stumbled on a molehill and our former King fell and broke his neck. Careless, eh?

Then there’s the old chestnut of Catherine the Great being killed while engaging in sexual relations with a horse, which is total hogswallop, but it makes a great story, doesn’t it?

And then there’s the statistic that more people are killed fishing than any other sport – they drown trying to land “the one that got away”.

But my final animal injury has to be the most famous (and fortunately it’s been committed to celluloid). None other than the late, great Richard Whiteley being mauled by a ferret. Watch and wince!