Bits and Pieces
"BLOG" *shocker
Over at www.waitingforlunchtime.co.uk/blog/ for your viewing pleasure.
This is just assorted ramblings etc that I couldn't put anywhere else convenient. I don't like blogs, as they're something that I associate with angst-ridden teenage girls or, at best, a kind of cathartic online diary and completely pointless. So this is not a blog, it's merely a collection of commentaries about interesting contemporary websites and events, coupled with opinionated ramblings. So that's nothing like a blog then. No I mean it, it's NOT a blog. OK?
Older posts live in the archive.
If you're wondering why there's not much very recent here, it's because these days I tend to use Furl to keep track of other pages that I think are interesting. Sometimes I'm even moved to write a small commentary. You can check out my Furl public archive if you care enough.
31 July,2006 view
One for the tube geeks: an interactive blank tube map where you can fill in the blanks: Name That Tube Station.
1 September, 2005 view
Well supposedly any civilisation is only a week away from anarchy. After watching what's happened to New Orleans over the past 24 hours, it seems like it only takes 3 days for a complete breakdown of society to begin. I've also just heard that Fats Domino has been reported missing -- his house in New Orleans is apparently completely under water. If it's true then what a terrible way for one of the founders of Rock & Roll to go.
31 August, 2005 view
So RIP New Orleans. If the city's going to be underwater for the next few months then I can't see it ever recovering to what it once was. What a shame as it was very high up on my list of US cities to visit -- definitely one of the ones with real character and history.
9th July, 2005
In memory of July 7th, 2005
LONDON STANDS UNITED
This is the most diverse city on the planet. We've survived world wars, fires, riots, revolutions, not to mention 30-plus years of terrorist bombings.
We stand united,
all races and faiths, to say:
— You will not divide us.
— You will not intimidate us.
— You will not win.
13 April, 2005 view
Excellent letter in Metro this morning, that had me chuckling for a good half hour afterwards. I hope it was a spoof but have a horrible feeling it might be serious. It was in regard to a recent article about wind farms, and this is what it said:
"I'm all for cutting carbon dioxide and other pollution but has no one considered the consequences that thousands of wind turbines might have on Earth? They could push against the atmosphere, causing the world to spin more slowly so that mankind floats off into space as a result of reduced gravity; or the world spin might be speeded up by the propeller-like action of too many turbines, resulting in Earth being thrown off its axis."
I really don't think anything more needs to be said!
31 December, 2004 view
The UK Government has so far resisted all attempts to admit exactly how much it has spent on the war in Iraq. But we do know that £3.8 billion was initially set aside for the war cost.
The UK Government has made an awful lot of publicity about the fact that it's the largest single country donor to relief funds for the South Asia tsunami -- although less of the fact that is was embarassed into upping its donation to £50 million after its initial paltry £15 million had been exceeded by public donations.
Total spent on the war by .gov.uk: £ 3,800,000,000
Total spent on humanitarian aid: £ 50,000,000
6 December, 2004 view
Hmmm, my Furl archive seems to be supplanting a lot of what I'd previously write here, these days, but every so often something comes along which just deserves a bit exta.
It looks like Google have taken the interface from GMail and melded it to their Usenet front-end, to create groups-beta.google.com. I'm not a great fan of traditional mail clients also doubling up as usenet readers, being of the belief that software tends to be better if it adheres to the principle of "do one thing, and do it well". So I'm still undecided as to whether GMail's fantastically-good user interface (for a webmail system anyway) is something that ought to be applied to Usenet or not. If I ever come to a conclusion, I'll let you know :)
9 November, 2004 view
OK, so some of them tried to keep Bush out. And they feel really bad that they didn't succeed. Not all Americans are nasty :)
29 October, 2004 view
This looks quite interesting. It's a service called Furl which allows you to save personal copies of any web pages you find. Not just the URL and title, but the full content of the page. I've signed up (and had to write my own macros for K-Meleon but perhaps that serves me write for running a beta version of a little-known browser), so we'll see whether I decide it might be useful.
10 October, 2004 view
Hmmm, been quite a while since I wrote anything here. Been rather busy, to be honest. Still, here are a couple of bits and pieces that I've found recently and which I thought were quite interesting.
The first one is for anyone who's read Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Some pictures have been discovered of Pirsig's original journey in 1968 which caused him to begin to develop the philosophies (and madness) that are the theme of the book. Fascinating.
And on a completely different note, here are some articles on the potential future of digital broadcasting, from a well-respected source. Link here and here.
28 July, 2004 view
I mirrored the Preparing For Emergencies spoof site that hit the web yesterday, in case the original (well, original parody) should vanish for any reason ...
20 July, 2004 view
Following on from my quick Accessible Odeon program that I created yesterday, today it not only got a mention in The Register (letters page only), but I abstracted the guts of the thing into a Perl module which then became my very first module uploaded to CPAN.
19 July, 2004 view
Towards the end of last week, Odeon sent its Evil Lawyers in Black over to the Accessible Odeon website, forcing it to shut down.
For those unaware of the background, the Accessible Odeon website was set up because the official Odeon site is severely broken: if you don't use IE5 or IE6, on Windows, with Javascript enabled, then you can't view the site. The Accessible Odeon site scraped real-time live data from the broken official site and displayed it, without the need for Javascript, particular browsers, or anything fancy. In an attempt to show Odeon that there was Another Way, it also "borrowed" the Odeon logos, CSS styles and general look and feel from the official site, and this seems to have been what's really got up the nose of the Evil Lawyers in Black.
Well I was sorely miffed when the Accessible site closed down. An Odeon cinema is the only one I can easily get to, but I refuse to run a piece of software as dangerous as Internet Explorer on my computer. The solution? Write my own version of the Accessible Odeon website. To try to stave off the Evil Lawyers I made sure that it was immediately obvious that my site wasn't in any way associated with the real Odeon site, other than using their data.
So here it is, in all its plain-text glory: The (Re)Accessible Odeon website. It's still very much a work in progress and quite possibly buggy, so let me know if you find any weirdness. Other than that ... enjoy!
7 July, 2004 view
Yesterday I left work early and headed off into town to try to watch the Formula 1 display along Regent Street. Yeah, some chance! By the time I got there at about 5:30 the crowds were a good 10-deep along most of the street, and even the large screen that was erected in Hanover Square was so crowded that there wasn't much to be seen. Apparently the organisers had expected something like 100,000 - 150,000 people to turn up -- according to police the figures were closer to half a million.
Still, there's been talk about trying to set up a full-on street circuit in London for future British Grands Prix which could be pretty interesting. Although this route looks like the most fantastic idea ever -- shame there's no chance of it becoming reality!
23 June, 2004 view
Manic aka Tim Ireland, the man behind the amazing Bloggerheads has announced that he's no longer going to be blogging or campaigning, as it's starting to physically and mentally wear him down. I can fully understand his reasons but it'll be a real shame to see him go. Bloggerheads has never ceased to be inspirational, funny, sad, clever and always highly political. And some great campaigns have come from that site over the years.
Take care, Manic. You'll be missed.
25 May, 2004 view
"The Sunday Times pretends to be a serious newspaper. The truth is that it is owned by Rupert Murdoch"
No, not one of my quotes, but one from Professor Richard Dawkins of "The Selfish Gene" fame (and many, many other articles and books of course). The Sunday Times quote came in response to an article by that newspaper where the science editor completely mis-quoted him (Dawkins) to make it look like he semi-endorsed a recent claim putting a scientific backing on astrology. The full details are here.
24 May, 2004 view
The Register, although ostensibly a tech news website, often publishes op-eds and other articles which are only very tenuously linked to technical or IT news. Today they've got a piece by one of their reporters, Thomas Greene, attempting to link the malpractices of US military personnel at Abu Ghraib as being in some way down to poor intelligence, and hence vaguely tech-related. But regardless of that, he makes an excellent point:
[Torture] is very bad at getting to the truth ... If your goal is to hang an innocent man, then torture is an expedient; he'll confess, eventually. But if your goal is to learn something you didn't already know, then you must use a different approach.
24 May, 2004 view
Talking of Abu Ghraib, Al Jazeera are coming up with a conspiracy theory par excellence, that the beheading of Nick Berg took place within the prison walls and was therefore presumably carried out by the CIA or other unknown agents working in collusion with the US forces, rather than by Islamist terrorists.
21 May, 2004 view
Michael Berg, father of Nick Berg, the American who was beheaded in Iraq earlier this month, lays the blame for his son's death firmly at the US President's feet.
15 May, 2004 view
Ho hum. Work's keeping me plenty busy at the moment so I've not been rabbiting away here as much as I'd like. Here's a few links to things that I've noticed recently though. The Guardian had an extract from Robert Winder's new book "Bloody Foreigners" showing that Eastern European Jewish immigrants to London in the mid- to late-19th Century encountered similar prejudices to today's round of Eastern European incomers. Only for the Jews much of the bigotry came from the already-established (and very integrated) Jewish population.
On a completely different note, I found a page giving Javascript to detect spyware unwittingly installed as a plugin to users' web browsers (predominately Internet Explorer of course). Interesting.
28 April, 2004 view
David Brent, eat your heart out. The Deputy Chief Constable of North Wales, asked to address a meeting of the North Wales Black Police Association, decided to "get down wiv da brothaz" and gave his speech in the form of a rap. And it's not even April 1st!
20 April, 2004 view
What a shame. It seems that the wonderful mirror.ac.uk software repository is being taken away from Kent and Lancaster universities. I know that the boys and girls at both those places have worked really hard to make it one of the best mirror services around -- those who can remember the old sunsite mirror at Imperial College will know exactly what I'm talking about!
There will be a new mirror service but according to that press release it's unlikely to be anything like as comprehensive as the old one. Ho hum.
27 March, 2004 view
Elena, the Ukrainian motorcyclist who rides in the "dead zone" around Chernobyl has updated her site, with new commentary and pictures from a recent ride. Simultaneously eerie and chilling, yet totally fascinating and compelling.
27 March, 2004 view
Here is a very good introductory guide to the Semantic Web, which is something I'm trying to get my head round at the moment.
26 March, 2004 view
To coincide with Tony Blair's visit to Libya, the Guardian has printed a list of some gems from Colonel Gaddafi's words of wisdom over the years. Here's my personal favourite:
Any claim that a newspaper represents public opinion is groundless because it actually expresses the viewpoints of a natural person. Democratically, a natural person should not be permitted to own any means of publication or information.
But that's OK, because in this democracy, the people who own the newspapers tend to be anything BUT a "natural person":
24 March, 2004 view
One from the "really annoying but compulsive and addictive flash games" stable.
22 March, 2004 view
Well it turns out that prior to 11th September, 2001, George W Bush's neo-con administration not only had full plans to attack Iraq, but even when they were alerted about potential threats from Al-Qaida they dismissed it out of hand. And even after the attacks on that date, Donald Rumsfeld -- with the full backing of Bush and the rest of the administration -- then wanted the security forces to "prove" that Iraq was behind the attacks.
11 March, 2004 view
This has to be one of the coolest things I've seen for quite a while. An entire linux system that runs within a Windows command prompt -- without the need of VMWare or anything else similar. It's called CoLinux (from Co-Operative Linux) and here's a screenshot of it running on my own Windows XP system. Quite extraordinary.
It's still in beta or even alpha release and requires a bit of tweaking and fiddling to get working, but it's not horrendously complicated and so far seems to do most things asked of it. It's perfect for if you dual-boot between Windows and Linux, as it can use your existing Linux root partition as its own filesystem root, so you'll have essentially your Linux system running simultaneously with your Windows one. Ace!
5 March, 2004 view
The origin of the Penguin/Yeti games is revealed.
2 March, 2004 view
You say you want a revolution? Well yes, that seems to be the gist of George Monbiot's latest article in the Guardian!
23 February, 2004 view
Ha ha! Even before I uploaded the Grey Album mp3s to my site I received a Cease & Desist notice from a bunch of yank lawyers. Like I'm going to take any notice of that.
21 February, 2004 view
I will be hosting the Grey Album here on "Grey Tuesday", and as for as long afterwards as I can get away with. For more details see the news page.
11 February, 2004 view
11 February, 2004 view
An excellent piece of hyperbole from someone at BBC News Online, writing about the Tory Party's proposed move from Smith Square, their current headquarters, which he describes as:
"an Amityville-style house of horror with blood seeping from the walls, eerie whispers emanating from the attic and bodies buried in the brickwork."
So that's what's happened to Maggie, then!
8 February, 2004 view
Well if a site called Derelict London isn't supposed to reinforce the stereotype of London as a run-down decaying city, I don't know what is! Actually it's quite a fascinating site, with well over 300 pictures at the moment (and more going up all the time), including quite a few of places that I've seen many times along with plenty of more off-the-wall and unusual pictures. In particular, check out the Cemeteries and Graffiti links for some really quite beautiful images, in an urban decay kind of fashion.
7 February, 2004 view
On Monday I started a new job at the BBC, where I will now have the glorious (and lengthy) job title of Interactive Software Engineer, BBCi Factual and Learning. Yes, I started at the Beeb four days after the publication of the Hutton Report, which means I am currently one of probably only a dozen or so BBC employees not to have been at the organisation during Greg Dyke's time as Director General. Let nobody ever say I don't have an ironic sense of timing!
But enough of that. On Tuesday I was up bright and early while the BBC bundled me into one of Stelios' finest and sent me up to Glasgow to join the BBC's "Upfront" 4-day residential induction course for all new employees. I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive, expecting something that might be rather full of media lovies and lots of self-congratulatory nonsense, but I was pleasantly surprised at how down-to-earth it all was. It was also very interesting, especially the hands-on exercises where we were shown (and participated) in the making of television and radio programmes, and I had a very enjoyable time. And so on Monday I'll actually be starting my new job properly, as last week I barely had time to find out where my desk was and meet my colleagues before I was whisked off to Scotland.
29 January, 2004 view
So Lord Hutton finally reported back ... and oh look, he's completely exonerated the Government. But as The Spectator reports, what else would you expect from a Law Lord when it comes to choosing sides either for or against the establishment? But the whole thing's not going to go away, seeing as an early poll says that half the British public consider the verdict a whitewash. Much, much more to come on this, I think.
20 January, 2004 view
Radio Netherlands hits the nail firmly on the head with this article:
... [T]he US says holding early elections [in Iraq] is unfeasible for practical and security reasons ... besides, if elections were to be held now, they would almost certainly be won by the religious Shi'ite movements who have a clear organisational advantage through their networks of mosques. This is not a welcome prospect for the US. (my emphasis)
America's all in favour of democracy ... as long it's the kind of democracy that will in turn favour American interests.
11 January, 2004 view
It's the land of the free, the country of truth, justice and liberty for all. Unless you're a Canadian citizen with the wrong name. The San Francisco Chronicle reports how the US authorities kidnapped a man and sent him abroad to be tortured simply because a brother of a friend of a friend was allegedly linked to Al Qaida. It seems that today America is less the home of liberty and more the home of summary arrest and torture. Lovely ...
His story has naturally generated a huge amount of interest in Canada, although this is the first time I've heard about it. CBC News has a whole section on its website dedicated to Maher Arar's nightmare in US and Syrian custody. Unfortunately it seems that the Canadian authorities either don't want to anger their American neighbours or have been warned away, as Prime Minister Chrétien has point-blank refused a independent enquiry into what happened.
5 January, 2004 view
"MPs are to look into whether the Big Ben chimes heard as London welcomed 2004 at midnight were genuine or a recording." I'm delighted to see that they're dealing with the really weighty matters now ...
31 December, 2003 view
South African police will crack down hard on anybody throwing old fridges from high-rise buildings during the New Year's holiday, they say.
So reports the BBC about New Year's Eve traditions in the deprived Johannesburg suburb of Hillbrow. And just to prove they're not making this up as some kind of early April Fool's joke, here's an article about last year's festivities in the area. Sheer class!
19 December, 2003 view
Erk, I got NTK'd. Again! This time it was for the TinyURL Roulette that I put together a couple of weeks ago.
15 December, 2003 view
Keith Richard's reaction on hearing that Mick Jagger had been offered a knighthood? "I went fucking berserk when I heard"!
9 December, 2003 view
A nice article from the BBC regarding the irony shown by the fact that Britain, a constitutionally Christian country, is far less religious than the USA, a constitutionally Atheist one.
2 December, 2003 view
Well I mentioned it before but now a former member of the CIA, Robert Baer, has pretty much confirmed why America can't hold elections in Iraq at the moment in an interview with CNN. The following couple of lines of conversation says it all:
BLITZER: What do you make of the power of the Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, the Shiite leader in the south? He seems to be a powerful figure right now, perhaps emerging as the most powerful figure in Iraq.
BAER: What he's saying is, listen, we are 60 percent of the population. We want one man, one vote. And if we get this, this is going to be a Shia republic. And that's going to be our stand. And this is what's worrying coalition authorities.
So there you have it, the Americans want there to be democracy in Iraq, but only if the Iraqis democratically elect a government that's going to be friendly to America. If they democratically elect an unfriendly government then ... well, it seems that one way or another the CIA won't allow that kind of democracy to take place.
1 December, 2003 view
It's December, so it must be time for the Perl advent calendar.
1 December, 2003 view
Well I never, a useful and interesting site from Microsoft. Netscan contains more analysis and statistics of Usenet, its groups and its posters than you could ever imagine. If you ever hang around Usenet, you'll be fascinated by some of the stuff you find there. The Java application that lives under the Crosspost link is particularly fun to play with.
Amusingly, it's been reported that the site breaks under IE5, although it works perfectly under a Gecko-based browser.
27 November, 2003 view
Yay, nice one Benjamin Zephaniah! He was offered an OBE in the New Year Honours List but has turned it down. Although I personally think it might have been more fun to go to the palace and then tell the Queen and Blair what he really thinks about it all. But then again maybe he didn't want to get done for treason! The man's got even more respect from me after this though, that's for sure.
16 November, 2003 view
Amongst many others, these guys will be doing their best to make sure that George Bush realises his visit to London later this week isn't among his best moves. Splendid :)
14 November, 2003 view
Even before the war began, the American government and military were assuring people that this wouldn't become another Vietnam. Today comes the news that More US troops have been killed during the war on Iraq than were killed during the first three years of the Vietnam war. Quite a shocking thing to consider.
5 November, 2003 view
Once upon a time (back in the late 80s and early 90s) I used to be a fairly regular viewer of the Channel 4 soap opera Brookside. Unlike most other soaps it seemed to concentrate less on melodrama and more on real-life problems, and also some of Britain's finest actors. However as the 90s drew on the plotlines became more and more ridiculous, most of the better actors moved on to pastures new and, like millions of others, I stopped watching.
Last night was the soap's final episode, so for the first time in years I tuned in to watch it. Much of it was as expected, but the final 15 minutes, which consisited almost entirely of a monologue by Jimmy Corkhill (played brilliantly as ever by the supremely talented Dean Sullivan. This was classic Brookie, as Jimmy laid down a diatribe against today's politicians, people's apathy, and most spectacularly of all the media and particularly television. Excellent stuff, and if I can find a transcript I'll link to it.
See also this review from the Guardian.
3 November, 2003 view
I wonder if I'm the only person to consider the irony of America's drive-thru soup kitchens for the poor ...
21 October, 2003 view
Some pictures of the Camden tube derailment. Looks like that train hit the wall at a fair old pace ...
21 October, 2003 view
It wasn't an accident, writes Zoe Williams about last weekend's tube derailment at Camden. A good article explaining why private companies, with their primary concern being shareholders' profits, don't mix well with public services. "It's time to start calling them what they are: errors, mishandlings, manslaughter."
20 October, 2003 view
John Humphrys has an article in today's G2 about English grammar. I think he hits the right note in compromising between allowing the language to evolve (as of course it has always done) and not getting hung-up on nit-picky details, whilst still paying attention to some useful and important rules. After all, how can you fail to nod at a sentence such as:
"Management speak has been infiltrated into our lives, a loathsome serpent crawling into our bed at night and choking the life out of our language."
15 October, 2003 view
Revolution in Bolivia? Not far off it.
Given that it's reportedly a "popular uprising" consisting of the poor and the native indians, what are the odds that if successful they'll bring in a Government friendly to American and multinational capital's interest? Pretty low, I'd have thought. In which case the OAS warning that "any government that arises anti-democratically is absolutely unacceptable in the Americas" starts to sound a bit ominous. Watch this space ...
2 October, 2003 view
The Independent has published an article (actually little more than a reworded IFPI press release) about how badly the record companies are still suffering due to P2P file sharing on the internet.
This was my reply:
To: letters@independent.co.uk
Subject: Is it really all down to internet piracy?Referring to your article "Net downloading cuts music sales by further 11%". http://news.independent.co.uk/business/news/story.jsp?story=449025
I'm sure the IFPI are delighted that Liz Vaughan-Adams has apparently printed one of their Press Releases, lightly reworked, seemingly without doing any further research.
About the only factual element in that article is the claim that "Global sales of recorded music dropped another 10.9 per cent in the first half of the year." Nobody's denying this -- however the reasons, which Ms Vaughan-Adams stated as fact ("internet downloading and illegal copying of CDs") are dubious at best.
The big music publishing companies are right to regard file-swapping on the internet as a threat -- but not simply because it means they can't sell as many CDs as they used to. After all, in the 1970s we were all told that "Home Taping is Killing Music". It wasn't, and it didn't.
The main reason that the multi-billion pound music industry fears an internet trade in music is due to the fact that it could threaten their entire business model. If you are an up-and-coming band you can sign a contract with EMI, requesting that they record your songs, produce CDs, distribute them, market them, and generally manage the whole shebang. Or alternatively you can use cheap computer equipment to record the songs & press CDs yourself, distribute copies of your music over the internet -- after all word-of-mouth (sorry, "viral marketing") works way better than traditional advertising -- and sell the CDs for half the price they cost in the shops, and yet STILL make two or three times the amount per album that you'd get from the old-style record deal.
File-sharing on the internet has certainly had an effect on music sales. In fact for "serious" music, there is a growing amount of evidence to suggest that file-sharing is causing higher sales, as new fans are born after hearing one or two downloaded tracks.
However, in a Pop Idol Universe, where bland, same-y pop tunes are aimed at an ever-younger teenage or pre-teen population, there is little incentive to buy albums anyway. These listeners want to hear Christina's latest tune, just like on the radio -- only it's virtually impossible to buy singles these days. They've no interest in buying the album as it's the saccharine-coated pop tune du jour that they really want, and if that can be obtained from the internet for free, then so much the better.
The answer to declining music sales is not to make criminals out of music fans, as the Recording Industry Association of America are doing with their onslaught of lawsuits. The real answer is to accept that a business model that evolved in the 1950s and became a sophisticated machine in the 1980s is no longer applicable, and to realise that Pop is coming to the end of its marketable lifespan. If you were to introduce serious, quality bands, and rely more on the music than on image and secondary merchandising, the industry would probably see a huge turnaround in its fortunes.
But that would also mean changing a whole bunch of entrenched atittudes, and even more entrenched senior management. Far easier to spout on about "evil internet piracy" and to set free the lawyers, than to actually (god forbid) have to change.
1 October, 2003 view
Oh now I like this. I like it a lot! Google can now act as a calculator -- and really a rather clever one at that.
Want to do some temperature conversion. Just tell Google that you're looking for 25 degrees celsius in farenheit and out pops the answer. What does the year I was born look like in Roman Numerals? MCMLXIX, apparently. Talking of the Romans, imagine they'd actually invented the computer and needed to convert their painful number system into binary. Yes, Google Calculator can even do that. What a cute piece of code!
It could actually be useful too, seeing as in the web browser I use I can simply hit CTRL-G to bring up an input box and the results get sent to Google. So now I shouldn't need to have to find a separate calculator application -- it's all built-in to my browser.
26 September, 2003 view
Any Perl programmer worthy of the name will be well aware of a neat little algorithm called the Schwartzian Transform. Today, however, I stumbled across the original article written by Randal Schwartz where he first proposed his eponymous technique.
26 September, 2003 view
[The internet] is littered it seems not just with gurning paedophiles, but with spotty-faced science students "stealing music"; mad terrorists swapping bomb recipes; snake-oil salesmen desperate to increase the size of your penis; adverts for Viagra, Russian brides and cheap loans. A refuge for the socially dysfunctional and the sexually perverted.
Emily Bell explains, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, just how evil this whole net place really is. Actually she does nothing of the kind, and has written a quite interesting article regarding MSN's recent decision to close its chatrooms.
26 September, 2003 view
So it's (almost) official. Iraq hadn't had any weapons of mass destruction for years and years. The most they're able to come up with is that Saddam Hussein would have apparently liked to obtain some. But that's hardly the same thing. This could be really awkward for Blair now.
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