Dump the World Wide Web!

Dump the World Wide Web!, says Bill Thompson on openDemocracy.

Late edition to Good Things that happened in 2004

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/4112085.stm

The Polymeal

Stick to this diet, reduce your chances of getting cardiovascular disease by more than 75% and increase your life expectancy by 6.6 years. It's true, the BMJ says so.

Shit Things that happened this year:

1) US elections
2) Madrid bombing
3) Iraq war
4) Death of John Peel
5) Russia school massacre
6) Polar ice cap melts
7) Death of John Maynard Smith
8) UKIP

Good Things

1) Mark Thatcher arrested
2) Fitzrovian Tuesday launched

er, any others..

bugger

Rents on one bedroom flats rising faster than other properties.

2004 bad science awards

Again, from the Grauniad.

100 Most Useful Websites

From Guardian online. Weirdly, Fitzrovian isn't included.

It's a Wonderful Life in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies

Another New York Review of Books link

The truth about Muslims

Google to scan famous libraries

Google to scan famous libraries. This sounds good. Has anyone ever tried that 'look inside the book' thing on Amazon.com?

rock and roll circus several minutes on

shit - yoko ono is part of john lennon's supergroup and it's all gone downhill rather rapidly...

Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus 1968

On as I type on BBC 4 - the who have just followed jethro tull and it's all compered by the stones 1968 lineup in a big top. Apparently it's legendary but has never been seen before or something - has anyone else ever heard of this?

More goats for Christmas

I'm getting my grans goats and chickens from Oxfam Unwrapped, since they're both in their late 90s and don't really know who I am anymore.

John - Bis! You pulled that one out of the vault.

This bares out what I was saying in the Fitzroy about the Blair government I think

Blair's rule full of gaffes, spin and control freakery, says mandarin.

I was a bit disappointed to find it wasn't Manda Rin out of Bis making the damning indictment though...

Law to safeguard religion is no joke, warns Blackadder

I could almost forgive him Mr Bean.

heyhey16k

Hold Iraq death probe, Blair told

UK ministers have rejected the Lancet figures but offered no alternative estimate of their own.

Good Gifts

Wonder if my nephews will thank me if I buy a goat for some Africans instead of fighting my way through the wild-eyed desperate Hamleys hordes to get them some overpriced plastic Thunderbirds toy for their Christmas.

One for Tom:

National Secular Society

Fozzy Osbourne

Who says no news is good news?

Kilroy-Silk attacked with slurry

Required reading...

Chris Hedges on war

Neighbourhood Statistics

Home owners - enter your postcode at Neighbourhood Statistics to find out the truth about your council ward!

pub

will be there around 7 this evening...

First look at PlayStation 3 chip

The Cell revealed

Geeks Grants

Geeks - sorry, Pro Ams - make a positive contribution to society and should receive Govt funding to pursue their hobbies, according to Demos.

You know you're a bit homesick for Scotland...

...when you find yourself looking at travel webcams for the central belt's road network. Ahh, the Newbridge Roundabout...

Fine art

Nicked from Holy Moly, but what a fantastic painting: GENERAL DOG PORTRAIT

Postpone?

John and Tom can't go. Seumas, do you want to rearrange for next week?

Pub Tonight?

Are we still up for it? I'll probably be there closer to 7, but see you there. Think Tom's on childcare duties.

Christmas Threatened by Ukraine Unrest

I hope Santa sorts out the electoral chaos in Ukraine in time to deliver presents to all the children...

The Man Who Fell Asleep

Met this depressed and boring bloke at a party last week. Turns out he's a genius - check out his blog

No Blogo

Naomi Klein's websites recommendations: www.democracynow.org, iraqoccupationfocus.org.uk, empirenotes.org.

the politics of christianity.

appropriate sunday night post. interesting looking website.

DivestSudan

Pub on Thursday 6.30pm

OK?

Mastering the race

Nature reports that apparently humans are the shape they are because they're good at long distance running. Don't know what happened to me.

USB Virtual Machine

This is just one of the coolest ideas ever...

Pub

We should all go down the pub in the near future. Fitzroy sometime?

Election result maps

In case you haven't had enough yet, these election result maps redraw the red and blue states according to population density, county level constituencies, electoral college, shades of purple etc.

F*ck the South

Righteous vitriol: F*ck the South.

Guardian Neal Stephenson interview.

Bored of the dance

Article in the Guardian about the demise of dance music :-/

Following up on a couple of earlier posts...

Further to the ancient bittorrent discussion, I've just discovered uknova.com which links to torrents of British TV and radio media. They've got the first two episodes of "The Power of Nightmares" (I can put them up on fitzroytuesday.homelinux.net if anyone's wanting them for conventional download). Terry Jones Medieval Lives series plus loads of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue also available - fantastic!

Also, my Neal Stephenson posting spurred me toward buying "Quicksilver." Amazon delivered end of last week - started reading it immediately and it is astoundingly good, can't recommend it highly enough etc.

Thinking Machine 4

This is flipping brilliant: Thinking Machine 4

teenage kicks

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Simon Waldman on Wikipedia's success

Guardian Unlimited | Online | Simon Waldman on Wikipedia's success

RIP John Peel

BBC - Radio 1 - John Peel

Slashdot | Neal Stephenson Responds With Wit and Humor

MP3 players

I'm thinking of buying one, preferably with quite a lot of storage capacity, but not too bulky. I know that a lot of techie-minded people are very anti-ipod, but what do they recommend instead? Anyone know?

Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

Entertaining piece by Hunter S Thompson in Rolling Stone, apparently written during the optimistic blip following Kerry's debate wins: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004.

Excerpts:

When young Bush was at Yale in the Sixties, he told the same joke over and over again for two years, according to some of his classmates. One of them still remembers it:

There was a young man named Green
Who invented a jack-off machine
On the twenty-third stroke
The damn thing broke
And churned his nuts into cream.

"It was horrible to hear him tell it," said the classmate, who spoke only on condition of anonymity. He lifted his shirt and showed me a scar on his back put there by young George. "He burned this into my flesh with a red-hot poker," he said solemnly, "and I have hated him ever since. That jackass was born cruel. He burned me in the back while I was blindfolded. This scar will be with me forever."

There is nothing new or secret about that story. It ran on the front page of the Yale Daily News and caused a nasty scandal for a few weeks, but nobody was ever expelled for it. George did his first cover-up job. And he liked it...

BULLETIN
KERRY WINS GONZO ENDORSMENT; DR. THOMPSON JOINS DEMOCRAT IN CALLING BUSH "THE SYPHILLIS PRESIDENT"

"Four more years of George Bush will be like four more years of syphilis," the famed author said yesterday at a hastily called press conference near his home in Woody Creek, Colorado. "Only a fool or a sucker would vote for a dangerous loser like Bush," Dr. Thompson warned. "He hates everything we stand for, and he knows we will vote against him in November."

Thompson, long known for the eerie accuracy of his political instincts, went on to denounce Ralph Nader as "a worthless Judas Goat with no moral compass."

"I endorsed John Kerry a long time ago," he said, "and I will do everything in my power, short of roaming the streets with a meat hammer, to help him be the next President of the United States."

My Life As A Morrisons Employee

Fascinating. My Life As A Morrisons Employee. Sample quote: "it's christmas here at Morrisons and has been since the 3rd September".

Electronic voting in Florida

Example here

Metafilter thread on The Power of nightmares.

The Power of nightmares. | Metafilter

t r u t h o u t - GOP Faces 'Civil War' over Bush's Faith-Based Rule

t r u t h o u t - GOP Faces 'Civil War' over Bush's Faith-Based Rule

further to the below

The making of the terror myth

reminder about tonight's telly

The Power of Nightmares
BBC2
Wed 20 Oct, 9:00 pm - 10:00 pm 60mins

Baby It's Cold Outside

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares. The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams weren't true, neither are these nightmares.

This series shows dramatically how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion. It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media. At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neoconservatives and the radical Islamists. Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. These two groups have changed the world but not in the way either intended. Together they created today's nightmare vision of an organised terror network. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. Those with the darkest fears became the most powerful.

The rise of the Politics of Fear begins in 1949 with two men whose radical ideas would inspire the attack of 9/11 and influence the neoconservative movement that dominates Washington. Both these men believed that modern liberal freedoms were eroding the bonds that held society together. The two movements they inspired set out, in their different ways, to rescue their societies from this decay. But in an age of growing disillusion with politics, the neoconservatives turned to fear in order to pursue their vision. They would create a hidden network of evil run by the Soviet Union that only they could see. The Islamists were faced by the refusal of the masses to follow their dream and began to turn to terror to force the people to 'see the truth'.

Guardian Clark County campaign

Tom - prepare to do no work for the next few hours: 'What WERE you thinking?'

The Guardian's (pretty misjudged) letter-writing campaign gets big Blog reaction.

Kerry Haters for Kerry

I guess this is kind of positive...

Team America

Have you heard about this new puppet action movie from the South Park guys. It's either going to be hilarious or absolutely terrible (he says, hedging his bets).

Cornwall

Back last night from a few days in St Mawes, Cornwall. St Mawes is fantastic - stayed courtesy these people who I can highly recommend. Enjoyed the Lost Gardens of Heligan v. much - my holiday snaps are up at http://johnmain.fotopic.net.

The Onion Election Guide

And this - might cheer Tom up: election guide.

New Onion Out

I quite like Cheney vows to attack America if Kerry elected. Also, has anyone noticed that the people in the BBC news site's 'Voters Views' panel look strangely like the vox pop panel on the Onion?

More music...

...for the rest of you... ;)

Actually, I had to get Quicktime to play this, and realised how much I hated the damn program. So, if you're sick of Quicktime and Realplayer being just generally crap, go to this site and get Real Alternative and Quicktime Alternative. You won't regret it (this is assuming you've got Windows).

Classical music

I know John is a refined man who'll appreciate some fine classical music, so this site is for him...

Thieves Jargon

The web really is the great last chance saloon for all us frustrated poets

a different kind of optical illusion

Apparently this took 9 hours on a Pentium 4 3GHz with 1GB of RAM. Fullsize version here.

Google Print

Search the text of books with Google Print.

W says

The Bush-O-Matic Quote Generator

Brain hurts...

...and eyes are broken.

Noels oblige

Entertaining report on this year's Ig-Nobel awards.

Florida Election Ballot

Florida Election Ballot

What is red mercury?

As cited by John below. (Just figured out how these new titles work.)

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

Excellent - hope this one takes off: How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power.

Homage to Gaudi splits community

Anyone else seen this interesting storefront up Muswell Hill way? Personally I'm not sure if the style makes the Catalonia - North London transfer that successfully...

Guardian Unlimited | Life | Guardian life bad science

bad science - inspired by John's dirty bomb debunking...

Laurel Canyon

Saw Laurel Canyon on vid last night. Entertaining movie - hadn't heard of it before.

Blogger templates

I've revisited some of the blog settings - there's now a title field for posts and I've enabled the new "official" blogger comments rather than the third party system that was in place.

House painters star in Tate show.

Shameless lift from the popbitch mailout. Definitely worth watching though - I deliberately avoided the drama thing last week...

Radiation bombs are a government fantasy

Last week’s BBC drama about a dirty
bomb in London has helped keep everyone
terrified about terrorism.

But a forthcoming documentary shows that
dirty bombs are actually a fantasy. The
Americans should know: the CIA tried for
years to make one, before realising that
blowing up radioactive material won't hurt
anyone. Radioactive dust disperses so
quickly you'd need to be exposed to it
for about a year before any real
damage occurred.

The documentary, The Power Of Nightmares,
shows how politicians are using fake stories
like the dirty bomb to keep people scared,
and themselves in power. It also demonstrates
that the claim that Al-Qaeda is a global,
hidden, terror network is also a myth.

So what channel is this BBC-debunking
documentary showing on? Er, BBC2.

The Power Of Nightmares. BBC2, 20th October, 9pm.

Too much US politics thinksme. Try The Adventures of Superman instead....cool adverts too....

Quite interesting perspective on fallout from Iraq war from a pretty right wing perspective. Though, like a lot of these wankers, he seems to have conveniently forgotten how up for it he was 18 months ago.

I've enabled my webserver to serve content from user directories (ie http://fitzroytuesday.homelinux.net/~mainj/test.html) - drop me a line if you want some free webspace!

This is quite good - Purple States. Shows republican/democrat vote distribution not as red and blue states but as different shades of purple. Trouble is, i'm too colourblind and can't tell with any certainty which ones were for bush and which ones for gore (it's based on last time round I think).

Cripes!

Britain's 15-year-old girls are amongst the world's
least likely to succeed. They drink more alcohol than any other
15-year-olds on the face of the globe. They are the world's third
largest dope smokers, the fourth most obese and the fifth best at
watching telly.

Makes you proud...

If America were Iraq...

70 things you might not know about Leonard Cohen

One for you Tom? Saint Clinton

How about this for completely fucking bonkers?

P2P outfit sues RIAA for copyright theft

this thing tonight - is there a guest list or something?

looks like php and mysql don't like each other out of the box (on fedora at least)...

idokorro mobile : Blackberry and Nokia SSH Telnet & Wireless Windows Administration. This is extraordinarily cool. Shame it's not free ;-)

new webserver back up online - had a few technical probs with the old platform so have moved to Redhat Fedora 2.0 running on a different machine. this new setup should be a lot more stable (fingers crossed) so should be able to start doing stuff with it this week. not sure what though...

This flikr thing looks useful...

Jings! Crivvens! Help Ma Boab! It's the Scottish Parliament website in Scots...

Had predictive text messaging explained to me last night. Amazing! Has everyone else known about this for aeons?

Why we're all doomed: Republican Voters Speak Out About Bush, Iraq War. Don't be fooled by that misleading title into thinking they're all speaking out against the war.

This seems to be the best poll website for the US elections. As with everything in that country, all of the polls and sites are highly partisan and biased, but this one seems pretty reasonable.

This looks quite interesting - Ingenious

A friend of mine runs this very good short stories website. Well worth checking out - he is almost earning enough from advertising revenues to give up his IT job.

Couple of good ones from the education guardian email newsletter - the multi-disciplinary environmental MA at Oxford, and the maths problem that would render internet encryption useless.

By the way, the reason I can't go next Tuesday is that I'm going to this IPPR Vote USA event, if anybody fancies it.

second tuesday tomorrow
However, I can't make it - going to the cinema. In fact, all of this week and next week don't look too good for me. So either go ahead without me, or can we reschedule?

How was holiday John?

One of the world's greatest unsung heroes? | Metafilter This is very interesting, never heard about this before. There's a *fantastic* Einstein quote just over half way down the thread...

GITS2

Retro vs. Metro - the Great Divide, why the retro states, representing a third of the population and standing for reactionary political values, run America instead of the more progressive, liberal metro ones.

I believe this was mentioned last time we met - House Price Crash.co.uk. (Sorry, homeowners.)

Fitzrovian Tuesdanians - do you fancy coming along to this?

How To Get Published - September 15

Colin and I have been involved in putting it together, and could do with all the support we can get. It should be a genuinely decent event, with food and drink and literary chat. You don't have to come for the whole afternoon, but the evening networking should be good.

Good economist piece on Poverty in America.

Here's some more on it: ROGUE FARM

My brother in law has animated a short film, which is being shown at the ICA on Saturday.

Interesting Metafilter thread on a familiar topic...

Webserver: progress report

Locking down security is progressing well - should be internet ready by end of the bank holiday if I can devote a few more hours to it.

Next steps will be to setup user accounts and access rights for individual users (if anyone is interested). Can then offer free webhosting plus PHP and MySQL access, and start thinking about setting up a more sophisticated blog.

Could also start thinking about acquiring a proper domain name - I reckon fitzroviantuesdays.com will come in at ~ $25 per year. This would allow me to set up a mail server on another machine for username@fitzroviantuesdays.com addresses...

Life is too short
My friend's doing the marketing for this great ormond street fundraising campaign. They hope the webpage will spread virally - but it revolves around people getting sponsored to wear jeans to work (?!?) - and most people I know can do that anyway. Most of their supporters are middle aged women, so if you know anyone suitable, please visit the page and forward on the link. Ta.

Extreme Gravity Racing Series. The Volvo entry rocks!

Webserver - next steps.

Have taken fitzroytuesday.homelinux.net offline for the time being as want to ensure the security is locked down properly.

Once I've done this the next thing will be to think of something to do with it - has anyone got some ideas?

It will be straightforward to register a proper domain name (fitzroviantuesdays.com!) to point at the machine - in fact it shouldn't be *too* difficult to have the apache server running multiple websites on multiple domain names, if anyone has any pet projects...

OK - apache webserver up and intermittently running at http://fitzroytuesday.homelinux.net/ Now I just need to work out how to add content to this thing!

wish i'd thought to scan mine...

Re-edited my links below and they seem to be working OK-ish. Anyway Claire, Jenny-Pops and myself are staying here next week. Highly exciting - never been to the Isle of Wight before...

Just created an account with DynDNS.org. Should be able to post the address of a Harringay hosted website sometime in the next couple of days (DIY permitting).

I see yahoo are getting into RSS now...

About fucking time...

I'm sure I mentioned this before, but BLOG:CMS is software for setting up your own blog site. You need PHP installed and MySQL running (as well as web server software obviously!) Only 1 Meg download....it's pretty cool.

Here's a picture of it running, and another which shows what it looks like just with a different stylesheet (or "skin").

Skye bridge tolls cause unfortunate acronym. Still the highest bridge toll in Europe, but going to be removed before the end of the year it seems...

George Bush, in his wisdom, promotes hydrogen power as an alternative to oil. Hydrogen power is non-polluting and easier than invasion!

I've still got loads of Gmail invites....anyone know anyone who wants one?

Programs that may behave differently in Windows XP Service Pack 2 . Golly there seem to be quite a lot of these...

Yes, a very good Fitzrovian evening.

Here's a link to a paper on Mindfulness in plain English which is well worth reading.

Ah yes, the five tastes: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and 'umami', coined by the Japanese inventor of monosodium glutamate.

Also, Kobe beef, produced by feeding cows beer and giving them sake massages.

Good to get the Fitzroy sessions back on track yesterday. Topics to follow up: John's mindful buddhist conversion, hydrogen power, flavourless tea, Skye bridge, er... memory not serving me well this morning, like John and his pin number.

Talking of tea, I take it you've all seen nice cup of tea and a sit down?

Mobile blogging via blackberry - I'm on the top deck of a no. 38, just going past the ritz...

Proof of concept mobile blogging from my blackberry. I'm writing this on the top deck of a 38...

Oh dear - ThankYouTony.com.

Pub II

OK - suggest next Tuesday (17th) in the Princess Louise (just near Holborn Tube) from 7pm. Who's with me?

Most Scots believe life is sweeter south of the Border

I liked Where Are You Now, When We Need You Most, Rage Against The Machine? And Jim Anchower is always good.

Good one in this week's Onion: Kerry Unveils One-Point Plan For Better America (ie, the removal of George Bush).

I also liked 'US Military Clears A-Team of All Charges' - after 30 years on the run.

Pub

Anyone up for a Fitzroy gathering at some stage? Been a while now...

Peer-to-peer networks carry surprising cargo - ZDNet UK News

The Daily Mail Watch - watching them : watching us

Monbiot in Grauniad today, slagging off climate change deniers like David Bellamy. Also inlcudes this interesting take on modern prosperity - "A recent study by the New Economics Foundation suggests that the costs of crime have risen by 13 times in the past 50 years, and the costs of family breakdown fourfold. The money we spend on such disasters is included in the official measure of human happiness: gross domestic product. Extract these costs and you discover, the study says, that our quality of life peaked in 1976. "

Lastminute.com to axe 350 jobs. "Lastminute chairman Allan Leighton said the company, in common with other travel operators, had been affected by a growing tendency for consumers to book their holidays later than usual." Eh? wasn't that supposed to be the whole point?

Richard Herring is performing at the "Pod Deco" in Edinburgh. The Pod Deco is the old Odeon on South Clerk Street. I always feel a bit wistful for Edinburgh at this time of year.

Further to the webserver project, I tried installing Suse10 on a 500MHz Celeron Sony Vaio with 64MB RAM and the YAST installer tool reported not enough memory! Bah. It did give the option of enabling swap space but I couldn't work out how to make it run fdisk (or similar) to set a swap partition.

Am going to try again with Gentoo 20004.2... Does this sound sensible or is there a better distro for low end machines (Seumas)?

I've just rediscoverd the The Postmodernism Generator, after reading about it last night in Francis Wheen's mumbo jumbo book. It generates entire essays, complete with footnotes, author etc.

A couple of cultural items, plus a possible project...

First off, "Hear my Name" by Armand Van Helden. Absolutely superb house track. The video is quite good as well.

I've been playing a downloadable game thingy while on the bus which I can reccomend - Ancient Empires by Macrospace. Very similar to the legendary Advance Wars.

On the project front, I've realised that my broadband router supports Dynamic DNS which means that I will be able to host an (internet visible) webserver. To this end I'm looking at setting up a low end end machine running linux and apache. Not sure when I'll get round to doing this but once its in place it could be a new home for Fitzrovian Tuesdays (fitzroviantuesdays.com anyone?)

2nd Tuesday...

is next week. Anyone up for Fitzroy-ing?

I have just returned from here and here. It were great.

I haven't got anything new or important to say other than fucking hell I hate George Bush even more than I did a week ago.

End of the Routemaster

Wind farms etc...

Just got a flyer for this through my letterbox this morning. Not sure what to do as it is beginning to look like the whole windfarm thing is a bit of a racket, really. They do look nice though.

William Shatner sings Pulp's Common People. Or speaks it anyway.

Lookout V1.2. This is quite good. Much better than Outlook 2003's woeful search facility anyway...

I'd like to think this is true:

'NEWSWEEK reports that President Bush, appearing before a right-to-life rally in Tampa, Florida, on June 17,'04, stated: "We must always remember that all human beings begin life as a feces. A Feces is a living being in the eyes of God, who has endowed that feces with all of the rights and God- given blessings of any other human being." The audience listened in disbelief as the President repeated his error at least a dozen times, before realizing that he had used the word 'feces" when he meant to say "fetus."  '

NTK's pedantic webpage mistake feature now has a website: Doh - Broken web pages, but in a funny way

 
One think always puzzled me about Stephen Hawking Is he a genius whose work will go down in history (e.g. like Bohr, Heisinger, Einsten, Schroeder etc) or is he just one of a thousand or so leading contemporary theoretical physicists who happens to go round in a wheel chair?

419 scammer operates out of Edinburgh scheme.

Hopefully going to get the OK to donate a load of our (ie my work's) older kit to these guys. All seems very worthwhile - and they promote open source!

This appears to be real - Powell goes disco for Asean forum

My brother got me Mario Golf Toadstool Tour for my birthday. It rocks...

child pimp and ho costumes for sale. That's the nephews' birthdays sorted, then...

Cassini-Huygens: Multimedia-Images-Latest Images

BHODemon 2.0 Useful if you still have to use IE....

Oxfam - Conflict Campaign

Wild parrots settle in suburbs

This is first tuesday today, right? We're not due to meet until next week?

Hubble discovers 100 new planets

How cool is this? I'm amazed it's not bigger news as the implications are pretty stupendous ie "The discovery will lend support to the idea that almost every sunlike star in our galaxy, and probably the Universe, is accompanied by planets."

An Open Letter to the Radioactive Spider That Never Bit Me.

Welcome to EUROBAD '74, an exhibition of Europe's
worst interiors of 1974.

Another national psycho-tragedy last night. But at least now the European Championship will probably be won by a social democracy not embroiled in an illegal occupation.

Am reading Meyer Hillman's book on How to Save the Planet. Absolutely terrifying - basically, it's immoral to ever fly anywhere on holiday, or do anything else much except read, cycle and farm crops. We are all fucked.

Odd - two comments underneath Colin's meme machine entry but it lists as Comments (0).

What was that meme machine book you guys mentioned the other night?

Hotmail bounces Gmail invitations

Cheat's guide to Joyce's Ulysses

Big Noise Music -- forget iTunes, Oxfam have launched a music download site, with 10% going to charidee. They're also involved in a new chain of fair trade coffee shops (called Progresso, which is a bit of a duff name).

New Statesman New Media Award nominees

Did a Second Tuesday happen yesterday?

Where does this leave us? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3783543.stm

Notcon 04

Nasa Cities Collection

Fahrenheit 9/11 trailer now online

The Pixies: Rock's comeback kings

Return of Colossus marks D-Day

This is good - it create's a mini shockwave movie derived from the Google image search, based on the keyword you put in: One Word Movie

Re: Ecotricity

There seems to be a bit of a windmill backlash building from unexpected sources. A lot of people (including alternative energy types) are saying that they'll never generate enough power. I was thinking about this stuff the other day, and it occured to me that we should be investing loads in providing solar power in Africa -- doing our R&D there and basically giving it away to them in vast quantities. Also, I still think they should add dynamos to treadmills and exercise bikes in gyms across the world...

Seumas, I'm sure you'll disapprove of me posting this, but I just read a speech by Bill Gates for a thing I'm doing at work, and thought it might be of vague interest for John, workwise: Bill Gates' Speech Transcript: Microsoft CEO Summit May 2004.

Doonesbury at war. Just in case anyone missed the Gruaniad piece yesterday.

Kissinger Tells Of A Drunk Nixon. Hope Monkeyboy isn't back on the sauce - choking on pretzels, falling off mountainbikes etc...

Well, it's something I suppose.. I've just switched electricity suppliers to http://www.ecotricity.co.uk

It only takes a minute.

Unexpectedly, Shaun Woodward has probably got the best MP's website. It's a blog basically, and he gets stuck in. I've had some reasonable chat with him.

http://www.shaunwoodward.com

Best. Geek-Gift. Ever.

Hiya all,

Neither John nor myself will be able to make this Second Tuesday. He's off to the sunshine and I'm off to the cold. Anyway, we thought maybe a Final Thursday might do the trick if you're available for that? Thoughts?

Best headline of the day - Swedish elk steals bicycle.

James Lovelock in today's Independent. Reading this rather spoiled my bus journey in this morning... :-/

Pandaf Golf

The Onion infographic on Electronic Voting Machines -- includes button sequence for God mode, giving user unlimited votes (R2,L2,Triangle,Circle,R2,R2), and pop-ups reading "People who voted for John Kerry also ordered these products from Amazon.com"...

What stupendously nice weather we're having!

:-D

The new Hari Kunzru novel is all about an Indian in Silicon Valley writing computer viruses.

Rainy-day voice of a generation. Anyone see Morrissey on Jonathon Ross on Friday? Saw it was on but missed it...

Test....chosen a new username to go with email account...

Ebay is just weird....

eBay item 3292008773 (Ends 21-May-04 13:03:52 BST) - Monopoly Quiz Machine

Cold Turkey -- In These Times

Donna out of Elastica has a new band.

Turning the Pages

Hubble sees 'planet' around star

Good chat last night. Sorry I got there late. As I remember, here were the major themes:

Coming to terms with the absence of free will
A collective bout of "we told you so" about Iraq, tempered by total despair over the situation
John's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Seamus's theism

What the hell is going on in the world? Islamist website shows 'beheading'

Tomorrow evening

Who's up for the Fitzroy tomorrow? Seeing as Colin can't make it, maybe we should postpone to next week?

Have you seen the End of Story thing they're doing on BBC 3 website? A bunch of authors have written two thirds of a short story, and now they're running a competition to see who can write the best ending...

Don't think I can make it next week
Sorry, I've managed to double-book myself. Perhaps we can hold an extra session later in the month? Apart from general socialising, I was hoping to pick your brains about Linux...

Scottish update

Apologies for the lack of promised photoblogging action - I didn't bring my laptop so can't transfer pictures from digital camera to interweb. I've also not taken very many pictures though will try and post a panoramic shot of the East Lothian coast from the hills above Musselburgh (just what this blog needs) when I get back to London.

Apache killing video becomes viral news

I saw this horrible video of an Apache helicopter shooting Iraqis a few months ago. Something about it didn't seem right - surely it couldn't be real - and I decided that it must be some kind of sick simulation.


In light of all the torture pictures and videos that have come to light in the last couple of weeks, this has been checked out, and apparently it's genuine. My sources tell me it might turn up on the news this week...

Re the earlier google talk - this is quite an interesting article about the way google run their datacenters. 100,000 is a lot of servers...

Hello chaps,

Claire, Jenny-pops and I are heading north for a week in Scotland. Will attempt to do some photoblogging of our North British sojourn.

toodle pip

US secret agents quiz boy over art. Things still completely FUBAR on the other side of the pond then...

Let's get a rapping Welsh policeman along to our next pub night. His world view would be sure to inspire some heated debate...

As penance for the recent frivolity of my posts, here's an interesting piece by Dick Morris in today's Times about the Bush/Kerry election prospects. More equivocal than his article in the NY Post that I posted the other week, and thus slightly more hopeful for liberals.


Essentially, he says that if terrorism is the main election issue Bush will scrape it, but if the economy or anything else is Kerry should sneak in. The problem is that when something like Faluja is going on, the US electorate get more gung-ho about terrorism, even though Bush actually created the situation in the first place. Thus you get republicans denigrating Kerry because he voted against purchasing the arms which US marines are now using in Iraq -- yet if Bush had never started the bloody war in the first place, they wouldn't need the arms. It's so frustrating how war and jingoism seem to short-circuit people's sense of reason.

Seumas (and Tom and Colin if you're interested) - you up for a Green Lanes pint 4pm tomorrow? Can you mail me at my yahoo address (I've broken my work email).

Ta

As well as the exploits of Dirty Desmond, did you quys catch this in yesterday's Grauniad?

One of the greatest living Englishmen is no longer living..

So gutted that Richard Desmond has elected to support the tories...

You may have seen this before, but if not, Andy Serkis at MTV awards gives the Best. Acceptance speech. Ever. (warning: some swearing).

BTW, when I signed into blogger.com today, I got offered a Gmail account (which I took, out of curiosity). Anyone else get this?

Derelict London.com

Poets 'die younger' than authors

Aaaaaaaaaargh. Britain's brickies build a fortune

Bloody excellent - jet packs reach Stoke Newington

Haven't been any pictures for a while, so thought I'd subject you all to these photos of Maradonna:

    

(Aged 43, 39 and 25.)

Nice one - the dullest blog in the world!

Not like this one, oh no.

Guardian Unlimited | Arts special reports | Blog all about it

Google news rendered in diagramtic form as a 'map' of the biggest stories.

Google Search: miserable failure

The Islamic Onion

Strange spam

I just received a spam email with the following subject line and body copy (plus a hyperlink, which I've removed); it's like trying to read Finnegan's Wake:

Subject: craig ambassador parody bent haddock carburetor epsom jiffy retract abed fullback acadia churchgo criminal

Body:
Out of energy...if so, I think I've found the answer

[link was here]

datum holt areaway carolyn hanover declivity bengal brevet rhine indispensable sealant caribbean

indigo elizabeth penalty adaptation alienate hampshire biggs efficacy aftereffect centrifugate histamine infantrymen proffer away checklist compare alp eclipse ftc audible bloc indoor clark magi homebuilding consignee algal dc orthant guyana homologue equinox bryozoa bullfrog infrequent patrolmen carrion christ

Oh, I forgot. Knoppix is a Linux distribution that runs from CD. No need to install anything to HD, just burn the ISO and boot from the CD.

Stephen Hawkings gets new transport

Oh, the company who've got the wonder tanning drug working...there was something about it in the Sunday Times apparently.

Get a tan, get thin, feel sexy. The Chemical Generation is just getting started...

Meanwhile the MP3 generation is still in full swing. Just get proper software like CDex.

Devon: The villages of Lynton and Lynmouth are connected with a really cool water powered railway. Lots of details at this site. This is a Must See if you are ever passing that way...

Not talked about, but since I didn't sleep again last night (arghh!) I watched early morning cartoons and....Trap Door is back!!! You remember Trap Door surely? Go here and choose it from the side menu. You know you want to.

High tech band have high tech website. Thank you, John, for bring that into my life...

That's all I remember....

Good to see everyone last night

Topics I recall include: tanning/libido/weight-loss drugs; mp3 rippers and alternative audio compression software; Devonian water-powered gravity trains; running linux OS from CD-ROM; Richard Herring's number plate game; Stephen Hawking; investing in the Computing 30; The Fog of War; Kill Bill as computer game; Thalidomide; narcolepsy; oh, and incorrect table numbering.

Anything else?

SaveThe73.com

Incredibly, opinion is gathering that Kerry's going to miss an open goal.

Amazing - somebody's blogging their experiences of using the no. 73 bus route.

History of the International Herald Tribune centerpiece

Sorry to lower the tone, but is it true that Condoleezza Rice is a lesbian?

An Open Letter to Osama bin Laden: By Chevalier James R. Reese, Grand Prior of the United States

Scientist Has Nagging Feeling He Left Particle Accelerator On

funniest line from today's onion. made me laugh anyway.

I've republished the archives in monthly format and they now seem to work OK...

John, the archive's not working!

Last week's ok, but previous weeks not available. (IE6.0, win2k etc etc)

John's post below about Tom Wilson has inspired me to unleash the Gallery of Neds!!!!



The horror, the horror...

Just read on popbitch that Tom Wilson, the king of "tartan techno" has died. There's a tribute to him on the Radio Forth website.

Straight into my all time top 10 websites:

http://www.maggiethatchersdead.co.uk/

In a week's time I shall be here.




Yay!

I like the title of this blog. One day I will dance on her grave, oh yes.

The Exorcist in 30 seconds with bunnies.

Turning the Tide

I found this interesting blog, though it seems a bit left wing...

Here is what one of my favourtie reference books (Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable) has to say on the subject of Fitzrovia:

"A world of outsiders, down-and-outs, drunks, sensualists, homosexuals and eccentrics"
Times Literary Supplement, 1958

Sounds brilliant!

Oxfam - The 0.7% campaign.
Take action now - demand that Gordon Brown fulfils UK international promises on aid and increases our aid budget to 0.7% of the country's wealth.

I just got a spam email advertising a new niche genre - goth porn. The strapline was 'You won't get any mercy from these sisters'. Whatever next?

Yes, we are all individuals...

And images?

Google Image Result for www.cinefex.com/backissues/number10.jpg

Testing to see how this works...

Extension Room :: BlogThis: "BlogThis by Phil RingnaldaAdds a context menu option to blog a link to the current page and the selected text (if any) through Blogger's BlogThis form."

For anyone using Firefox...

Extension Room :: BlogThis: "BlogThis by Phil RingnaldaAdds a context menu option to blog a link to the current page and the selected text (if any) through Blogger's BlogThis form."

Just testing John's revelation about Google toolbar.

I had hidden that button on mine - now prepare to be bombarded with lots of random boring links.

Er, like this one that I happened to have open, about how Sun will sell software to governments: Sun bases prices on countries' populations.

More skyscrapers!

Skyscrapers transforming City skyline

Interesting article on, errr, skyscrapers transforming the City skyline.

BTW, do you guys use the Google toolbar on IE? It allows you to make a Blog post pointing at the website you are viewing just by hitting a button.

Political Cartoon even more boring and impenetrable than the issue it attempts to address...

Ok, I'm stupid. How do you put a picture in without going like <img src="http://whatever"> ? Isn't there a button to press or something?

I'm in disguise...

Crikey - London Metropolitan University have just beaten Jesus College, Cambridge in the second round of University Challenge. Quite a high scoring match too!

Mass Extinction Not Inevitable

After glancing at the doom laden front page of the Grauniad yesterday and reading the New Scientist article, this interview in Wired has made me feel slightly less depressed about Life on Earth. Hurrah (a bit).

In Pictures: Your Scotland

Every Friday I go to this BBC site and daydream about relocating. One of these days...

Bad day? End it all with an asteroid and no worries about work in the morning...

I'm here. Hungover and tired, with a Guinness hat on top of my monitor. I guess I just didn't have anything of import to say. There is a photo of the pub lunch yesterday but I'll have to wait to get it (it's on a phone ATM).

--Seumas

Marketing scam or promising development?

npower are offering windfarm-only generated electricity to home consumers.

Where's Seumas?

And why does he spurn our blog so?

Richard Herring on getting the tube in London in these benighted times.

and of course...

Happy birthday Seumas!

As I cycled in this morning I found a large chunk of Bloomsbury closed off due to a security alert. Apparently Brixton High St is the same. What larks we are having these days!

:-/

Beware the Ides of March!

Went to the natural history museum at the weekend and saw the wildlife photographer of the year exhibition. There was a brilliant picture of an ape seeing its reflection in a mirror for the first time. I feel like that myself some mornings.

We forgot to post Seumas's link to the Russian girl with a motorbike who rides around Chernobyl taking pictures.

Blog Links

Apropos of not very much other than to lighten my mood on this most wretched of days, here are links to the blogs I read on a daily basis.

metafilter
linkmachinego
i love everything
richardherring.com
peteashton.com

weegie advertising hoarding

Budget Deficits

Basically i think if you run a big budget deficit, the fact that you have to service the debt by borrowing from banks, issuing bonds etc means that investment funds for more productive economic activity get crowded out, and the economy as a whole suffers.

Right, lets get back to XY women ;-)

the RSS feed is working fine. i've just installed SharpReader which seems to work pretty well btw (windows only I'm afraid seumas).

RE: Krugman and US debt

$500 billion is the figure I see, but I think there's a distinction between deficit and national debt. Deficit is the annual budget over-spend (i.e difference between tax revenues and expenditure). National debt is the aggregate of budget deficits and all the government's other long-term debts, such as war bonds, accrued over years and years.

If you go here, you can make a contribution to paying off the US National Debt!!

I've enabled the "site feed" feature so Fitzrovian Tuesdays can be read by RSS news aggregators. The address to point the reader to is http://fitzroytuesday.blogspot.com/atom.xml

I'm in danger of revealing how much time I spend online like a sad git in the evenings when I'm pretending to do some extra-curricular work (and impressing/worrying my flatmate with what she imagines to be my work ethic - this is the danger of broadband), but thought I'd better reveal that the internet is shit.

By the way, Krugman seems to reckon that the US budget deficit is currently around 500-odd billion, which doesn't tally with the running total from the link below.

More on budget deficits. I was trying to find a good Paul Krugman explanation, but have so far only come up with columns which treat the budget in relation to other issues, such as this one from earlier this month, or this one from last summer. But you could do worse than to check out his official Princeton site, his old MIT site or the slightly fanatical unofficial site.

That Onion link below has turned into something else. The one I meant to provide is now in the previous issue, but looks like the link's not permanent. Not that funny, anyway (and Tom, don't open this one in the LDA). Quick, before the next issue comes out...

here you go tom

Why rugby is rubbish part 64 - and why Australians deserve their reputation for plain speaking.

Onion foster mom story

(But not if you're in the office)

Links from last night...

Sharjah International Airport .

XY Women.


Still not sure what effect the US National Debt is supposed to have (is it the cause of the low value of the dollar?), but the big numbers are cool.


We didn't chat about this, but you have not lived till you've heard William Shatner sing Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds.



From previous Tuesdays...


Mozilla Firefox web browser


Bit Torrent.