I’ve just discovered an album by Geneva amongst my music collection. These guys are great—and I can honestly say that this is the first time I’ve discovered a new band by randomly selecting a CD from the shelf. Maybe I should try and listen to them soon after I buy them.
Yearly Archives: 2000
Melody Maker
Hooray for expletives!
The award for the most gratuitous use of offensive language is jointly held today. The Broadcasting Standards Commission wins for publishing their annual list of Britain’s rudest words, but credit should also be given to The Register, who went ahead and published it. If that doesn’t upset the search engines, nothing will. Channel 4 News attempted to cover this story a few nights ago, but as the programme goes out before the infamous watershed their video-wall demonstration was somewhat baffling. Imagine Jon Snow, and behind him his thirty-foot video wall displays simply ’Motherf*****’.
Mac attack
Not a lot happened during the day, so I spent some time hunting around for interesting websites. I failed. One marginally interesting discovery though: normally, one would expect a URL to bare some relevance to the content of its site. Not so with robinhood.com. Any Macintosh experts out there—I want an explanation for this one.
The Des effect
First, he was the most respected and recognisable figure in British sports journalism. Then he made a few bob by moving from Auntie to ITV and became their top sports anchorman. He’s brought us a warm tone, well-maintained moustache, and expert delivery of sports news for as long as anyone can remember, with lines such as ’Going down to the pub is not yet an Olympic sport, but beach volleyball is’. Now, the right-honourable Desmond Lynam has become an accredited internet expert—and presents MSN equipped with only a cup of tea and warm pullover. Is there anything this man cannot do? If I were Jakob Nielsen, I’d be shitting myself…
(Mo takes a few moments to compose himself after hysterical laughter induced by the words ’Hello there. I’m Des Lynam’.) Dear me. Good old Des. If I really needed to be patronised by MSN, I can’t think of anyone I’d rather have do it. Except possibly Terry Wogan.
Greymatter
Noah Grey has created a nifty little Perl program for creating weblogs via a web interface without having to rely on Blogger and the like. It works on Unix hosts running Perl 5, but not on any NT variation. After a bit of tweaking, I got the thing working on my NT4 host, so zipped up the amended files and sent them back to him. I don’t know how good they’ll be on anybody else’s setup, but they do work here. I’m not sure if I’ll go to such a system, but if I do, this is the strongest contender so far.
Who wants to change their brother?
Tonight, the first million will be won on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. I shan’t be watching, although it makes me wonder what the telly gurus will dream up next. How about Carol Vorderman hosting a show in which two sets of neighbours are locked in each others homes for seven weeks and have to completely redecorate the place, while answering multiple choice questions and being watched day and night over the ’net. Then at the end the viewing public will decide who wins the huge cash prize.
Bill
The big cheese has lent me a copy of Bill Gates’ book. I have to say that, since reading the first few chapters, old Gatesy has certainly risen in my estimation. But only slightly.