- Brit ISPs censor Wikipedia over ‘child porn’ album cover – As a general principle I don’t appreciate my Internet connection being censored. In this case, two things stand out. Firstly, is this really “child porn”? Secondly, why are connections denied silently? Could they not tell me why the page is being blocked rather than just sever the connection? (I get a generic “could not connect” error message.)
- Amazon.co.uk: MP3 store – DRM-free MP3 music downloads – iTunes finally has a major competitor in the UK. Prices are similar, perhaps a little lower, but the main differentiator is that everything is in MP3 format and DRM-free.
- Lessons from Mumbai – “Terrorism is rare. If a bunch of men with guns and grenades is all they really need, then why isn’t this sort of terrorism more common? Why not in the U.S., where it’s easy to get hold of weapons? It’s because terrorism is very, very rare.”
This slightly understated image, taken around dusk, is one of my favourites from my trip to Egypt last year. At first glance it’s just a sunset taken over a “generic” city, but a more comprehensive look reveals the pyramids, meaning that it must be Cairo.
Please also vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Black.” I’m entry number 226.
You may have noticed that ZX81.org.uk has been offline for at least twenty-fours hours. I don’t know exactly how long, but I first noticed about this time yesterday.
At the moment I have no idea what happened. The company hosting the site have not been terribly forthcoming — no response to the support tickets I raised, no public announcement of the down time — which in a sense is even more disappointing that the downtime. No system is 100% reliable, but you should at least communicate with those most affected.
What do Britney Spears and Yummy, my iPhone Delicious.com client, have in common? If you had asked me a few months ago I would have said nothing but I’d have been wrong. No, they both have had to grow up in public.
For a version 1.0 product, Yummy seemed solid to me. It was fast, coped will all my bookmarks and had the ability to add, edit and delete entries. I didn’t think that this would remain as a unique feature for as long as it has, but hey, that’s a bonus.
- Educated Catholics have sown dissent and confusion in the Church, claims bishop – A Catholic Bishop thinks that “mass education has led to ‘sickness in the Church and wider society’.” While teaching people to think for themselves may be a bad thing for the church I have a hard time seeing it as a bad thing for society as a whole.
- What you need to know about ID cards – “If you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to fear. If you’ve something to hide you shouldn’t even be here.” ID cards just get worse the more you learn about them.
- Cameron anger at ‘Stalinesque’ arrest of Tory MP in leak inquiry – News so shocking that I actually agree with a Tory: “In a democracy, opposition politicians have a duty to hold the government to account. I was elected to the House of Commons precisely to do that and I certainly intend to continue doing so.”
Photography is all about light, which makes this weeks PhotoFriday challenge rather challenging, “Black” being the absence of light. The best I’ve been able to do is this silhouette picture, taken in Oslo, Norway.
There’s a story about this image. I went to Norway shortly after buying my first SLR and, since I knew that I was going to be there for a while, decided to experiment with a few different kinds of film (this being Ilford XP2). I thought the contrast here worked well and was pretty pleased with the result.
- WordPress 2.6.5 – As always: new version of WordPress installed on zx81.org.uk, no known problems but please let me know if you find anything recently broken.
- The pitfalls of Africa’s aid addiction – Interesting take on how Western aid to Africa isn’t having the effect it’s supposed to.
- How to Price Your iPhone App out of Existence – Nice analysis of the current iPhone application pricing situation. Summary: not good for the long term.
It was all part of the November Plan. Head out of the country for a weekend for no apparent reason, with little research beforehand and no expectations. It’s a great way to travel, even if to say that I planned it that way is an exaggeration.
This year I went to Portugal’s capital city, Lisbon. After the grim summer and recent return to Greenwich Mean Time, I craved some sun and a little warmth. Sure, I wasn’t going to be wilting in the heat on the Atlantic coast but it was a good few degrees warmer than London, with sun forecast and much longer daylight hours. That I’d never made it to Portugal before was a bonus.
It all started ten thirteen years ago. In November 1998 I went with a friend to Amsterdam, and now every November since I have spent at least a few days out of the country.
For the record, those trips were:
- Amsterdam, The Netherlands (1998)
- Abu Dhabi, UAE (1999)
- Thailand (2000)
- Oslo, Norway (2001)
- Malta (2002)
- Charlotte, NC, USA (2003)
- Cuba (2004)
- Brussels, Belgium (2005)
- Lille, France (2006)
- Jordan and Egypt (2007)
- Lisbon, Portugal (2008)
- Vienna, Austria (2009)
- Amsterdam and Den Haag, The Netherlands (2010)
It never started as a challenge and you can’t deliberately start a tradition, but I’m keen to keep this one going for as long as I can. Even if it is a little silly.