According to Christoph Hartmann, the president of the game-publisher 2K, the Wii Market is “Flooded with Crap” - something that Wii owner could not have failed to notice.
BBC World have broadcast the first episode of The Oracle, a strange and funny hybrid of financial analysis and humor. It’s produced by my friends Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert who Resonance FM listeners may know as the hosts of the weekly radio show Karmabanuqe.
it’s fantastic, funny stuff and represents a real break from the reportage of statistics and stock-picks that passes for financial news on the “business” channels.
I’ve been slowly reading through Frank Key’s excellent new book “Gravitas, Punctillio, Rectitude and Pippy Bags” - the third of Franks books currently in print.
Those of you fortunate enough to live within range of Resonance 104.4 FM’s feebly low-powered radio-beacon may know Mr. Key from his Thursday evening radio broadcasts. If you’ve never heard his live show, pretty much every word he has ever spoken on the air has been collected by my friend “Marvin Suicide” and posted on the Resonance FM Podcast site. Just subscribe to it with whatever podcast-downloader you use… if that application happens to be iTunes, please consider using an alternative which is not so tightly corporately controlled… but heck, you can use that too.
Perhaps it’s too late to get this book as a Christmas present, but as Mr Key informed me once, true Dobsonists do not celebrate Xmas, they celebrate on Boxing day.
This rather sinister looking observation post is in a park in North London not far from my home.
Bach allegedly discovered the healing power of the ultra-dilute flower-essences in his products via some kind of telepathic study of the medicinal affinities of the plants he studied. What I find astonishing is not the that Mr. Bach was a blatant charlatan but that people continue to buy his worthless product.
Bach’s “Rescue Remedy” consists of 50% brandy dissolved in distilled water. Other compounds may be present in negligible trace quantities. It is based on the discredited “homeopathic” theory that chemicals present in trace quantities may have some sort of healing property.
The most expensive brandy sold by Sainsbury (a British supermarket) is £24 per 1000ml. That’s just under 2.5p per ml. Bach’s 10m product by comparison is just over £1 per ml.
That’s 43 times more expensive than the most expensive brandy sold by a typical supermarket.
Podcastle, the fantasy department of Steve Eley’s Escape-Artists podcasting collective has just entered the dangerous realm of slash-fiction with it’s latest production: “Red Riding Hood’s Child“. It’s not just regualr slash… you now the kind where Batman get it on with Catwoman. It’s furry-slash. If your idea of fun is being raped by anthropomorphic man-wolves then this story is definitely for you!
In case you are unaware of them, Escape Artists are currently world’s biggest genre-fiction Zine. Their subscription is probably as big as all of the print SF magazines put together. They’ve been going for about three years and currently have three channels. The original one was “Escape Pod” wich favours science-fiction, then came Pseudopod which caters for lovers of horror. Finally came Podcastle - for people who like their swords mixed with sorcery.
I’m not sure that I cared for the tale all that much, but it do think that Steve & friends ought to exploit this - perhaps it’s time for them to open up a fourth Escape Artists channel which features ONLY slash-fiction? I’d probably subscribe to that (I just wouldn’t tell anybody).
Just think how many slash writers would love to have their story read to the size of audience that Escape Artists can deliver. I’m convinced that Escape Artists could be the driving force behind a slash-fiction revival.
Silly TV Licensing advert, originally uploaded by salimfadhley.
This was taken outside the Foundry club in Hoxton, which I believe is just within the border of Hackney council, and definitely not within the purview of Enfield, which is approximately 8 miles to the North of the location of this billboard.
Perhaps the reason for this glaring mistake can be seen by a careful study of TV Licensing’s “database”: It seems that somebody has nicked all their CPUs and memory - it reminds me of the days of ram-raiders!
After what seems like almost 2 years of hype and promises, Bibble Labs have released this very short video demonstration of their next generation RAW photography program, this is a big deal because Bibble is just about the only commerical software I’ve ever bought for Linux, and also the only fully cross-platform raw-photography processing system.
Bibble 4 has a somewhat cranky interface, but is an exceptionally good program and is my current software of choice. The Bibble people assure me that anybody who buys Bibble 4 today is guaranteed a free upgrade to Bibble 5.
I’m obsessed by Bluetooth devices, particularly stereo headsets. These devices provide the same features of the odd-looking objects that dangle from people’s ears, and yet have the conventional, more socially acceptable appearance of a pair of headphones. The addition of a telephone manufacturer’s brand name at the side informs observers that the user is not talking to himself.
I consider the wireless stereo headset to be the essential mobile phone accessory. Almost always travel with a pair, especially whule cycling, working, cooking or even holding one (or both) of my children.
The trouble with these headsets is that until recently it has been almost impossible to find a reliable device that is not utterly stupid-looking or will not instantly self-destruct, hence my enthusiasm for Nokia’s BH-503 which seems to be their first device that is tough enough for daily use, reliable enough for continuous operation and is not utterly minging.
Normally with electronics the rule is that the bigger the number, the more advanced the product, however in this case the BH-503 beats the “flagship” BH-601 in just about every sense. For me the most noticeable improvements are:
- Controls: Moving the volume controls to the the top makes them easier to find. They now have a very different feel to the track-skip and answer-buttons which are on the side of the device. All the buttons have a firm yet unambiguously “clicky” quality, and when the are pressed the headphones are sufficiently rigid to not flex and distort under finger-pressure.
- Reliability: The BH-503 is much better at picking up a consistent signal than the BH-601, and even on the rare occasions when it cuts-out it seems to nearly allways reconnect a fraction of a second later. Oce configured the headset pairs automatically without requiring the user to do anything other than switch the device on. This is notably different to the 601 which would often require a hard-reset after any interruption, no matter how trivial.
- Design: This is Nokia’s first stereo design that I’d describe as being “somewhat attractive” - it’s no fashion accessory, but when I wear them on my ears or around my neck I no longer feel like some kind of “cyberman” type robot. The BH-601 seems boxy and clumsy looking by comparison. The indicator light is wheere it should be (on the side) and is discreet enough not to draw any real attention.
- Comfort: Round is good - how long did it take Nokia to realize this? The curved shape fits comfortably on my ears and does not cause any stress, even after very extended operation.
- Build Quality: It’s lasted well - the photo above is my own BH-503 taken after approximately 2 months of very heavy use. This compares very favourably with Nokia’s fragile BH-501’s - of which I had a pair that lasted fewer than ten days before crumbling.
On the whole, I’m delighted with this headset - definitely Nokia’s best so far.
Mike Gene is known to some as “The Smartest Guy In Intelligent Design”: This may seem like an oxymoron but is actually quite plausible since he is one of the few high-profile ID advocates who had the good-sense to avoid associating with the Discovery Institute and their gaggle of nit-witted followers. The DI, creators of the “Wedge” document, are the people responsible (in part) for loosing the Dover trial, and drafting the new Florida legislation that promises to usher in a whole slew of Doveresque legal theater.
Mike Gene keeps a lower profile than many of the “big names” in ID - unlike Michael Behe and William Dembski he has never been a tenured researcher at a famous institution. He’s never even published a single paper. Even the name “Mike Gene” may be a pseudonym. According to an interview he gave to a fundamentalist-Christian podcast called “Darwin or Design” he stated that this obfuscated identity is intentional and serves to shield his important professional research work from the unwelcome hostility of all those anti-ID folk, however it could just as easily be a ruse to conceal the fact that Gene is unqualified for the role he has assumed.
Mike’s main contribution to the ID kerfuffle is the theory of “front loading” - finding out just what this theory is requires you to buy his book: “The Design Matrix”. In what might appear to be an an excessively bonkers act of self-defeating candor Gene admits that his theory is not science, should not be taught in schools and does not meet any known standards of experimental rigor required for it to become science in the forseeable future. Despite this, Mike seems to have kept a substantial gang of enthusiastic followers who are all keen to big-up his project.
To save you the bother of finding out: “Front Loading” appears to be the notion that things did indeed evolve just like that nasty atheist Richard Dawkins claims, except that God (or some other unspecified first cause) knew it would be that way. An argument for Front Loading often goes something like this: Look kids, a protein which is critical for brain formation is used by a yeast-cell. But since yeast has no brain these proteins must have been put there in anticipation of large-brained creatures such as ourselves.
That’s more or less where the argument ends, except of course for the titular “Design Matrix” - the (unproven) idea that one can detect design by counting up and tabulating the number of features present in an artifact which resemble designed objects and from this infer a probability of design. I’ve heard this approach summed up as somewhere between plain-nonsense and naive wishful thinking, but even this is light-years ahead of the crypto-creationist junk which passes for reasoning amongst the ID community.
I’ve been reading what I always assumed was his blog - “Telic Thoughts”, a site which I had been lurking and occasionally commenting (until my account got suspended). These days I just lurk - I find that fifteen minutes creationism can get my blood pumping faster than the strongest double espresso. But shock of all shocks, Mike Gene has just announced that he’s going to resign from his own blog - and I guess he’s handed the passwords over to his chums Denyse Oleary and Bradford.
Mike’s stated reason for giving up the blog is that all-time favourite of politicians: The need to spend more time with his family. At the risk of being snarky, I’d suspect that the smartest guy in ID may just have been smart enough to figure out that ID is really going nowhere, and the only thing a smart guy can do is quit.