David Blunkett has resigned from the cabinet for the second time in twelve months. You’d think that someone would learn a lesson somewhere along the line. Either he should learn to stop abusing positions of power or Blair should stop appointing him to them. But no. I’ve no doubt he’ll be back again within six… Continue reading Blunkett Resigns… Again
Author: Dave Cross
Searching The Guardian
Looks like The Guardian have taken their new search engine out of beta and are now linking to it from the main site. It all looks very nice.
Sony Takes DRM Too Far
Here’s an interesting story from a Windows user who found a rootkit on his system. Further investigation revealed that it had been installed by Sony when he had played the digitally protected music on a CD he had bought (Get Right With The Man bu Van Zant). Sony is apparently so concerned about protecting its… Continue reading Sony Takes DRM Too Far
A Brief History of Disbelief
Most TV documentaries have been dumbed down to such an extent that they are often unwatchable. Programme makers seem to think that it’s impossible to explain concepts to the viewer without flashy graphics or re-enactment of key scenes. And a lot of time is wasted telling us what we are about see or what we… Continue reading A Brief History of Disbelief
BBC Programme Catalogue
When I saw him in Amsterdam, Matt was talking about a secret project he was doing for the BBC. And now he has revealed what it is. He’s putting a web front end on the BBC Programme Catalogue. That’s a database that contains details of almost a million programmes that the BBC have broadcast over… Continue reading BBC Programme Catalogue
MirrorMask vs The Corpse Bride
Last weekend I saw The Corpse Bride. Yesterday I saw MirrorMask. Two new films from past masters of fantasy. How do they compare? Actually there’s no comparison. MirrorMask is streets ahead. Whilst I’m a big fan of a lot of Tim Burton’s work, I find that some of his gothic fantasy stuff is a bit… Continue reading MirrorMask vs The Corpse Bride
EuroOSCON Day 3
Late, but I thought it was worth recording what I did on the final day of EuroOSCON. As always, we started with the keynotes. Marc Heglund talked about privacy issues and the possibility of an “open data” movement. David Heinemeier Hansson talked about the secrets of Ruby on Rails and MySQL’s Kaj Arnö showed us… Continue reading EuroOSCON Day 3
EuroOSCON Day 2
Very late, but here’s a summary of what I did at EuroOSCON on the second day (Wednesday). The keynotes started with Rael Dornfest talking about how “Annenuation is the new Aggregation”. He was followed by Red Hat’s Michael Tiemann talking about quality management. We then had Jason Matusow from Microsoft nicely illustrating how, hard as… Continue reading EuroOSCON Day 2
London Web Frameworks Night
November is shaping up to be an interesting month in London. Not only is there the London Perl Workshop that I mentioned yesterday, but Dean Wilson has organised a London Web Frameworks Night on November 17th. Three experts will be discussing the major MVC frameworks for Perl (Catalyst), Python (Django) and Ruby (Rails). And it’s… Continue reading London Web Frameworks Night
“Sleepy Village”
I can ‘t work out whether or not this is irony. The article talks about Pete Townshend doing a small unannounced gig in the pub at the end of my road. It says that the show took place at the Bedford Pub in the sleepy village of Balham near London Never thought of myself as… Continue reading “Sleepy Village”