Glastonbury Photo sets

I just wanted a place to host together the photo sets of all the mates I was hanging out with in Glastonbury. So here we go:

• Mine
• Milf's
• Tom's
• Joe's
• Matt's

My new gimpPod, and, Why iPods actually cost more

Thought I'd post a picture of my new iPod, dubbed the gimpPod because of the black wubber skin I bought for it. Pretty neat the way not one part of the actual pod is exposed, and the way the touchwheel can work beneath the rubber. Thanks to the lovely folks for a great birthday present.

I was surprised when the iPod arrived how much the iPod "package" has been paired down. A while ago I was musing about how cheap iPods are now, relative to when they first came out, and I put it down to scales of production and the iPods popularity. But actually, the accessories the iPod *doesn't* come with any more, more than make up the shortfall in cost. My 3G ipod, which cost about £300, came with -

• a belt clip carry case (£19)
  
• an external power supply with integral 13A plug (£19)
  
• a dock (£25)
  
• an in-line remote control (now only available as FM Radio Remote £35)
  
• headphone foams (£8)
  

That little £106 bunch of stuff all came in a really ornate, exciting-to-open, 6-inch cube of packaging, with software CD-ROM and user manual. All those things are missing from the iPod now, which comes in a box about the size of a fat double-CD jewel case. At £240, it just comes with headphones (<1m cable), USB lead, and cloth bag. Most irritating is the lack of mains charger - I now have to find a computer every time I want to charge my iPod.

So, if you do the maths, iPods are actually more expensive now than they were four years ago.

Hilary Clinton loves Jesus (Jones)

Interesting to hear that Hilary Clinton's campaign theme song is Right Here, Right Now by Jesus Jones - I suspect the identity of the artist performing the song is rarely mentioned by campaign staff. Here's a "live" performance of the song, from 1991.

I find the stupid over-performance, which doesn't fit the relatively mellow nature of the song, quite amusing. They think they're big hair rockers, but they're really not. Note especially the stupidly manic keyboard, none other than the self-indulgent prat Iain Baker, who recently left Xfm in a cloud of DLT-esque "I'm not happy with some of the changes around here" (friends in the know make it quite clear he was actually let go, probably for being, umm, a bit of a twat).

Bees, glorious bees

I've got a bee home on my balcony. Here are some photos, and here is a video.

Super Duper!!

I haven't blogged about the US elections in a while, it had kinda gone a bit quiet as far as news reaching the UK was concerned. Couple of things caught my eye today though.

I got an email from Barack last night (he likes to write to me), telling me that he'd raised $25m so far, all from individual supporters (it's a big part of his campaign that politics should be a conversation with the people, and he's not taking contributions from corporates or lobbyists). Quite impressive considering Clinton has raised just $26m, and hasn't made such a pledge. Whether that means Clinton still has that card up her sleeve, and Obama will run out of cash, I don't know.

Then, I read about Super Duper Tuesday. "Super Tuesday" has been around for 30 years or so now; synchronous election days in multiple states, which usually cause the minnows to drop out, but often cause upsets or unheard-ofs to suddenly become heard of (think FA Cup giant killings, but with politics). This year, tired of the demographically-misrepresentative and smaller states like Iowa and New Hampshire shaping the beginnings of all the campaigns, the other states have decided to, practically speaking, make the primaries a general election. 25 states (and maybe more) will now be holding there primaries on February 5th, in what has been dubbed (it could only be so in America) Super Duper Tuesday. This includes California and Texas, who are the most populous and have the most electoral college votes. So, it could all be over and the tickets decided on Feb 5th 2007. This could be a bad thing - those small players without a voice used to rely on the gradual build up through the small states to gain momentum (Bill Clinton for example), and some commentators are suggesting this move will only be a good thing for the well-funded big candidates.

Finally, in a nod again to my working life, Joe Biden's website www.headtohead08.com is a smart use of YouTube video. Pick a candidate, and you can hear what they have to say about Iraq alongside what Joe has to say. It seems to be only about Iraq, but I'm sure that will change. Neat idea, and another example perhaps of an outsider candidate trying to quietly build support via the interwebs.

Myspace Impacts on Election

Myspace are running a portal page to each of the Presidential candidates' Myspace pages. I'm not sure if the myspace people set up the pages as well, but it's an interesting way to a) get young people interested in politics (the youthful addiction to voting/rating things doesn't seem to spill over into the real world particularly), and b) have a cheap popularity contest, though, I guess the electorate in this vote are much younger than in the real election. Hilary currently has 3,023 friends, and Barack Obama has 74,229.

Wemberley!!!

Me and Tom went to Wembley on Saturday, for the Community Day - the first public opening of the stadium, to test their crowd management. Their was a couple of celeb football games, but mainly it was a chance to walk around the stadium and take photos (here are mine, on flickr and here are Tom's) and go WOW.

Amusing cock-up of the week.

The Terry and Fearne show goes off the rails on the Eurovision Making Your Mind Up show. God knows what went wrong (earpiece faults? Maybe the lead changed at the last minute? Maybe Terry's a doddery old fool? Who knows), but it was hilarious and rounded off a great day of drinking and celebrating.


Fearne Cotton seems to have become one of these "safe pair of hands" presenters - she was on Comic Relief the night before, she did the Oscars for sky - she's quite irritating, but can always keep a programme on track, always finds something to say to keep things moving (even if it is something banal and vacuous). I quite like the way she "wheeled" Terry around the programme last night, sort of acting like the tour guide to his septuagenarian tinsel-and-turkey weekender. Come on grandad, it's time to read the winner out. Werther's original? Bless.

(ps, my mate Zoe built the Scooch website, way back in 2000 and it's still live)

Tony Blair ain't bovvered

The highlight of last night's Comic Relief show, Tony Blair appearing in a sketch with Catherine Tate. Little tricks like this can do wonders for a politician - Tony Blair is fairly universally disliked in this country at the moment, and seen as dead weight hanging on for dear life. I bet anyone that saw this thought kinds thoughts about him for the first time in ages.

Does being good looking improve your chances of getting elected?

Erm, probably, yes. No brainer really. But they discuss it in this article anyway, just for laffs.

Sky ads highlight Ofcom cock-up

Sky have been censured by the Advertising Standards Authority for publishing misleading adverts in Whitehaven, Cumbria that incorrectly state Terrestrial TV will be switched off there this Autumn. Essentially, they should have used the word "Analogue", not "Terrestrial", which is going to survive quite happily as "Digital Terrestrial" (aka Freeview). The reason these ads have been running in Whitehaven is that it is the testbed for analogue switch-off; it's happening there in October this year.

The most ridiculous thing about that seems to be being over-looked in all this though. Ofcom have chosen to testbed the analogue switch-off in a town which cannot yet receive Freeview or Cable!!! Essentially leaving Sky a complete monopoly on digital television. Not only is this a complete distortion of the market that puts Freeview and Virgin right up the swanny, it is also a completely unrepresentative testbed for analogue switch-off. Bloody numpties, what a waste of time.

David Palmer never had all this trouble...

I'm starting to become more aware of the discussions going on around America about Barack Obama's "blackness". I first heard about this on the Radio4 programme Feedback, where somebody had written in to protest at BBC reporters' use of the term "black" to refer to Sen. Obama when he's actually of mixed race. A google search for "obama black mixed race" will spit out allsorts of opinion, ranging from the pathetic and racist, up to the more interesting discussions of what being "black" means to modern American society.

Far from being about petty semantics, there's a very strong sense amongst some African Americans that calling yourself black means associating yourself with Black America's long struggle for civil rights - "Black, in our political and social vocabulary, means those descended from West African slaves" writes Debra Dickerson, who also says it in this interview with Stephen Colbert.

That distinction between "Black" and "African American" (which nobody can deny Obama is) is something new to me. In fact, Dickerson goes so far to label him with a new label - "he's an African African American" - which is, frankly, pathetic. As Colbert points out, she is asserting his blackness not based on his skin colour, but on the content of his character - "a truly special interpretation of Dr King's words". Is anybody else slightly frightened that when she says in that interview "we're not the same" it sounds slightly... er... racist?

I don't mean to paint myself as a truly enlightened modern multicultural thinker, but none of this should really matter. But of course it does. And while we middle class Guardian-reading white Brits allow ourselves the opportunity to say "yes yes, about time the yanks had a black president or a woman president" we mustn't forget our own pathetic record in that same area. We may have had a woman leader for 11 years (*shudder*), but we only just had our first black cabinet member, let alone party leader or Prime Minister. And as far as I know, despite British Asians making up around 5% of our population, there's never been an Asian in senior British politics.

Obama uses gmail

I really don't intend to dwell on the webbyness of the various presidential candidates but... Obama invited me to a rally in Los Angeles today (when I signed up, I told him my zip code was 90210!) and he invited me via his gmail account, losangelesrally@gmail.com. Part of the web, rather than just on the web; good old Obama.

Obama declares he's running for president...

...and he does it in Abraham Lincoln's Springfield, Illinois webcasting the whole shebang. I think I'm right in saying someone got in a bit of trouble for using U2 as their walk up music in the last election... I hope they got permission this time, else I'm telling Bono.

My Barack Obama

Oh my. My professional world and my interest in US politics merging into one. Shining light in the American presidential elections Barack Obama has a personalisation/participation/user generated content area of his website - it's called, of course, My.BarackObama.com.

There's nothing particularly revolutionary on there - create a profile, create a blog, get told about events near to your ZIP code, join groups of other supporters, and do some fundraising for your favourite Illinoisan African-American senator. To a certain extent, it reminds me of UselessAccount.com - it's a carbon copy of a million websites where you just create a profile for apparently no reason other than to feel like you belong to that website - but it's the latest example of politics embracing the web. Have a look around the rest of the website too - there's Barack.tv as well, run via brightcove, where you can watch all his little schmultzy telly messages and watch his announcement live later today (and no doubt a million stump speeches over the next two years as well).

Looking through the other candidates websites, underdog Chris Dodd has a section of his website called The Dodd Pod - at first I thought this was podcasts, but actually it's an opportunity for you to suggest songs that he should put on his iPod. Why you might want to do that, apart from to assert your recognition that he's clearly a hip cool daddio, I don't know. Of course, he has a blog, a myspace page, a flickr page, and a facebook account as well. And don't forget to join the Dodd Squad while you're there...

Hillary C's website is a little more reserved; she still has a blog, but you can't be a human being without one of those these days. There's a shedload of video on there, but again that's one-way traffic. Maybe she's still exploring the possibilities of web campaigning, as part of her exploratory committee. Perhaps it reflects the already clear distinctions between her and her more youthful main opponent (that's Obama, by the way, not Dodd). He is appealing to the young, the politically disenfranchised, the opponents of war, the minority groups, pretty much anyone looking for a change - all groups that have turned to the Internet's democratised platform as a way to make themselves heard.

Clinton is appealing to middle America, the politically apathetic, the white middle class people who hanker after a bit of good old pre-Bush democratic politics. From 1993-2001 they never had it so good, and they are quite happy for a little bit more of the same please - though, maybe with a hint less blowing up of Americans abroad. Her demographic aren't really likely to use the web in the same ways as Obama's - more turning to it for information and updates, than to actively participate with other voters. That's not to say that Obama's will necessarily provide that, but it certainly provides the illusion of it. And as UselessAccount's irony suggests, sometimes all it takes to make you feel part of something is to create a profile, then to ignore it and forget you ever signed up in the first place.

Snow fall in Clapham

It snowed in London. I set up a time lapse camera over night and during the day to film it falling and then melting again. I used a bit of freeware for the mac called Gawker, and I tried using the camera built into my laptop, but the glare from the screen reflecting on the window was too much, so I set up my camcorder instead.

It's about midnight at the start, and 8pm at the end. It took one frame every 60 seconds. At about 5am it seems like dawn happens, but really it's the light reflecting off the falling/fallen snow making the whole thing brighter. Quite cool. Then the sun rises, and during the day you see various people playing in the snow and then it gradually melt away (boo hoo) before sun sets again. Fun stuff.

A good summary of dates and candidates

As expected, the wikipedia community have pulled off a great one pager about the US elections, key dates, candidates announced so far. It's a bit nuts and bolts, but the facts are all there.

Liz Taylor loves Clinton

My friend Nigel has suggested I start colating, on this blog, the best non-stories about the US election. Given there's more than 18months still to come, I think there's a strong likelihood there'll be plenty that fall into this category. Thanks to Nigel, here's story number one... Elizabeth Taylor loves Hilary Clinton. While Jeffrey Katzenberg loves Obama. Go Hollywood.

John Kerry's not running

Ted Danson lookylikey John Kerry, who managed to screw up beating George W Bush in 2004, despite Dubya only having an approval rating of something like 35%, has thankfully announced he won't be running in the 2008 election. He announced it during a speech to the senate a couple of days ago. Thank god for that....

Sleepy Senator McCain

A leading contender for the Republican nomination for President is Senator John McCain. But, here's a clip of him in the house for last night's State of the Union address, not really showing himself to be presidential material....