alfa.org.uk

– The Streets - Dry Your Eyes

Firstly:

Gretchen: You’re weird
Donnie: Sorry
Gretchen: No, that was a compliment

Secondly:

Gretchen: Donnie Darko? What the hell kind of name is that? It’s like some sort of superhero or something
Donnie: What makes you think I’m not?

And most importantly:

Donnie: Why do you wear that stupid bunny suit?
Frank: Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?

I was searching online, trying to see if there were any sites that properly analysed some of the piano voicings McCoy Tyner uses on A Love Supreme. I couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for (any jazz buffs know if such a thing exists?) but I did come across this site, which has some of the best-explained jazz theory I’ve seen online.

Well-written and accurate.

If anyone has a spare GMail invite, I’d be eternally grateful…

I can pay in beer or sexual favours.

This is a talk that Cory Doctorow (from the EFF) gave the other day to Microsoft. He explains very clearly and very articulately why DRM is one of the worst ideas of the late twentieth century. You should read it.

Especially if you don’t know what DRM is.

Hmm, in a posting mood today. I was pleased and glad to find this blog post earlier, which pretty much sums up some of the Big And Scary Issues that I’ve been trying to deal with over the last year or so. I know how the guy feels.

Maybe I’ll deal with it and buy the T-shirt some day.

Anderson Consulting in San Francisco is liquidating its operations and auctioning off its stuff.

Before they shut down, their core business was… Liquidating dot-com companies and auctioning off all their stuff.

Does this mean the second dot-com boom is around the corner???

Amazing what you can find when you have a dig through the results of regulator’s investigations: Fox News slapped down over news report.

1. “We do not believe that a simple Internet search for the words “BBC” and “anti-American” is sufficient evidence to back-up such a statement”
2. “We do not accept that the Hutton Inquiry supported the statement that the “BBC felt entitled to lie and when caught lying, felt entitled to defend its lying”. The Inquiry stated that BBC editorial system was “defective”. At no stage did Hutton accuse the BBC management of lying.”
3. “There is no evidence, and Fox News did not provide any, that the BBC “insisted its reporter had a right to lie””
4. “Fox News was unable to provide any substantial evidence to support the overall allegation that the BBC management had lied and the BBC had an anti-American obsession”

Yes, I’m back from holiday. I know you missed me (not).

Photos are at http://www.alfa.org.uk/pictures. Many thanks to my good friend Smic for providing the (non-sucky) hosting. Were I ‘from da ghetto’ I would sent him ‘mad props’ or ’shouts out’. But I’m not. So I won’t.

I haven’t written anything about the European elections here (vote Green!) until now, but I am now sufficiently annoyed to do so.

Yesterday I received through my door the campaign literature from the BNP.

Among its contents, it says (and I quote):

1. The government is already planning to build 5 new cities, each the size of Birmingham, over the next 30 years to house over 5 million new immigrants. [emphasis theirs]
2. The asylum flood has helped to make Britain a battleground for foreign conflicts
3. Asylum is allowing hundreds of ‘asylum bombers’ to plan their atrocities in Britain

It’s the last one that is the most insidious; the first two are just plain wrong. Note the phrasing of the last one: plan their atrocities in Britain. They’re referring to the fact that apparently those that committed the Madrid bombings had links with migrant communities in North London. But the sentence doesn’t make that clear. They trick the reader into thinking that they’re saying immigrants have come here to plot terrorist attacks to be carried out in Britain, but careful reading shows something a lot more benign.

It’s inflammatory language, but language a clever lawyer can defend in court.

Bastards.