alfa.org.uk

It’s that time of year again.

I like optical illusions. Here are two good ones.

It just occurred to me that thanks to our copyright laws all the thousands of people buying the Crazy Frog Ringtone single are, technically, not allowed to rip the CD and use it as a ringtone on their phone.

The irony is delicious.

Ooh, news. The most excellent Ben Folds will be the musical guest on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross this week.

Unfortunately you have to sit through the sycophantic fop to get this reward, but oh well.

Andrew Marr is stepping down as the BBC’s political editor.

This is really really bad news, he is brilliant.

Please go and read this awesome thread about a new restaurant just opened in Chicago. It will blow your mind.

A few things to start the week with:

1. Today’s dieselsweeties comic is brilliant.
2. Have you ever noticed that in the Boyzone classic “No Matter What” it’s Stephen Gately that sings the line “I can’t be what I’m not”. How ironic… ;-)
3. The new Ben Folds album is brilliant - highly recommended.
4. I spent Saturday cycling on the Isle of Wight. You can see some photos.
5. There’s an online effort to create a dictionary where each definition is a limerick. I thought this might appeal to some of my readership ;-)

That’s all.

I want an online TV guide with tagging.

Sites like Yahoo TV Guide (I refuse to add the exclamation mark) are okay, but don’t tell you much about a programme, except the few sentences the production company supplies.

What if anyone could add tags to a programme? So after I watched a programme containing, say, footage of September 11th I could tag it “wtc”. Or a programme that mentioned the Rugby World Cup could be tagged “wilkinson”.

Then anyone could search for the tags and see a list of all the programmes in the last week that mentioned the WTC attacks, or Jonny Wilkinson. Or both.

This would really come into its own when the BBC Creative Archive comes online. You could subscribe to an Atom feed for your chosen tags, and automatically download programmes that match them.

How cool would that be?

Is there a word to describe words and phrases that are taken directly from a foreign language? Examples would include cliché, deja vu, fait accompli, cul-de-sac, faux pas, etc etc.

This will destroy your productivity and waste your day. You have been warned.