“groovy mother...”

Travelogue round Route 128, inspired by Jonathan Richman’s “Roadrunner”

A Modest Proposal supporting the music industry’s calls for ISPs to block filesharing.

Stephen Fry writes about the HTML5 ogg video debacle — he’s even more geeky that I’d previously imagined. What a hero!

Excellent article on homeopathy by Ben Goldacre — not too ranty in an “all homeopathy is evil” way, rather a “homeopathy should be part of a discussion, if only for the benefits on the placebo effect, but we can’t get the homeopaths to talk”. Hopefully a rational-enough read to convince “believers”.

Stephen Fry reviews the iPhone for The Grauniad. “In the end the iPhone is like some glorious early-60s sports car. Not as practical, reliable, economical, sensible or roomy as a family saloon but oh, the joy. The jouissance as Roland Barthes liked to say.”

“When writer Elena Lappin flew to LA, she dreamed of a sunkissed, laid-back city. But that was before airport officials decided to detain her as a threat to security”

Quality grumpiness from Charlie Brooker. “The pop-up a tent was a joy. It comes flat, disc-shaped. You throw it in the air and it unfurls into a canvas shell. Within seconds I was the proud owner of a home fit for a tramp.”

Splendid break-down of the bad science in last Monday’s Panorama “Science says Wi-Fi is dangerous” scarefest.

This weekend, the UK charts will switch to including sales of all digital tracks, not just those marked as “singles”. As a result, album tracks and one-hit wonders are likely to hit the Top 100. Anything that gets The Proclaimers into the charts *has* to be a good thing.

Anatomy of a pump’n’dump scam. Or: Why you’re getting so much more spam this month.

FFS. Detailed explanation of the how’s and why’s of reading/cloning a UK RFID-chipped passport — which don’t even have the tinfoil protective cover that US passports will. “‘This doesn’t matter,’ says a Home Office spokesman.”

The Grauniad’s constantly-updated downloadable PDF, designed to be printed out before you leave the office in the evening to read on the train home. Nice way to attack the evening newspapers’ sales without having to distribute deadtree yourself.

I’ve just changed my voicemail message to say “Send me an email. I rarely check voicemail.”

“Get angry if they don’t believe you. They will eventually. They always do.”

Grauniad to offer easily-print-outable on-demand PDF news digest.

The Grauniad’s answer to the Huffington Post. Looking forward to see how this fleshes out.

Ricky Gervais is going to record a bunch of weekly podcasts, starting Monday.

Tube station shut down because of man “acting suspicously” (wearing an overcoat and sending text messages, apparently). Police arrest him and confiscate lots of computer/electronics equipment from his house. They eventually drop charges (although they don’t return his property). Unfortunately for them, said man has the skill and contacts to get his story told on the front page of The Guardian. Feeling safer, Britain?

Grauniad dumps Doonesbury strip without warning as part of shrinkifying of paper. Hundreds of readers complain. 24 hours later, the features editor posts “mea culpa” in their blog comments, and says that it will return. Good for them. (FWIW, Steve Bell and Doonesbury were two of the main reasons I started reading the Grauniad when I was 15.)

So farewell then, Garamond Italic and Helvetica Black.