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10 days ago
I was recently sent an email from Nokia telling me they’d created an account for me at their Nokia Music site and credited it with £4, which works out at about 5 free tracks at the 79 pence each they charge. So I promptly flagged it for looking at later and forgot all about it. It’s now a couple of weeks later and I decided to log into this account I never asked for to see what gems I could find, my ultimate goal being to find an old classic album and download the lot for my free £4. After installing their odd software (which I wouldn’t normally do, but since I will be re-installing the operating system on this machine shortly I’m not too bothered), I managed to browse around their store, but to my disappointment no albums could be found for less than £7.99, and no individual tracks for less than 79 pence. So basically, CDs which I could got into HMV and buy for £3 will cost me over twice as much, without the physical expense of a tangible product which I could (arguably) format ...
89 days ago
I don't know how, but I managed to miss all the fuss surrounding Cerrie Burnell when she joined CBeebies. The problem? Cerrie is that she only has one hand, the other missing from the elbow down. This is how she was born, it's not through an accident (something which I had wondered). The 'fuss' was from parents whose children were frightened when she appeared on their screens, and the parents, rather than calming them down and explaining that people are different, sadly chose instead to complain to the BBC. Sorry, but I can't believe this level of ignorance. Well that's not strictly true, I'm more accurately saddened that they can be that ignorant, and suspect the children were responding to the parents reactions. Obviously Adam is far too young to notice anything different about Cerrie, but if he had been I would have explained to him, and I dare say at some point he's going to ask, and I look forward to reassuring him if necessary, but hopefully he'll be smart enough to work this ...
139 days ago
But to be honest it’s sometimes a chore to get writing long and at least semi-cohesive entries, add to that that I’ve got other more important things that I’m also not doing and it’s no surprise this blogh gets neglected. So where can you find me now? Well the facebook pages gets updated once in a while: http://www.facebook.com/imorital The twitter page gets a similar level of service: http://twitter.com/imorital And that’s largely it. My local web site has been sorely neglected, but there’s a couple of things I’ll be posting there soon. In the real world: I’ve been at the new job for a couple of months now. It’s going OK at the moment but is hard work (another reason why I’m too tired to keep this page up to date, but we covered that already). Adam is walking around confidently now. He still has the occasional tumble, but it’s a joy to watch him getting around, and he also loves to dance: Other than that everything is much the same. Yeah, I know.
229 days ago
Here’s an interesting thought, Google have taken down music videos from YouTube in the U.K. (and some other countries) as they say the artists are asking for too big a rate increase to play there works. Conversely in this article on CNET Pete Waterman says he’s only earned $16 for the 150 million times “Never Gonna Give You UP” by Rick Astley has been played. If that’s the whole story then this is a disgrace. But it does raise lots of questions, including: Pete only got $16, but what did everyone else in the food chain get? What did Google earn from the associated advertising (by which I mean profit after costs) How much is a fair rate? Should YouTube charge to view ‘Premium’ content. From my point of view I think a lot of this is down to interpretation, and essentially it should be the artists who decide on the rate, and then Google can decide if this is acceptable or not and act accordingly on an individual basis, more or less what I understand has happened (with the ...
258 days ago
I’ve been meaning to write a blog article similar to this for some time, but have been spurred on by replying to this posting made by an old friend of mine.Take a deep breath, and prepare to flame me if you will: I'm not sure if I've posted a similar comment to this in the past, but I thoroughly recommend reading 'Tricks Of The Mind' by Derren Brown, he of Channel 4 illusionary. Apart from being entertaining in the same way as (I at least) find his shows, he also goes into detail about how his own personal beliefs have changed over the years, and does this with much humility. In one section penned by the good Mr. Brown, he mentions the impact caused by 'The Silent Spring' published by Rachel Carson in 1962, at least as he (and I after a very little additional background reading) see it. At the risk of breaking copyright, I'll quote the relevant section (taken out of context of the argument for/against GM crops): "Rachel Carson famously wrote The Silent Spring in 1962, ...
