DomBlog

Glasto Roundup

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:40:31 GMT

It may have been a couple of months since I got back, but here's my post-Glasto roundup.

I think I arrived earlier than I have before. First weren't running the bus from Bath this year (boo!), so I got a train to Temple Meads and the shuttle bus from there. It all went pretty smoothly, and even though it started pouring with rain just after I got on the bus, it was sunny by the time we arrived on-site about 40 minutes later. They've sorted-out the traffic this year, so only buses could go through Pilton. I don't know where the cars were sent, but it made the bus a lot quicker not having to sit in all the plebby car traffic. Hurrah!

I'd sent my tent up and had a cup of tea by about 1:30pm, so I headed off to find some music. I spent a lot of time at the Small World Solar Stage where I caught Crystal Masters (sort of bluesy/country stuff), Celeste Lovick (who I thought was excellent - I bought one of the CDs she was selling), and Cornelius. I spent the rest of my Wednesday poking around the Green Fields and enjoying the site in its pre-mud state. Shrek III was inexplicably cancelled in the evening, but hey ho.

On Thursday there was a big fire at a scrap-yard outside the site, but the huge amounts of black smoke that hung around in the sky all day provoked some debate. I had discussions with random people about everything from 'terrorist attacks on music' to 'Street is on fire', but thankfully all were false. I spent most of the day catching the bands playing on the Bandstand, including The Doubtful Guest, who were as good as ever.

Friday kicked-off with breakfast at Henry's Beard, then Kate Nash on the Pyramid stage. I don't really know much about her, but she was ok. I stuck around for The Subways (who were unimpressive) and Get Cape, Wear Cape, Fly, who were ok. I then trundled off to the Other stage to catch Vampire Weekend, mainly thanks to people going on about how good they are. They were ok, but I think they suffered from the immediate downer that my brain adds to any Other Stage performance. I wandered-off to the Green Futures field to watch Caroline Lucas wipe the floor with some Tory in a debate entitled 'Can the Tories Deliver A Green Agenda?', one of a number of interesting events in that tent. I then strolled over to the Avalon stage to catch Hazel O'Conner, which was suprisingly good. I then caught a strange act called 'Dancing On Your Grave' by 'The Cholmondleys and the Featherstonehaughs', followed by a cute singer/songwriter called Hera from Iceland/New Zealand (another set I liked enough to buy the CD afterwards). There then followed a few hours of managing not to meet-up with some friends, but I did catch the surprise Franz Ferdinand set on The Park stage.

Saturday morning saw the site beginning to dry-up a bit after the rain on Friday, with the Pyramid Stage not looking too bad. First up was Shakin' Stevens, who was pretty poor actually. For some reason he now refuses to sing 'Green Door', which leaves 'This Old House' as the only song anyone cares about. Martha Wainwright was up next, and she was suitably barmy. I didn't catch her whole set though as I had to be at the Leftfield for 12:30 to catch Seize The Day, who were as excellent as ever. Immediately after them came the mighty Flipron, who I've probably seen almost as many times now as I've seen anyone. Then it was back to the Pyramid to see the ever excellent Crowded House, followed by a bit of James Blunt (who really isn't that objectionable - I don't know why he gets so much stick). It was then time for a comedy break, so I went to the Cabaret tent to see Simon Munnery, Jeremy Hardy and Mitch Benn - all excellent as usual. Jeremy Hardy just doesn't do enough stand-up. Then it was off to the Jazz World stage to see Imagined Village, who had Billy Bragg on for a bit. I can't really remember the rest of the evening thanks to cider overload, but I think I saw Massive Attack. I definitely ignored Jay-Z.

Sunday morning brought another very pleasant breakfast at Henry's Beard in the Green Fields, then on to the Pyramid stage to see Marina Topley-Bird. I also caught Scouting For Girls on the Other Stage, before heading to the Pyramid Stage to get a spot for Leonard Cohen. I caught the end of the unimpressive Neil Diamond and the better than expected Goldfrapp, before the highlight of the festival, Leonard Cohen. He was blinding, as expected... and I've managed to see him live! I never thought I would. All is well with the world.

Monday was lovely and sunny. I spent a good few hours strolling around and poking at the (now much quieter) markets. It really was a lovely, sunny day. After the nightmare of last year's departure (thanks to See Tickets awful bus planning, the weather, early starts, and other rubbish), this year was about a million times better. Just look at the lovely, sunny and mud-free bus station!. The mud came over the top of my boots there last year, and we were all close to being hypothermic. Good times.

GM Crops

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:40:42 GMT

There have been some worrying noises coming from the government about GM crops recently, and the pro-GM case is being made more loudly every day. One might think that we don't have to worry about this since public opinion is so strongly against GM, but such opinion is easily swayed by only hearing one side of the argument, or worse, invalid argument. This has been demonstrated recently by the shift of opinion towards nuclear power that has taken place in a relatively short timescale, thanks mainly to piggy-backing a genuine concern (CO2 emissions). The government presented a false dichotomy - it's either nuclear power or more fossil fuels - rather than anything valid. Will the same thing happen with GM?

The news has recently been full of reports of food riots in developing countries due to the increasing costs of grain. The 'obvious' solution to this, as trotted-out by sections of the press, ministers, and those with vested interests, is the use of GM crops. However, what would these crops actually achieve, and are they in fact our only choice?

The main selling-point of GM crops is their resilience to herbicides. Companies such as Monsanto don't try to hide this fact, and yet it's a commonly held belief that using GM crops would allow us to use less chemicals on the fields. This is a myth. Many GM crops make the plants more tolerant of them, allowing the farmers to use far more. This does its job and kills the weeds, but also causes far more pollution. Funnily enough some crops, such as Monsanto's ''Roundup Ready' varieties, are specifically engineered to be resistant to their 'Roundup' herbicides. It's not unusual for GM crop producers to modify plants to further their other products.

Monsanto is a particularly shady company, of course. They have a history of suing farmers who happen to have had their crops wind-pollinated by GM crops in neighbouring farmers fields. It's actually amazing that Monsanto win in such cases - what are farmers meant to do? Pollen can travel for several miles and can remain active for up to ten years, and if it happens to fall onto non-GM fields it can pollenate plants there, making it very difficult to prevent contamination. If your crop is contaminated with GM pollen like this then you lose the ability to say GM-free, through no fault of your own. However, it gets worse - if you decide to keep some grain to replant next year, and unknown to you it has been contaminated, you can be sued by Monsanto, as this farmer in Canada can testify. Of course, some countries wouldn't want to allow this sort of thing, but it's useful for Monsanto when the US mandates GM crops as part of an aid package. GM crops or starvation? It's not a tough choice, but once GM is there it's there for good.

The pro-GM groups usually trot-out the line that GM crops will save poor countries. Let's assume that an African farmer decides to make use of GM - what should he grow? He'd probably want to grow crops suited to the climate, such as yams. However, he's unlikely to find that the GM companies are willing to help him here. The biotech companies are like the drugs companies in that they invest in the areas most likely to make them money, hence lots of research into cancer (which hits the rich, western world) and little into malaria (which doesn't). So we end-up with plenty of GM wheat that will make lots of money from western farmers, but little that will grow in Africa and actually help the poor.

The power of GM food producers and the rest of the biotech food industry is immense. For instance, a bill currently being considered in the US prohibits organic milk producers from being able to label their product as free from Bovine Growth Hormone, but it fails to force any milk produced from hormone-treated cows from being labelled as such. This bill is being pushed-through by Monsanto and other GM lobbyists and is almost certain to succeed, and it shows immense contempt for the consumer. Whether consumers want GM food or not, they should be given the choice.

In the end, it is wrong that a corporation can 'own' any species, whether they created it or not. Now that the possibility of doing so is legal, where will it end. As scientists develop more complex 'artificial' animals, as will happen with the human-hybrid work recently in the news, what is the point at which a life should no longer be owned? How can a corporation decide what forms of life can breed, and which must die without doing so? Isn't a fundamental purpose of any living thing to reproduce?

If you have time, be sure to watch The World According To Monsanto", which was shown on French TV. It's excellent and contains many important facts to help you make up your own mind on the issue.

Glasto

Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:27:42 GMT

It has been an exciting old weekend. On Saturday Ally celebrated her 30th birthday. It was an excellent party, and photos will be appearing on Facebook very soon, I'm sure. I'm ashamed to say that I was the only person there not in fancy dress. I have an excuse though - before the party I went to see the always funny Stewart Lee doing his show '41st Best Stand Up Ever' at the Ustiniv. Support came from the also brilliant Kevin Eldon in the form of some amusing poetry. Stewart Lee's set was great as always - perhaps a little less confrontational than previous ones, but very entertaining none the less. Hopefully he will be at Glastonbury again this year... not that I'm sure that the naked man and Jesus with crucifix 'heckles' could ever be beaten. They were proper Glasto moments indeed.

Ah yes, Glastonbury! I was up for 9am on Sunday morning, ready for the annual madness that is clicking on refresh and redialing the phone for three hours until I get through. Sure enough, with three of us doing that constantly I finally got through and bought tickets at about half eleven. It's always a joyous moment, and I didn't even have to get the inconvenient coach tickets this time (although I'll still go by bus, of course). As the day went on though the tickets still didn't sell out, and they were still there by the end of the day. It was most bizarre, and obviously in hindsight I wouldn't have got up early and gone through the pain of watching timeout messages for hours. Tickets are, in fact, still there now. It's funny - last year I was hoping that the rain would put off some of the fair-weather fans (see what I did there?) this year, and it turns out that may have happened. However awful Jay-Z is, there are always so many artists for every taste that the lineup really doesn't make much difference, so I don't buy that line of reasoning. I really don't think that the weather and mud could be any worse, and even if it is, it will still all be brilliant. Can't wait.

2008

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 23:43:20 GMT

Of course it has been 2008 for some time... in fact, we're now in 'Q2' as sales types like to say in an effort to sound important. It has been a while since my last entry, and for that I apologise. Life has been busy, etc etc. However, I will fill you in on what has been going on as best I can.

My last entry was about mince pies if I recall correctly. You may be pleased to know that they were very nice. I have decided that the single most dull part of pie making is pastry, and lack of pastry is something that cakes have over the whole pie world. Actually, not just cakes - any sort of non-pastry topped dessert or sweet. Is a crumble a pie that just has a crust made of something other than pastry though? Hmm... I'll have to think about that.

So anyway, after the pies, Christmas and so on I went to France for a spot of skiing. There was a big group of us and we headed down in three cars to the alps for a week of snowy fun. French roads eh? Driving on them loses its novelty value after about ten hours, but we get there without incident. The chalet itself was very nice, and only a mile or so from the lift. We were also blessed with excellent weather for the time of year and fresh snow for most of the time. It was my first time skiing and although I showed all the aptitude of a blind bull on crack, I really enjoyed it. The downside was breaking a couple of ribs just over halfway through the holiday, which put me in too much pain to actually move much. Sport eh? Dangerous business if you ask me.

I've started a philosophy course with the OU. It has been very interesting so far, and despite going straight into my usual last-minute essay writing mode I seem to be doing ok at it. The tutorials are probably the most interesting ones of any course I've done for some time, and the reading is the sort of thing I like reading anyway. I may feel differently come exam time, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

A few weeks ago I went to Minehead and found it to be much nicer than I remembered it to be. I suppose that being off-season adds a lot to it, but I was most pleasantly surprised. I'm not sure why tourism usually does horrible things to towns, but Minehead has a good selection of independent shops and a bustling high street, as well as decently priced housing, and the sea of course. It was one of those places I could see myself living in... just not quite yet. Good place to bring-up a family though.

This year will feature several 30th birthdays for friends, plus a couple of weddings. Big events, and as we all know, big events involve lots of tomfoolery and tipsy shenanigans. I'm sure there will be a few amusing photos posted to various Facebook profiles as a result. I'm looking forward to it all.

The Glastonbury Festival will feature none other than Leonard Cohen this year! I can't wait. Well, I may not get a ticket of course - I've been lucky so far. I've pre-registered for the usual rush (which will happen on the 8th), so fingers crossed. The lineup is excellent (not sure about JayZ or whoever he is.. one for the kids I suppose), and the weather can't actually be any worse, right? I'm also off to the Two Thousand Trees festival (featuring the brilliant Flipron), plus a few others I'm sure. Oh, and Billy Bragg later this month. In fact he's just released a new album (Mr Love and Justice) which you should obviously go and buy.

Life is generally pretty much the same as it was 2007 in most ways though. Kate Winslet still hasn't come to her senses and married me, and to be honest she'd better get her skates on before I tire of her coyness. 2007 did seem to feature some big swings from high to low with that sort of thing actually - hopefully this year will be more stable. Generally the last few months have been pretty cool but they sort of fade into a blur when trying to remember them in bed at gone midnight, as I am now. I will try to keep the blog postings a bit more regular from now on... there's a lot to spout off about generally, and it sort of loses its appeal after months have passed. One of the reasons I have forgotten stuff is because I haven't blogged it - you know you're old when you keep a blog as a memory aid.

Festive Food

Sun, 16 Dec 2007 11:33:42 GMT

Christmas is rapidly approaching and mince pies take a minimum of a week to make properly, so yesterday I made this year's mincemeat. Some people seem to think that this is harder than it is, so I thought I'd stick the recipe down here to prove that it's probably as easy as buying the stuff in jars.

You will need the following things:

Now quantities are always vague, but I work on a ratio system. I think that a lot of recipes care a bit too much about exactly how much to use, and I usually go on this sort of vague 'one of these for two of those' system. It seems to work! Anyway, going through the photo from top left we have:

2 x good quality minced beef.

Small pot of mixed glace peel.. about 'half' in our ratios

1 x (by weight) rum, brandy or a mixture of both

Ginger in syrup, about the same weight as the peel

1 x beef suet. Your local butcher will have this

4 x single eating apple

1.5 x ground almonds

1 x single grated nutmeg

Mixed spice, about twice as much as the grated nutmeg

2 x dried fruit. I've used half currants and half raisins here.

1 x single lemon

1 x single orange

1 x soft brown sugar

Making the mincemeat is easy - just chop everything that needs chopping into small pieces and mix together! You'll probably want to peel and core the apples, and the skin of the lemon and orange needs to be grated into the mixture and the remaining fruit squeezed.

You should end-up with something like this:

Whack it into some old jars and keep it for at least a week. It will then be ready to fill some pies. Yum!

Green Christmas

Tue, 04 Dec 2007 21:51:07 GMT

So December is upon us... so soon! Winter is a challenging time to stay green, and I'm finding it increasingly difficult to make it through all of 2007 while remaining carbon neutral. With this in mind I've started thinking about Christmas, and how I can green it up a bit.

Firstly, trees. A few years back I read a vaguely convincing article about how the greenest choice of tree is an artificial one. This is based an several assumptions, the most important being that the tree is reused for several years and recycled at the end of its life. If this is done then the benefits supposedly outweigh the fact that is is made of petrochemicals in China. However, is this true? Having looking into it a bit it seems that artificial trees are very hard to recycle since they are mostly made of steel and PVC. PVC can't easily be burned due to the emissions given off, while it's difficult to remove the steel without doing this since most trees are made by twisting the steel and PVC strands very tightly. One must also be realistic about how long trees are kept. My parents are probably reasonably unusual in that we had the same (aluminium) tree for about twenty years and it never seemed to get more scrappy, but how many people loose bits, need to buy a different size, or whatever? The sheer amount of artificial trees sold before Christmas at DIY centres suggests that people don't keep them forever.

So what about real trees? Some of the bad press they have received about their green credentials has been based on historical figures of imports. There was a time when the majority of trees were imported, but most are now British-grown, thus reducing the fuel used in transport. However, fuel is still used - there are the carbon costs of preparing the fields, planting the trees, the pesticides/herbicides used for growing, then transporting the trees afterwards. If the trees are grown in place of an older wood then there's also the impact of destroying the existing trees, which as a worst case could be an ancient oak forest. Plantations of Christmas trees do not lend themselves well to biodiversity, although of course they provide more cover for animals than bare ground.

So the best choice for a new tree is still not clear. I think that in the worst case for the real tree, such as one that is imported, grown on cleared deciduous woodland, heavily sprayed, and so on, an artificial tree may still be the best option. This is even more true if you can find a PVC-free, easy to recycle tree that is made locally. That is if these exist.

Of course the greenest options are not to get a new tree at all. Use a living tree, or just buy a second-hand artificial tree (an easy way to recycle them!). You could also consider one of the cute 'grow your own' kits. These are all zero-carbon options, and you end-up with a tree that's just as fine. It's also a little reduction on the mad consumerism of the season of course, which is something we should all take some time to think about.

Now as for when to put the tree up... well, that's another kettle of fish!

The Future of Genomics

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 19:50:12 GMT

On Thursday evening I was in Bristol for a public debate on The Future of Genomics at Expore@Bristol. It was a special event to mark the opening of the new 'Inside DNA' exhibition they have there, and since I've always been interested in genetics I thought I'd go along.

Sir John Sulston kicked-off with a half hour or so talk about the state of play in genetics research, then the floor was opened. The lovely Alice Roberts (yes, her from off the telly) handled the session. The audience was filled with several experts on genetics and the ethics behind it, and some of the questions were quite good considering that it was a public event. Given current events there was some interest in biometrics and ID cards (which are all pointless as well as scary) and databases, plus genuinely interesting tidbits.

Interesting tidbit example - they think they now know why we're seeing a rise in peanut allergies, something that concerns me as I have one. It's possibly because creams containing peanut oil were used to treat eczema in the 70's and 80's, and the proteins being absorbed through the broken skin provoked the intolerance. This explains a lot - I had eczema as a child, so it all fits. They discovered this through the 'child of the 90's' study which is taking place in Bristol. It's the most detailed study of its kind in the world and has provided a lot of information so far, so yay for Bristol.

The exhibition is well worth checking out, as it all of @Bristol, of course. It's a shame that they closed the iMax though - hopefully it will reopen one day.

SQL Server - argh!

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:01:46 GMT

This is quite geeky. I recommend that you stop reading now if you don't know or care about databases.

I'm currently having to get 'into' SQL server at work. I come from an Oracle background, but hey, how different can they be, right? Well... you'd be surprised.

One of the nice things about Oracle is PL/SQL. In my last job I wrote a lot of PL/SQL... it's easy, quick to do, well documented, and allows good software engineering. SQL Server uses something called 't-SQL' and compared to PL/SQL, it's appalling. The best way of demonstrating this is with an example. In stored procedures I can do this in PL/SQL:

PROCEDURE MyProcedure
    errorCode        OUT NUMBER,
    errorText        OUT VARCHAR2,
    someItemID    IN     ITEM.ITEMID%TYPE,
    someNumber    IN     ITEM.ITEMNUMBER%TYPE,
    somethingElse IN OUT NUMBER,
    result           OUT RESULTTABLE.RESULT%TYPE) IS

This can be part of a package defined as two files - a spec and a body. All good software engineering.

With MS SQL Server I simply can't so this. As far as I know, there are no packages with specs and bodies, for one thing. There are weird, implicit returns for selects, variables defined within the procedure, and other strange and wacky stuff that really works against every good software engineering principle. Also, a roughly equivalent header might look like this:

CREATE PROCEDURE [dbo].[MyProcedure]
    @errorCode     INT OUT,
    @errorText     VARCHAR(1024) OUT,
    @someItemID    INT,
    @someNumber    INT,
    @somethingElse INT OUT,
    @result        INT OUT AS

The biggest problem is that you can't get the type from the columns of a table, so if the table changed you have to change all of your code. This is insane! Large applications may have thousands of stored procedures, all of which would have to be changed. The lack of packages (although as I say, I might be wrong there) mean that you can't logically group procedures either, and you lose some context that you get in Oracle just from the package name.

As I mentioned, the way stored procedures seem to work in SQL Server is by implicit returns. For example, say we have this line:

  declare @intReturnCode int

We can then add a 'return @intReturnCode' later and return a value not even defined in the header. Worse, you can do something like this:

  set @someValue = (select fieldValue from someTable where name = 'this')

So looking at the parameters you'd have no idea that you were going to get 'someValue' back, or what type it is. Madness, absolute madness.

I must admit I was wary of SQL Server, but the more I look at it the more I'm amazed that anyone actually uses it. I mean, they only added exception handling in 2005! It's like some sort of toy database, but with a fairly hefty price tag.

Anyway, feel free to correct me. In the meantime I will continue to think poorly of it..

Weekend Amusements

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 22:18:56 GMT

I was in London over the weekend for a birthday party. A friend was 30 and hired a Routemaster bus to take us (along with a large amount of champagne) to watch the fireworks at Blackheath, then back to Victoria again for a slap-up feed at a Mexican restaurant. Much fun was had, and I don't think I've had quite so much champagne for some time!

Thankfully champagne doesn't seem to give me much of a hangover, so I didn't feel too bad on Sunday. I took the opportunity to catch-up with some friends while at the same time check out Shibboleth by Doris Salcedo at the Tate Modern. I must say that we were slightly underwhelmed - I expected something a bit wider and deeper I suppose, and while it was certainly long and looked strange in such a large space, it was less impressive than I thought it might be. Still, it was pretty busy so lots of people were obviously interested. In fact the whole place was probably about the busiest I've seen it.

After looking around at a few other things that were new since I was last there we headed off for lunch at Tas at The Cut. It's the second time that we've tried to get in to The Anchor And Hope (which is meant to be one of the best gastropubs in London) but had to go to Tas instead, but hopefully I'll get to try it one day...

Bath Film Festival

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 14:36:08 GMT

Today is the start of the 2007 Bath Film Festival, and for the next eleven days there are some quality films. Some caught my eye.

Beautiful Young Minds, an interesting looking documentary about a maths competition (well, I think it sounds interesting!) on Saturday. Rescue Dawn is another film about Vietnam, but most importantly it has Christian Bale in it. Has he ever been in a bad film? I don't think so. The Yacoubian Building is a film about life in central Cairo that looks good and is being shown on Sunday. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (Monday) is the story of a man who suffers a stroke - sad, but it looks quite inspiring. Taxidermia appeals to my surreal side (just look at plot outline!) and is on Monday. The Killing Of John Lennon looks interesting, as do The Band's Visit and The Aura. I'd also like to catch Hearts and Minds, an Oscar-winning documentary about the Vietnam war which is still pretty relevant. There's also an evening of locally made short films on the 11th which looks good.

So, lots of films to see, or potentially see anyway. There are some others that I wanted to list but I don't want to just reel-off films as much as bring attention to the festival. It's all good!

Running madness

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:52:44 GMT

So I might well have gone a bit mad, but I have entered the next Bath Half Marathon. Considering that I haven't really run around much since school (where, let's face it, I was forced to.. usually by a rather insistent Brother James) this might seem like a slightly foolhardy step. However, I do have until the 16th of March next year to get ready for it, so it's not insurmountable.

Where there's a difficult looking task, there's a gadget to help. In my case I plumped for a GPS watch that I can plug into the computer to see my route and stats on Google Maps. This is sufficiently geeky to inspire me to actually do some exercise, so while some may say it's a bit pointless, if the end result is that I run 13 miles I reckon it's pretty good value for money.

So why run the race anyway? Well, I guess everyone has their reasons. I could certainly do with being fitter, and I could certainly be slimmer. In the end though, I think running a vaguely serious distance is something that I've always felt I should do at some point. Now seems a good time, and charity will even benefit a bit with sponsorship and so on. However, I am weak! I know this, so I need all the incentive I can get to see this through. Registering for the race was a start, but I intend to put my progress up on my web site. This way, any improvement (or lack of it) will be visible for all to see, which will in turn spur me on a bit. Hopefully.

Inheritance Tax

Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:57:00 GMT

Inheritance tax seems to be making the news at the moment, with both the Tories and Labour trying to outdo each other in reducing it. This only goes to show just how similar the two big parties have become. Inheritance tax should, if anything, be increased.

One thing that seems bizarre to me is quite why so many people worry about inheritance tax in the first place. In reality it simply isn't an issue for the vast majority of us. Last year 40,000 estates in England and Wales were liable to inheritance tax, while the same year there were 502,599 deaths. As a very rough guide that suggests that considerably fewer than ten percent of people who die have to worry about the tax at all. The reason that people worry about it is because they have an irrational optimism of their own financial future. Let's face it, most of us don't get rich. It's the sort of thinking that makes the public hostile to policies like 50% income tax on earnings over 100,000 - there's no way that's going to be a problem for most people, yet you hear people saying things like 'why tax success?' and other nonsense.

So what about the level at which the tax is payable? Well, until today it was 300,000 pounds. It has now (or will shortly) go up to 600,000 - a level which a tiny percentage of estates will reach. I think that this is a terrible decision, and if anything it should be reduced. The level at which tax starts to be paid all rather depends on what you want the tax to achieve, and inheritance tax is basically performing a redistribution function. It is one of the methods the state uses to make sure that too much money does not stay in the hands of too few people. If anything, this is becoming more of a problem, not less, so why on Earth are we reducing the effectiveness of one of the tools that we can use against it?

It's worth tackling the 'I've paid tax on it once, why should I pay again?' argument too. The reason that people are suddenly concerned about the tax in the first place is because property prices have increased so much. Houses have gone up in value far faster than inflation recently, which means that an initially modest investment is now worth hundreds of thousands. What people seem to forget is that the sum where 'tax has already been paid' is usually a small percentage of today's value, so in fact for most estates only a small percentage of the value has had tax paid on it anyway. It's only right that tax is paid, and paying once you've died seems like the most convenient time to me.

In the end we have to tax people on death precisely because property prices are high. By placing a tax on inherited properties people will be forced to sell them, placing the house back into the market. More houses on the market will help to bring prices down to a reasonable level, benefiting everyone. If the tax is reduced then the government will still need that money so they'll just tax something else, and that's going to be something that we all have to pay when we're alive, and probably something that has to be paid by far more people. Inheritance tax has so many logical advantages to such a majority of the population, so why has reducing it become so popular with voters? In the end we can probably put it down to selfishness and misplaced optimism, yet again. And so the wheel of capitalism turns...

Green Taxes 'Making Money'

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 09:29:21 GMT

It was hard to avoid the item on the news this morning about a group claiming that 'green taxes' are 'making billions'... far more, it is claimed, than the cost of pollution itself. Stating that fines and taxes are 'revenue generation' as if this is a bad thing is an old argument of course, and one that is often used against speed cameras. However, in this case the target is a much more serious one than speed cameras as it's an issue that is of vital importance to the whole world.

First let us look at the claims. Apparently 'green taxes' brought in 21.9 billion last year, while the emissions had done 11.7 billion worth of 'damage'. 'Green taxes' here include things like fuel duty - hardly a green tax.. more like something that the government has always charged. It also includes landfill tax and other taxes that could be considered green of course, but the scope is rather wide. What they actually mean therefore is a collection of taxes that is levied against things that may harm the environment, rather than green taxes in particular.

What I really have a problem with is the 'cost' of emissions they have come up with. Just how have they calculated this, exactly? Is the 'cost' of a landfill the amount it would be to dig it all up? No - it's the cost of burning-off the methane. I don't think that their idea of costs and mine, or any normal person, are quite the same. Also, how do you put a cost on the effect of a ton of CO2 going into the atmosphere and having some part in flooding yet more of Bangladesh? No, the whole 'cost' is a nonsense. 'Green' taxes aren't there to level some sort of account we have with the environment, they're there to stop people polluting in the first place. The only thing that will make some people stop is to hit them in the wallet, since appealing to their morals seems to fail. People must be priced out of their cars and flights, and motivated into recycling by the cost of not doing it. Society isn't profiteering from this, just making people pay something closer to the real cost of their selfish ways.

Finally, just who are The Tax Payers Alliance? Well, take a look. Surprise surprise, they are the usual right-wing nutjobs. Just who let a story by these people make the headlines? The chairman Andrew Allum left the Tories 'having lost faith that it represented his brand of free market, individualist and compassionate politics', that is to say that they probably weren't quite right-wing enough for him. The chief executive, Matthew Elliot, is a young chap who has worked for 'Britain’s leading Eurorealist think-tank', so he's clearly going to look at European issues objectively, right? Finally, Florence Heath works... and this is a good one... for an oil company. Brilliant. She's bound to be fully committed to the environment then.

Honestly though, what the hell is the BBC doing even giving these people the time of day? Three people who make the UKIP look sensible manage to get headlines on the Today programme?! Maybe I'll start my own 'think tank', since I seem to be just as qualified to do so. The trouble is, when you take the 'green' side you probably find that industry is slightly less willing to grease your palm. Perhaps the BBC should just ignore press releases from organisations that can't be bothered to get their own domain for their Web site? It doesn't show a lot of commitment to their cause does it? Either that or they're technically inept, but neither of these possibilities inspire a huge amount of confidence...

Festivals Ahoy

Wed, 15 Aug 2007 17:02:26 GMT

On Saturday I was in London for the Field Day Festival. The weather was perfect, and after a slightly delayed train journey I was still in London in good time. We met up and made our way to Bethnal Green, the nearest tube for Victoria Park.

None of us had been to Victoria Park before. It's actually quite nice and seems to be divided into two by a road. One part has a nice lake with plenty of birdlife hanging around on it, and is quite nicely landscaped. Over the road is the part of the park where the festival was being held, which was a much more straightforward green space with a few trees, along with some big monument thing. The festival was close to this, enclosed in a 7 foot fence.

The queue to get in was minimal, although for some reason that was never quite clear they divided people into male and female queues. I assumed that this was something to do with searches, but nobody was being searched anyway. Weird. All that it meant was that there was a lot of people hanging around just in the site waiting for their opposite-sexed friends. The rather overly-keen security staff were also taking food and drink, including water, away from people. This seemed a bit mean on such a hot day.

The site itself was quite small - apparently the capacity was 10,000, although I don't think that it got close to that while we were there. We grabbed some food (no queues for that) and had a wander around. This was fairly on in the day and the queues for beer were quite large, so we thought we'd wait and go later. That was our main mistake! As the day went on, beer queues grew and grew. There were only two bars for all 10,000 people, and it was taking literally hours to get served! Needless to say, we didn't bother. We stick with the rather strange cider-based 'Sungria', which we manged to get without much queuing early on. That was about the only alcohol we got all day though, thanks to the mad queues (which were nothing, compared to the toilets!). The lack of thought that had gone into bars and toilets was fairly amazing, and there were many disgruntled people. The music was pretty cool though, if hampered by a weedy sound system, so the day was still good overall. I just hope that next time the organisers try to decide how many toilets 10,000 people need when drinking they come-up with a number greater than 30.

After the festival we went to the pub for a few drinks, then onto a new sushi place in (I think) Kensington High Street, that was pretty good. After another few pints in the pub we called it a day.

On Sunday we went to see The Walker, which was actually very good. Woody Harrelson is a great actor - has he ever been in a bad film? Anyway, he was very good in this as a gay 'society walker' in Washington. I must admit that it's a career I have never really thought about, but it makes for an interesting film, and it's interesting how his 'society ladies' react to the events. Worth a go anyway. Now I just need to catch The Simpsons!

V Festival this weekend - I hope it stops raining! I've had enough of muddy festivals this year!

Get ready for a lot less privacy, and more work

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 16:51:59 GMT

An interesting policy from the Tories emerged today. They'd quite like to scrap our data protection laws. These are the laws that put restrictions on what businesses can do with your personal data, such as not selling it to people who send junk mail. Apparently this 'red tape' is annoying for businesses. Another annoying bit of 'red tape' is the Working Time Directive, which they also plan to scrap.

Much as I don't want the Tories to win, some of their moves are beyond belief. How are either of these changes meant to be vote winners? Sure, they make sense if you are a CEO, or perhaps just a bit evil.. but the man on the street? How can be gain from a change which means he can be forced to work even longer hours than he does now? And when he gets home from his longer day, he can expect to find tons more junk mail thanks to the fact that companies he has dealt with have sold his personal information (potentially to people who want to steal his identity). Note that they also want redundancy regulations to be 'relaxed' so that we can all lose our jobs more easily too.

Some would say that these moves are 'liberal' in a 'libertarian' sort of way, but I'm afraid that they are many facets of libertarianism that lead to corporations ruling the world, and we can see some examples right here. We need state control when it comes to not exploiting workers. 'Red tape' is sometimes useful, but for some reason it is one of those phrases that have stuck into the public mindset as a 'bad thing'. In reality, here are the Conservatives showing their true colours. They don't care about anyone except the 'boss class' and making their lives easier. Quite why anyone who is a decent human being would support things like this is beyond me. Having said that, this will of course be overlooked at the next election and we'll all be concentrating on some non-issue. You have to love the British press.

Trains, transport and money

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 11:16:56 GMT

So the government has said that they will give a whole load of money towards improving the rail network. This can only be a good thing, but it does seem to be a case of too little too late in a lot of respects. For all of the governments talk of green and sustainable transport policies, we're seeing a lot of funding for roads and aviation, but not a lot else. Road and air travel are cheaper in real terms now than they have ever been, yet since privatisation rail travel has become quite a lot more expensive. This is despite the fact that more people are travelling by rail all of the time.

The ESRC have some interesting statistics on travel, such as the cost to the UK of road accidents being 16 billion pounds per year. Road travel is not cheap, but the government doesn't worry about paying for roads and road improvement with public money. Why should the railways be any different? It goes without saying that I think they should be renationalised, but what else could be done to improve them?

I think that a big improvement could be achieved by putting a much higher tax on road transport of goods that could be transported by train, for one thing. We need new train lines to new depots in each town and city where goods can be unloaded and only the last part of the journey done by road. It is madness that we drive lorries with containers on them down motorways when rail is so much more efficient.

The railway network needs to be expanded. Where old lines closed in the 60's remain clear, they should be either reopened or protected from any development until such a time as they are economically viable. These lines were viable once, and the population was smaller then. If the costs of road transport start reflecting the true environmental costs, then these rail links will undoubtedly become useful again.

Fares need to become cheaper. Renationalisation is necessary for this, since I think it is fundamentally wrong to pay a public subsidy to a private company that makes a profit for its shareholders. If the railways were nationalised we could put an extra tax on petrol for road transport.. a couple of pence per litre say, and use that as a direct rail subsidy. Taxes on larger cars could also go to public transport, since taxing luxury cars takes the burden from the poor, who may still need to drive.

Finally, we need to think very hard about the way we build our towns and cities. As long as people feel that they need their cars then they will probably keep them, so we should do as much as we can to remove that need. This is already true in most of London and other big cities, where cars are a luxury. All new housing developments should include local shops and pubs etc within half a mile of any house to prevent people from having to travel just to buy food. This isn't some pipe-dream since this always used to be the case! Rail and buses should link residential areas so that people can get to work, and there should be tax incentives to live in the town or city you work in, to reduce the need to travel. We can do this if we try. If we don't tackle it and just bury our heads in the sand, things are only going to get worse... especially when the oil starts to run out.

Convicted Traitor? No jail for you!

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 17:02:08 GMT

My complete despair when it comes to American politics continues to deepen. The widely publicised news of the day is that Bush has 'spared' Libby from 2.5 years in jail. His reason? It seems that he thought it was an 'excessive' punishment, so obviously 'no jail at all' is the correct amount for lying to a grand jury and exposing a CIA agent, potentially threatening their life, because their husband had criticised the invasion of Iraq.

At a fundamental level the leader of any democratic country should not have the power to overrule the courts anyway. What sort of example is this to countries we accuse of corruption? The message is that you can do anything you like as long as you are chums with those in power. Hardly inspiring. However, just because previous presidents have done it isn't an excuse for its continuation! It's fairly telling that the Republican defence of pretty much anything stupid, immoral or just plain illegal that Bush and his cronies do is that 'Clinton lied about having an affair!'. Yes he did, and of course he shouldn't have done it. He was also no saint in many other areas of course, but let's face it, Bush has done more to make the world a worse, more dangerous, divisive, polluted, greedy and generally bad place than almost anyone else in the last decade... apart from Cheney, perhaps.

Closer to home we are right to worry about the BAe bribery scandal, and the corruption and very dubious morals in the Labour government that stopped the investigation into it. However, it's pretty galling to hear that the US DoJ want to investigate that deal while their president is letting his friends out of prison for serious crimes. The Murdoch press wonder why there is what they consider to be anti-Americanism in this country. The answer is obvious - how can you have any respect for the American government with the current idiots in charge? They even make our lot look good. Like it or not, other countries judge you by the actions of your government, and if they carry on the way they're going then driving Jeeps into Glasgow airport will be the least of our worries.

Religious Exemptions

Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:46:04 GMT

A magistrate in Manchester has walked out of a court because a defendant refused to remove a full-face veil, and this seems to have caused some controversy. Admittedly the magistrate could have handled it better than just walking out, but his point remains valid. You can't turn-up in court with your face covered - you could be anyone. Whose word do we have to take that this is actually the person who it should be?

I don't know how the law stands on this. Could anyone turn up in court with their face covered and expect everyone else to go along with it? Somehow I doubt it, and if it's true for one person it should be true for all people. We can't give special permission for people to be exempt from laws and conventions because of some belief they hold. Where would it stop? If it is indeed the case, then hey, my brand new and convenient religion forbids me to appear in court unless I'm provided with beer and strippers! I'm being silly of course, but how is that any more silly than the demands of any faith? They are all essentially made-up to fit some possibly questionable historical anyway.

It's time for the government to put its foot down and state that no religious 'rules' are valid for any exemptions or special treatments in any walk of life. It doesn't matter what your magic book or man with super powers from the past says - we are all equal, and we all have exactly the same rights, along with the same responsibilities. The overriding motivation behind any of our actions should be for society, not because we're scared of some mythical punishment that might befall us when we die. A life that is lived well purely because we fear a supernatural punishment is not worthy of admiration at all. It is to be pitied.

Glastonbury Roundup

Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:29:09 GMT

Well, I'm back from Glastonbury in one piece! You may have heard that it was a bit wet this year, and it was. Wetter than 2005 I'd say, but the new drainage stopped the flooding. It didn't stop the mud though! Anyway, more on that in a bit.

Our bus was due to go at 8:45 on Wednesday morning, but I got a text on Tuesday evening saying that it had been changed to 2pm. Slightly irritating, but that would mean getting on-site by 3pm or so, which isn't bad. We got to Bath coach station around 1:20 and settled in to the short wait, only to discover that the buses were rather disorganised. Our bus got gradually later, as did everyone else's. There was one guy from See Tickets (who were running everything, supposedly) and he was being mobbed by the 200 or so people waiting, but didn't know what was going on. He did have all of the tickets in a carrier bag though, and the first few people who asked got their tickets and made their own way. This got the guy a telling-off from his bosses though, so he soon stopped that. Time ticked on and the police turned-up as they didn't like 200 increasingly-annoyed people hanging around the coach station. There wasn't much they could do though (apart from telling people off for drinking), so everyone sat around getting frustrated for a few hours. Some reporters from the local paper turned up, but the only real story was See Tickets being inept.

Anyway, our coach finally left at around 6pm, and we were on-site by 7. Despite my earlier lofty plans to head for Dragons Field, we set-up in Woodsies as usual - it's a good spot, especially when rain is expected as it doesn't get too muddy. Even better, it's right next to gate A where we came in. Having set-up the tents we headed into the markets to look about. Foolishly we thought that the solstice was on Thursday night, not Thursday morning, so we missed all of the celebrations at the stone circle. Bah! Still, we grabbed some food from the excellent Garlic Kitchen (this guy is also a fan), then after a bit of wandering around went up to the cinema tent to watch Serenity. After that it was back down into the markets for a bimble about, then back to the tent for a relatively early one. Little did we know that it was the last time we'd see much on the ground other than mud.

It rained on Thursday, quite a lot. However, when it finished the ground didn't seem too bad. We did some things, but also drank quite a lot so I don't remember much about it. We spent some time in Chai Wallahs drinking their rather excellent chai, doing some wheatgrass shots, and listening to some of the guys from One Taste, including the really, really good Jamie Woon. Not only is he a great singer/guitarist, but he does a very impressive local loop one man band thing. You really have to see it. I can't remember anything else we did, but we were in the Leftfield drinking quite a lot.

On Friday the ground had got pretty muddy, but it was still just about ok in the morning. The bands had started of course, and we all had timetables in mind. First on my list were Flipron on the Avalon stage. I'd convinced Nicole that they were worth seeing, and I think she was convinced. They're always great and it's just a shame that the set wasn't longer. It was getting muddier all the time though, and after Flipron it was getting to the point where moving between stages had to be carefully considered as it took so flippin' long. More beer seemed to help my balance though. I caught Rory Motion and '4 in a Field' in the cabaret tent, although I only really laughed at a couple of the comedians (Sean Hughes was good, and Ed Byrne was a good compere). We caught Rufus Wainwright and Arcade Fire on the Other stage. I didn't bother with the Arctic Monkeys, but I probably heard most of Bjork as I was stuck in the human traffic jam heading towards the Pyramid stage.

Saturday was even wetter. The rain not stopping had got less funny, but it wasn't going to stop us! The mud gave it a good go though. We poked around the Green Fields, then spent a very enjoyable (and dry) afternoon in the cabaret tent watching Nina Conti, Simon Munnery, Paul Nathan, Murray Lachlan-Young, Jeremy Hardy, Rhythm Wave, Marcus Brigstocke, Phil Kay and Mitch Benn. The highlights were Jeremy Hardy and Marcus Brigstocke, but it was pretty much all good. I'm not sure what it says about me that the main thing I wanted to see on the day was comedy though! Anyway, after that it was off to the John Peel stage to catch 'Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly', then back to the cinema tent to catch Hot Fuzz, although we gave up before the end (it was cold, and I've seen it before... it's good though!). Oh, and we got into the Guardian photo montage thing, around about the 1:20 remaining mark. That's us, in yellow ponchos!

My main objective for Sunday was the Leftfield. We saw George Monbiot talk about his environmental ideas which are always very insightful. Eric Faulkner (yes him, from the Bay City Rollers) then played two guitars at once, which was very impressive. Then there was a debate called 'Another World is Possible' with Tony Benn, George Monbiot, and some union people. George Monbiot got very angry about the Iraq war and made some very good points again. The next act was Marcus Brigstocke again, with a reduced (but slightly different) version of his set from the day before. Still funny. Then Ed Byrne did a really funny set, Tony Benn talked about nuclear weapons and Trident, Shazia Mirza did her 'angry feminist Muslim' thing, then Mark Thomas did his funny (yet alarming) mass lone protest thing, ending with the good news that Gordon Brown has suggested that he'll scrap the restrictions on protesting near parliament. After that we hoofed-it up to the Avalon stage to catch Billy Bragg, in great form as ever. Sadly, far too many other people wanted to see him too, so we were stood some way outside the tent. Still a good gig though - he's always great to watch. After that we went back to the Pyramid stage and caught a bit of the Manics, but then gave up and went to Chai Wallah's again instead to drink chai and catch more Jamie Woon.

And today.... dear God, the organisation! Or lack of it. Our bus was due to go at 8am, so we were up early putting our tents away in the rain (it had rained all night), and trudged over to the site bus station. Of course, none of the buses were working and nobody knew what was going on. The mud was the deepest at the festival, and it actually came over the top of my boots for the first time all weekend. We gave-up waiting where we were meant to as it clearly wasn't going anyway, and went and stood near where the buses were coming in. It was very wet and windy, and some people were clearly very cold, despite the foil heat blanket things that were handed out. A bus for Bath eventually turned up at around 10, and about five coach loads of people tried to get on. We were lucky and made it in, but a lot of people didn't. I dread to think how long they had to wait. Urgh. So I got home just before midday, cold and wet, but overall happy.

It has easily been the wettest and coldest Glasto so far - even the floods of last time went away by Sunday, and it was sunny then too. This time the rain was just relentless, and the mud. I won't forget that in hurry. As for my highlight... Jeremy Hardy? Not very rock'n'roll, but there you go. And Billy Bragg from a musical perspective I suppose, but then I know all of his songs and agree with his views, so I probably got more out of it than the other guys. Jaime Woon was good too, and I intend to check him out...

Honours and Dodgy Peers

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 13:24:43 GMT

So the honours have been announced, and they include a knighthood for Salman Rushdie. This is fine, after all, his novel Midnight's Children won the 'Booker of Bookers' as the best book in 25 years - quite an achievement really. It's a prize that is definitely deserved.

However, it was bound to upset some religious fundamentalists, who are still a bit upset that Rushdie wrote a book that they believe mocked their relgion, or Mohammed, or something (most of them haven't read it so it doesn't matter anyway). This was to be expected, and ignored. However, when Labour peer Lord Ahmed waded-in and started saying he was "appalled to hear Salman Rushdie had been given a knighthood ... honouring the man who has blood on his hands, sort of, because of what he did, I think is going a bit too far". So then, Lord Ahmed, what did Rushdie do, exactly? In what way has he got blood on his hands? Is he the one suggesting that someone should become a suicide bomber and kill Rushdie, much like the oh-so-innocent Pakistan parliament? No, he was simply writing a piece of fiction, something that we have a right to do in this country. Why are you siding with religious nutjobs rather than someone you're actually meant to represent?

Lord Ahmed has no right to be representing Britain and should be sacked immediately. No, we don't cave-in to the lunatic demands of religions in this country. In fact we pander far too much to them as it is, and I'm not just talking about Muslims. No religion has any right to infringe on our basic liberties. They should all be ridiculed and mocked far more often for the backward, illogical, dangerous things that they are. Just because you believe in a big man in the sky who tells you to avoid pork, not use condoms, stone women to death or whatever, it doesn't make it a valid viewpoint. Why should we listen to you? Why should we even tolerate you when you start using your religion to reduce our liberties? By all accounts you can let your fairy tales and superstitions tell you what you can do with your own life, but as soon as you start affecting anyone else - including your own children... by God, you'd better to be ready to be ridiculed and mocked. Ignoring you hasn't worked after all, so it's time we told you exactly where you can stick your bigotry and intolerance.

Embracing Facebook

Fri, 15 Jun 2007 16:42:28 GMT

So, Facebook is still growing to encompass almost the entire world. This can't be ignored when you're a dynamic and hip Internet music outfit like we are here at The Filter, so today we released the MyFilter Facebook app.

Please give it a go. While you're at it, you can install the client (from our Web site) to get you personal charts and recommendations. You can get the client for Windows and OSX, of course. And Nokia phones.

So, that might all sound like a bit of an advert, and I suppose it is. However, we've got some genuinely exciting plans and it's all free, so what have you got to lose? It's time for us all to rediscover our music collections!

Hot Vegans, Almost

Mon, 11 Jun 2007 00:18:27 GMT

This weekend was really hot. I was in Bristol on Saturday, and when I left my house in the morning it was a bit overcast so I put some jeans on. Big mistake - by the time the train got to Bristol the sun was out and I was already overheating. Still, you have to make the most of these things, so buy combining the powers of ice cream and beer, I got through the day.

We went to the Glass Arcade in St Nicholas Markets for lunch where I tried some Caribbean 'Ackee and Salt Fish'. Tasty, although the women running the stall did her best to warn me that I wouldn't like it (nobody there, including her, liked it). I thought it was pretty good though - it sort of melts in your mouth. In a nice way.

We checked-out 'Encounters', a Manuel Vason exhibition at the Arnolfini. Despite the clever walk-activated lighting stuff, it rather suffered from a lack of context, but hey, it was suitably disturbing in parts to tick the right 'art' boxes! The Arnolfini do struggle to run their bar very efficiently when it's busy though, and it does get pretty busy on summer days.

During the afternoon we went to Brandon Hill and Cabot Tower. I don't know why I haven't been up it before, but I did this time. A great view is to be had from the top of it, and we had fun squeezing past the fat people on the thin spiral staircase. The tower is nice and cool when it's hot and sunny outside, so it was a bit of a welcome respite.

There was an intention to catch Puressence at the Vegan Fayre (the worlds biggest, no less), but a few drinks in the sun sort of messed-up our schedule. Still, we sort of heard the end of the set from the other side of the fence!

As I type this I'm watching Mick Jagger prancing about on stage singing Sympathy for the Devil at the Isle of Wight festival. He's not doing too badly for a pensioner! A few of my friends were there, and with the great weather and lineup, I'm sure they had an excellent time. My own festival excitement is for Glastonbury of course, but it has been ever so slightly tempered by the awkward Wednesday morning coach we are forced to get. Not so much a problem for me as a couple of the guys I'm going with, so hopefully it will turn out for the best.

Girls, Geeks, Google

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 17:12:24 GMT

Yesterday evening I went to the Google offices by Victoria Station in London for the thirteenth Girl Geek Dinner. This was the first one I've attended at a different venue, and I was interested to see the Google offices. They're in Belgrave House on Buckingham Palace Road - an impressively large building which also houses American Express (I think). The event itself was held in the staff canteen, and Google had laid-on food, booze and so on, as well as some cute promotional stuff. Top marks for all of that.

The first talk was given by Shivauna Raff, who talked about the future of search. She touched on some interesting stuff about vertical searching, and how she thinks the search market will go generally. The next talk was by the Google team behind the mobile version of Google Checkout. They had some interesting tales of the rather painful-sounding world of getting applications to run on phone... not an inconsiderable challenge when you consider the different phones that exist, and the fact that the same phone models can differ when used on different networks!

The way that products are developed within Google provoked some discussion. For the size of the company and number of users, Google use quite small development teams. This surprised some of the audience, but I think Google must have something right! I'll argue about the best way of doing things with them once I've made my own billions...

Sarah recorded the talks - you can find them on Viddler. You can also see Jane Dallaway's photos on Flickr.

Developers Developers Developers!

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 13:29:09 GMT

...so goes the familiar Microsoft rant, as expressed by Steve Ballmer. What he should have added, of course, is "They had better not be too clever if they want to work with us!". A guy called Jamie Cansdale has found this out to his cost by developing his Testdriven.NET plugin for Visual Studio. Basically, Microsoft are going to sue him for using APIs they encouraged people to use, mainly because something he's giving away for free might compete with one of their products. It's worth reading this article on it, including the increasingly threatening emails they are sending him.

Every day I'm glad that I don't have to develop on Windows. Not only would it mean actually using Windows (something that I can avoid completely now, thankfully), but Windows developers have such an overpriced monoculture to deal with when it comes to development, that it pretty much stifles innovation... unless you have piles of cash, of course. There's a pretty good reason why all the best new ideas are coming from non-Windows platforms, and by acting like they are in this story, Microsoft are only going to make the problem worse for themselves.

Isn't The Internet Brilliant?

Thu, 31 May 2007 12:57:09 GMT

Google continue to chuck-out things that impress me, and even better, they're free. Take the recent addition of 'Street Views' on Google Maps, for example. You can now become a virtual tourist of several cities in the US, and it is done really well. I'm not sure how they've done it, but the objects (people, cars and so on) all look normal and not stretched and stitched, as you'd imagine. I spent a few minutes looking at exactly the same views I had poking around San Francisco and Las Vegas last year - it's almost spooky.

Also on the Google front, Checkout is brilliant. I buy quite a lot of stuff from eBuyer as they're very cheap for computery bits and pieces, and for orders over thirty quid you get ten pounds off simply buy paying with Google Checkout! Can't argue with that - I've saved quite a lot already. Well... 'saved' in a sense, since I probably didn't exactly need some of the things I bought, but you know what I mean.

We're now into June, so I'm looking forward to the WWDC on the 11th. Not that I'm going myself of course, but we'll finally learn the 'super top secret' Leopard features, plus I'm sure there will be some product announcements. I'm hoping for a boost in Mac Mini specs, but there is a rumour it is being dropped! I guess I'll find out soon enough, but if it is dropped then I'll just have to pick-up one of the remaining ones. The current Core2Duo would do the job, but hopefully I'll be able to pay the same for a better machine.

There's iPhone promotion going on at the 'All Things Digital' conference at the moment, but that's far enough from its UK release that I'm not really thinking about it. At the same conference, Microsoft showed-off a whizzy table that is a bit like a giant iPhone. I guess it was kind of cool, but they're talking about around ten thousand quid for it, so it's not exactly a consumer device. Looking at the demo video, it's pretty similar to the iPhone Multitouch interface too, so not that innovative.

Facebook continues to gather steam. Every day it seems more people I know join it... I think it has reached that critical mass now where a social networking site actually becomes useful. The new applications that can be added to your profile page are also pretty cool, and as long as they don't allow people to change their page layout/fonts/colours then it's all good. If people start being able to mess with their pages then it will just become another MySpace, with people getting 'creative' and making horrendous, unreadable pages. Urgh.