Earth: Mostly Harmless

Wincing The Night Away by The Shins

Check out this free track from The Shins’ new album. Rather good.

(Via Uncrate).

UK Think Tank Calls For Fair Use Of Your Own CDs

Sensible proposals from the Institute for Public Policy Research. Shame they’ll probably not be given a second look in the Government’s copyright review.

UK Think Tank Calls For Fair Use Of Your Own CDs:

jweatherley writes “The BBC reports that a UK think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, has called for the legalization of format shifting. In a report commissioned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, they state that copyright laws are out of date, and that people should have a ‘private right to copy’ which would allow them to legally copy their own CDs and DVDs on to home computers, laptops and phones. The report goes on to say that: ‘it is not the music industry’s job to decide what rights consumers have. That is the job of government.’ The report also argues that there is no evidence the current 50-year copyright term is insufficient. The UK music industry is campaigning to extend the copyright term in sound recordings to 95 years.”

(Via Slashdot).

Rammstein and the Chipmunks

Breaking news: animated chipmunks join German industrial rock band!

Exhibit A.

If you listen to Last.fm radio on a Mac with its audio output sample rate set to 96Khz, you will too find that the godforsaken hellish sound of The Chipmunks has infiltrated your machine.

Current activities

I haven’t posted anything of substance here for a while, so I thought that a general update post might be a good idea.

My birthday has, after two weeks, begun to cease being the central focus of my life… I had a great time out with friends on on the 1st August (those who remember more of it will attest to this). And I was pleasantly surprised at the turn-out level

21sts seem to go on and on - and since my cousin’s 21st was yesterday, it felt like the dust had barely settled from mine before the whole gravy train started up again. It’s all very nice though, and I think he had a good time. there’s something tangibly different this birthday from the others I’ve had. I suppose the most obvious thing is that people treat it as sort of watershed - the beginnings of some new stage of your life. I expect that for me this is probably true. I’ve changed a great deal in the past few months, and though I won’t bore you with the details, I rather like the way things are going for me just now.

Oh, and come the 18th, Sharon and I will have been together for 18 months.

A few small updates and errata:

I’m working at Spoken Word three days a week just now, splitting my time between fixing bugs in Padova, and working on our squeaky-clean and brand new installation of the excellent Fedora repository software. Fedora is an interesting, though opaque environment. Lots of challenges ahead…

Loving Muse right now. I have tickets to the Edinburgh gig on the 24th and also to the Glasgow one in November. Should be excellent.

My friend Ross won a silver in the high jump at the Scottish Athletics Championships today, and also became under 20s champion. Though if I could jump my own height, I think I would put it to some form of criminal purposes. Not sure what, but there’s gotta be a fence somewhere that needs jumped over.

I also got my phone pretty much sorted out. I received a refund for the original E61 and thanks to a miraculous bit of timing I only had 24 hours ‘downtime’ between sending away the ‘old’ one and receiving the new one from a reseller. So I only had to use the yucky WinMo T-Mobile MDA Vario (right)for that short period. Euughh. It *should* be an okay phone, considering the specifications, but that OS - horrible. That one’s being eBay-ed ASAP. The new E61 is great.

I started reading Great Expectations. My literary criticism skills are about as advanced as that of a house-brick, so I will make a stark generalised comment and say “what a wonderful writer old Charlie was”, and leave it at that.

TTFN, dear readers. I love you all in exactly the way that one does not love him.

Temperature in hell heading for zero: BPI Calls for Private Copying Right

An eminently sensible proposal. However, the real test will be in the final legislation (if any) which comes out of this. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a vindication of private copying rights is accompanied by an expansion of the content lobby’s legal instruments for pursuing infringers.
I’ll be keeping track of this one. Watch [...] (…)