The View From Here - back, crack or sack?

27/7/03 - I heard 'Things'll Be Different' by MJ Hibbett & The Validators on Steve Lamacq's show yesterday. Very enjoyable. Now I want to hear 'Programming Is A Poetry For Our Time':

"I wonder would Wordsworth have written in Perl?
Would Keats have used Notepad for HTML?
I reckon Byron would see
The irony
Of writing words to change the world that we
Can't live without but no-one ever sees"

27/7/03 - A new weblog from the guy who does the editorial cartoon summary for Slate.

27/7/03 - I never noticed before but the All Music Guide does little articles on individual songs. This is for 'What Goes On':

"[Lou] Reed's furious, dead-solid-perfect guitar is the backbone of the original recording of the tune, and he doesn't miss a beat for a good four and a half minutes; as he wails with a palpable joy "Lady be good/Do what you should/It's gonna be all right," he sounds happier to be alive than on anything the Velvets ever cut. Reed's live performances of the song were, if anything, even wilder; 1969 Velvet Underground Live preserves an almost nine-minute take of "What Goes On" that's so frantic you work up a sweat just listening to it..."

27/7/03 - I'm assuming that as the Grauniad was the only newspaper to say that Strom Thurmond was a vegetarian it wasn't true. He doesn't make this list of famous vegetarians.

27/7/03 - The Norwich 'bus in a hole' incident:

More details including a map of the chalk workings that caused the problem.

27/7/03 - For the man who has everything; a small bowel cam:

See a normal small bowel in all its glory! (A choice of .avi or streaming video is available.)

27/7/03 - I complain enough about my Siemens A50, and lo, my prayers are answered, a Motorola C350 arrives unannounced.

27/7/03 - From the Observer:

"In the US, it's considered normal to go out with several different people at the same time. While here, a single date can mean you're serious... Ed Halliwell on the perils of multiple choice."

27/7/03 - I'm not sure how much press this particular aspect of the sorry Kelly affair is getting but I thought it interesting. Tony Blair's defence on the naming of David Kelly:

"Questioned on why the government confirmed Dr Kelly's identity, he replied: "That's a completely different matter once the name is out there. The inquiry can look at these things.""

Of course 'out there' is the key. According to the Times they (the Times) put twenty (twenty!) names to the government before getting the right one:

"Working on information from the BBC and the Government, The Times put more than 20 names to the MoD before officials confirmed Dr Kelly’s name. The Guardian says Dr Kelly was only the third name it put to the MoD before getting confirmation."

Obviously the Grauniad have luckier guessers.

27/7/03 - Another example of how foreign MPs seem much more dedicated:

26/7/03 - The worst covers of romance novels. What is she doing to get 3rd place? (via Pathologically Polymathic)

26/7/03 - Snoop Dogg aims for feminism, misses:

"Snoop Dogg cuts ties with 'Girls Gone Wild' (AP)
The rapper, who appeared as the host on one of the raunchy strip videos, told The Associated Press he's done with the series because it doesn't feature women of color.
"If you notice, there hasn't been no girls of (ethnicity) at all on none of those tapes," Snoop Dogg complained during a recent interview. "No black girls, no Spanish girls _ all white girls, and that (stuff) ain't cool, because white girls ain't the only hos that get wild.""

26/7/03 - Songs I'm trying to find:

Lord Beginner - Victory Test Match
Champion Jack Dupree - I Want To Be A Hippy
Golinski Brothers - Bloody
Wild Blue Yonder - The Possum Crawls Tonight
Woody Herman & His Thundering Herd - FM

26/7/03 - Leechers fall beneath my powerful tool. Behold MXMonitor.

And GSpot allows me to check codecs on .avi files. How cool is that?