Listening to: LSF - Kasabian

In general I loath commercial pop radio. It’s basically drivel, the music is shite
and there are far too many ads. Of late, though, I have started listening to BBC Radio
1 (particularly expat Kiwi Zane
Lowe) and I have to say that my perception of radio has changed. It is amazing
how good radio is when you blow open the play list, remove the lobotomised DJs and
replace them with people who know their music. It also helps that it is free of ads.
It’s kinda like listening to an iPod with a commentator that knows what they’re on
about…

My first purchase driven by this new appreciation is Kasabian by
Kasabian. Nice. Dare I say it… they remind me a little of the Stone Roses.

Listening to: Radio 1

Jeff forwarded this to
me. It is a Downing Street memo that was published in The Times on the 1st of May:

From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02

cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson,
John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell

IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER’S MEETING, 23 JULY

Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.

This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made.
It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.

John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam’s
regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely
to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably
by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming.
His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular
army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly
based.

C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in
attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam,
through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the
intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience
with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s
record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military
action.

Listening to: Graffiti - Maximo Park

I stumbled on the latest Robert X. Cringely article during the weekend. He makes a
number of really really interesting observations:

It’s an expression made popular in Silicon Valley years ago by Andy Grove of Intel:
“inflection point.” It’s that abrupt elbow in a graph of growth or decline when the
new technology or paradigm truly kicks in, and suddenly there is no going back. From
that moment, the new stuff takes off and the old stuff goes into rapid decline, whether
it is a new standard of modem, a new video game, a new microprocessor family, or just
a new idea. I think we’ve just hit such an inflection point and — though most of
us still don’t realize it — the personal computer, video game, and electronic entertainment
businesses will never be the same.
…
So Apple takes over video and movies while Yahoo threatens with a low-priced music
subscription service and Google threatens to take control of, well, everything.

And Microsoft? Microsoft kicks the dog.

Well worth a read.

Listening to: not too sure… this was computer generated.

westside
4 life

>

Originally uploaded by flash5.>

I found this painting in a tailors this morning… some young renaissance turk throwing
out a hand sign to his homies.

Listening to: BBC Radio 1

Gizmodo has a set
of scans from an upcoming magazine article:

UPDATE: Kotaku have
a summary of the MTV event.

UPDATE 2: And finally! A MS marketing
movie (src: gamesindustry.biz)
that doesn’t suck! Some marketoid at Redmond has grasped the subtle nature of
empathy. I now WANT an XBox 360 because the people who created it are the people who
sold me on it and they understand that for it to mean something it needs to mean something
to real people… not propellerheads. Maybe Mr Scoble is making a difference.

Listening to: Trapped Under Ice Floes> - +/-

Mephisto Jones has put a wonderful and large paste up on the wall along from the Krazy
Lounge.

>

Awesome! Love it!

Listening to: Bobby Friction and Nihal on Radio 1

Found a reference to this outfit over at /. .
Given the people involved and the approach they are taking I suspect this will be
the aerospace company to watch over the next few years. From the wikipedia entry:

t/Space (or Transformational Space Corporation) is an American aerospace company
which tried to compete for NASA’s Vision
for Space Exploration (VSE) contract. The company’s CEO is David
Gump of LunaCorp.
Some notable members of the company include Burt
Rutan of Scaled
Composites, Gary
Hudson of AirLaunch LLC [1] (http://www.airlaunchllc.com/), Elon
Musk of SpaceX,
and Red
Whittaker of the Carnegie
Mellon Robotics
Institute. The company is headquartered in Reston,
Virginia.

Listening to: Bobby Friction and Nihal on Radio 1

Found this over at pasta
and vinegar. The MouseField is
a rather smart ubiquitous computing input device. It combines ID and motion sensing
technology:

Listening to: Bobby Friction and Nihal on Radio 1

Gizmodo had a couple of interesting solar power related products this morning:

Solar
Power Home Control Panel

The JH-G51X gives real-time information on power consumption, the charge being
generated by the solar cells, how much excess power you can sell back to the grid,
or how much of a deficit there is.

The
Solar Umbrella

Justin Thomas’ Solar Umbrella consists of 48 LED lights embedded into its canopy,
that glow automatically at night. Outfitted with a discreet solar panel on top, the
Solar Umbrella is available in beige and hunter green and uses a Ni-Cad battery to
hold the day’s solar reserves.

Listening to: Bobby Friction and Nihal on Radio 1

I found this over at BoingBoing.
The monkeys that were hooked up to robotic arms seem to show that the robotic arm
wasn’t perceived as being a replacement arm (at least by the brain) but as an entirely
different appendage.

Mikhail’s analysis of the brain signals associated with use of the robotic and
animals’ actual arms revealed that the animal was simultaneously doing one thing with
its own arm and something else with the robotic arm,” (Nicolelis) said. “So, our hypothesis
is that the adaptation of brain structures allows the expansion of capability to use
an artificial appendage with no loss of function, because the animal can flip back
and forth between using the two. Depending on the goal, the animal could use its own
arm or the robotic arm, and in some cases both.

This more CT’s field.