Stephen Pieper

According to a press release, those sounds include "very low sub basses, square waves, noise sounds which trigger hysteria and panic within the audience." So your iPhone could make a whole lot of people very uncomfortable, if hooked up to big speakers-- which ATR encourages, via press release.

• The hot new sequel to "Interest Accrued," from the publishers who brought you "Expenses Deducted"
• "They're after me, Gladys! I know they are. You defer *one* payment and they sic the dogs on you. That's why I've put my throne by the window, so I can keep my eye ... hey! What's that? Is someone going through our trash? Oh. No, just a raccoon. Here, get me some more Red Bull, would ya? Gotta stay alert ..."
• I love her face — happy, like she's imagining what she'll do with his money when he's inevitably bumped off.

• "... will keep you chained to your chair..." — That's pretty vivid. "This book will perform such degrading acts of bondage upon you that you'll be forced to acknowledge its awesomeness."
• Hey, looks like the original hardcover features a guy looking out a window, too. I'll take the cover with the sexily murderous strawberry blonde any day of the week.

For once he was neither the hotel prisoner nor yet was he at home with his father. It was the transition stage. He spent his time deliciously, luxuriously.

Grant says Gorillaz copied his 1977 song Time Warp on their new single.

"I am outraged that the Gorillaz have infringed the copyright of my song Time Warp, claiming their song Stylo to be an original composition," he said.

[They] said it was "a private matter between Eddy Grant and Gorillaz".

[They] said it was "a private matter between Eddy Grant and Gorillaz".

Shared by Stephen
If you've got Spotify this seems essential. Works amazingly well.

Shared by Stephen
Well said!

A properly sceptical article by Anthony Gardner on the creative writing industry, in the latest Royal Society of Literature mag, quotes one teacher explaining that ‘creative writing schools in the US teach that a poem needs to have what they call “redemption”: something at the end which lifts the reader up.’

And you will know of course that all stories (including novels) need a beginning, a middle and an end. Also that short stories need to have a surprise final sentence, that all fiction must be written about what you know and rooted in your own experience and that paragraphs must never begin with ‘and’ or ‘but’.

But did you know about the redemption needed at the end of a poem? Obviously, scriptwriters must conform to this rule, and any book that has a downbeat ending is generally thought to be ‘depressing’ and therefore not good, but that redemptive kick in a poem is a new necessity to me, although, to the real benefit of the world, I don’t write poetry.

And this is the way my blog piece ends, not with a bang but a moment of uplift to suggest that all is wonderful fine in the best of all possible creative writing schools. Let the networking begin, let the creative take notes and let no one forget that what the reader needs from writers most of all is elevation from their lowdown existence.

One small question: what exactly have readers done to deserve this? Well, they’ve bought your book, read your poem, gone to your movie. And because you have left them feeling really warmed, endorphins tingling, they are ready to purchase more of the same.  More of the same. More of the same.

And life is beautiful.

"The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files," the lead singer of the band U2 wrote in an op-ed piece in The New York Times.
[...]
"Perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly four percent of gross domestic product," Bono said.

The singer pointed out that the US effort to stop child pornography and China's effort to suppress online dissent indicate that it is "perfectly possible to track" Internet content.

I am on a minimalist kick these days as I try to unload some of the more complex stuff I use in favor simple tools that are "good enough." A lot of this involves moving to anything that works with plain text since it works well everywhere and it's inherently portable. There's actually an active crowd of minimalist curators out there and, with their help, I am finding all kinds of cool stuff in this genre.

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Editor's note: As the BBC Archive website releases selections from the iconic BBC science show Tomorrow's World, former presenter Maggie Philbin shares her memories of the programme. (PM)

I was ten when Tomorrow's World began in 1965. I remember watching Raymond Baxter (pictured) in flickering black and white, telling me everything the future would hold. He carried me through the first flight of Concorde, the first ATM, and the early years of space flight. And there's a rich choice of 'firsts' in BBC Archive's collection of Tomorrow's World released today - Europe's first home computer terminal, the first "mobile" phone, and the first computerised credit card machine are all there.

Tomorrow's World's first show, from 1965, opens with a story about a committee who had to choose which patients would get the gift of survival on "life-saving kidney machines". From the start, Tomorrow's World was a show determined to go beyond "what's happening" in technology and also ask ethical questions.

Of course, the early shows are also very much of their time. Throwaway references to, for example, secretaries who spend all day filing their nails, were common. But by the time I turned up in 1982, not only was Judith Hann firmly in place but so were some outstanding female producers and researchers. And the editors were scrupulous: references to surgeons, engineers or mechanics as "he" came to an end. If a film involved dropping from a helicopter, driving a juggernaut, or testing a one-person submarine, then that item would have Judith's or my name against it. It's very touching to meet women who insist that watching us handle technology with confidence was the reason they chose careers in that area themselves.

Tomorrow's World is the best programme I have ever worked on. But it was also the most frightening. I still can't hear the opening music without my stomach churning. I was lucky enough to demonstrate the first fax machine, digital camera, sat nav and the first supermarket barcode reader. Cutting edge technology, for sure, but it came at a price. Frequently, the inventions were fragile and temperamental prototypes. The show was live and they had one chance to prove themselves. Typically, they would work perfectly all morning, then begin to play up during the afternoon rehearsals, introducing an unwelcome element of tension. Just before transmission, the angst-ridden inventors were swept off the studio floor and herded to the other side of TV Centre, to eliminate the possibility of them running onto the studio floor during the live programme in an attempt to rescue years of research from catastrophic failure.

So watch and relish the clip with Kieran Prendiville and "Hissing Sid", the robot "guaranteed" to pot the black on a snooker table. But spare a thought for the poor inventor watching the item through his fingers from the hospitality area.

Tomorrow's World was a show that forged powerful professional and personal friendships. Not only with Judith, Kieran, Howard and Peter but with the people who insisted on that final shot in a dark, wet potato field, or that it was perfectly safe to fly in a metal cage suspended from a helicopter or who had the imagination to see an elegant visual analogy for a complicated story.

At the Friday meeting every item would be discussed in detail. Judith and I would sit at our desks, surreptitiously opening our mail. In the middle of one particularly tense discussion, I passed her a letter I'd received, which I now have framed in my downstairs loo:

Dear Maggie

I hope you are well and happy. I hope Keith is happy too. Peter and me like watching "Tomorrow's World". Peter is my cat. He is very interested in the future.

Love Simone

It's fabulous that these pieces from the BBC Archive are now available online. And I hope the future we predicted matched Peter's expectations.

A new BBC Four season, Electric Revolution, which charts the rise of consumer technology over the last fifty years, begins later this month.

Just 11 per cent of Twitter users are aged 12 to 17, reports the New York Times (via Comscore).

Silicon Alley Insider writes about a ‘veteran venture capitalist’ being overheard saying that, “Twitter had better sell out before it’s too late.  Young people don’t like Twitter.  My kids think Twitter’s bullshit.”

Earlier this year, Morgan Stanley unveiled the research of a 15-year old who suggested that while teenagers were ‘consuming social media’, they were ignoring Twitter.

Meantime, use of social media by adults in the 35 to 64 demographic grew 60 per cent in the last year.

This is all great news.

The reason why Facebook and Bebo are popular with kids is the same reason why MySpace used to be – the social media on there is rich. It’s rich media. It’s videos, photos, music, games, quizzes and other interactive applications. These worlds are colourful and fun. They’re also less demanding of your attention. You can drift in, and you can drift out, and nobody minds.

Twitter is entirely text-based; those that are good with crafting a sentence or turning a phrase are rewarded. For the most part, kids don’t do well with prose. I’ve been privy to some of the things my 13-year old (and otherwise quite brilliant) son chats about with his friends online, and believe me, we don’t want any of that on Twitter. You think there’s a lot of pointless babble now? Just you wait.

Sure, you can link to all the rich media you want, but the platform itself is all about words. If you want to watch a video, listen to some music or look at a photo, you have to leave Twitter and go somewhere else. I hope this never changes, as I don’t want to see any of these things on Twitter. Ever.

And Twitter likes it when you make an effort. It doesn’t matter if you’re a brand, a guru, a single mom, or some guy living out in the woods with a laptop. If you don’t have anything to say, people stop paying attention.

I like the idea of an adult-only network (in the non-porn/swinger sense). In fact, I really like it. And if the only way to get kids to tweet is by providing them with all this rich media, I say ‘oh well’. That’s a shame, because all we have are lots and lots of words.

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Related posts:

1. Twitter, Friendfeed Growth Stalls For May; LinkedIn drops, Facebook Climbs 8.5%
2. Take A Moment To Freshen Your Twitter Bio
3. So You Don’t Get Twitter? (Part Three)

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"I think anybody that's touring is going to have a carbon footprint."

"I think it's probably unfair to single out rock 'n' roll."

"There's many other things that are in the same category but as it happens we have a programme to offset whatever carbon footprint we have."

"I think that's probably about as realistic as you can be right now," The Edge told BBC 6 Music.

"We'd love to have some alternative to big trucks bringing the stuff around but there just isn't one."

The Daily Mail’s Christopher Hart writes a scathing review of Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. Not only does he admit to never having seen the film, but he thinks nobody else should be allowed to see it.

Without a trace of irony or self-awareness, Hart says:

Now the anonymous moral guardians of the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), in their infinite wisdom, have passed this foul film for general consumption

What exactly is Hart promoting if not his own moral-guardianship? The BBFC have decided that only adults may see this film, but Hart apparently thinks that the average adult in the UK needs to be protected by his moral superiors. He would do well to heed the words of John Beyer, the soon-to-retire anti-smut warrior of Mediawatch-UK:

The BBFC no longer ‘cuts bits out of films’ but provides information about films so that members of the public can make up their own minds about what films they want to see or avoid.

Well said, Mr Beyer.

Here is what Hart says about the film he’s never seen:

A film which plumbs new depths of sexual explicitness, excruciating violence and degradation
[...]
Antichrist is presumably intended to shock. In fact, it doesn’t shock, it merely nauseates. 
[...]
sick, pretentious trash, fully confirming our jihadist enemies’ view of us as a society in the last stages of corruption and decay.
[...]
The world of Antichrist, by contrast, is blatantly amoral, without any sense of justice or retribution whatever.
[...]
In artistic terms, it is the equivalent of food poisoning

Where does he get this almost supernatural ability to discern an unseen film’s quality? Maybe God talks to him. He did write a breathless review of The Genesis Enigma – a preposterous book which claims the Book of Genesis fortold the theory of evolution 3,000 years before Darwin. So he is obviously a cretin.

(Tip: Nobody’s Business)

UPDATE (16:40) Michael Nimmo in the comments points out that the top six comments on Hart’s review are highly critical – another example a growing phenomenon, when the Mail’s internet readers show themselves to be considerably saner than its contributors:

How could anyone possibly judge a film that they had not seen?!
This is beyond ridiculous!
People can make thier own choice as to weather they want to watch it or not.
- Rebecca, Surrey, UK, 20/7/2009 11:30
Rating 789

You pride yourself on being broad-minded? I think perhaps you need to be slightly less proud of yourself today. That was a classic piece of closed minded criticism, of a film you haven’t seen, giving it a context you don’t fully understand, and claiming a lack of morality which you couldn’t possibly know – because you haven’t watched the film!

It was a hysterical read – and I mean that in the least complimentary way possible.
- Duncan, Edinburgh, Scotland, 20/7/2009 11:30
Rating 733

With free sensational advertising like this article, the film will be a guaranteed success …
- B. Colley, Betws-y-Coed, 20/7/2009 11:34
Rating 675

“I haven’t seen it myself…” I stopped reading there.
- Laura, London, 20/7/2009 10:58
Rating 476

How can any person speaking in a public forum, especially a film critic possibly make judgement over any film that they have not seen. Your job is to give us the detail rather than spew your moralistic, religious based ideals. Religious ideals that have no more right to a truth save for the fact we are told it as truth, than the plot of this movie.

Do your job and be professional and don’t bore us with your own personal afflictions.
- John Potter, Newbury, England, 20/7/2009 10:58
Rating 426

If you haven’t seen the film What gives you the right to comment on it??? You’re as bad as those hypocrits that banned The Life of Brian all those years ago!

I’d have been prepared for your side of the story if you’d watched it but as you haven’t I’ll watch it myself and make up my own mind!!
- Trevor, Perth, 19/7/2009 21:51
Rating 398

Plans for a 250 acre internet server farm in Scotland are advancing, after the scheme received £600m investment

A British company has raised £600m towards its plans to build what could become the world's largest data centre in Scotland.

The scheme is being concocted by Internet Villages International, a property company registered in the Isle of Man that plans to build the so-called Alba 1 facility in Dumfries and Galloway.

The company has raised its latest round of funding from unnamed investors, as part of an attempt to achieve to its target of building the 250 acre facility near Annandale next year.

Like other data centres around the globe, the site will host vast warehouses full of computer servers and networking equipment that can store information accessible on the internet and deliver to across the UK, Europe and further afield. But by providing around 3 million square feet of server space, Alba 1 could dwarf the world's largest existing data centres if it opens in 2010 as planned.

Although local press reports suggest the scheme has not yet been formally submitted to the authorities, it is hoped that it could provide around 1,000 jobs and spark growth in the area.

The scheme is set to cost £1bn overall, but could significantly increase the reliability and speed of internet service for many users around Britain by placing them closer to content. Currently much of Britain's web traffic is served from London, mainland Europe or America - and even reducing the minuscule delays in transferring data around the country could have an effect on some services.

Scotland is fast becoming a hub for data centre building in the UK, with a number of plans for new facilities across the country. The region offers plenty of open space and a technically skilled workforce thanks to the large number of semiconductor manufacturers there - though many have lost their jobs as the recession has taken hold.

It will please environmental campaigners that these are set to be, by and large, green projects: Alba, for example, is due to run off power generated at nearby biomass plant and from local wind farms. Other planned facilities could draw on a tidal power generation centre in the Pentland Firth, off the northern tip of the Scottish mainland.

As well as encouraging more renewable energy developments, such schemes will also help offset a portion of the internet's growing energy footprint - growth which experts told the Guardian earlier this year required drastic action.

Got 127 followers on Twitter? Congratulations - you're above average! And do you want to guess when its busiest time was? (Hint: not the Iran election...)

Here are some did-you-knows to drop about Twitter:

-the average user has 126 followers;

-only 20% of its traffic comes through the Twitter website; the other 80% (logically) comes from third-party programs on smartphones or computers. So if you're looking at Twitter stats on your website, you're probably underestimating that source of traffic by a factor of five;

-an early peak test of the service came during President Obama's inauguration in January, when more than 300 tweets per second were being added to the message queue.

These party factoids come courtesy of Evan Weaver, Twitter's lead engineer in its services team, who gave a talk at QCon 2009 to explain the architecture of the system - which started out as a sort of small content management system, but has morphed into a "messaging system" of sorts.

Weaver's job is primarily about optimisation and scalability, and that's been more necessary than ever with the abrupt growth of the site in the past year.

The post itself is a good read if you're into the problems of how to build a large backend system that will update in near-real time while serving millions of users.

Most of the tools used by Twitter are open source. The stack is made up of Rails for the front side, C, Scala and Java for the middle business layer, and MySQL for storing data. Everything is kept in RAM and the database is just a backup. The Rails front end handles rendering, cache composition, DB querying and synchronous inserts. This front end mostly glues together several client services, many written in C: MySQL client, Memcached client, a JSON one, and others.

("Most" of the tools? Which ones aren't?)

You can also see the slides at Weaver's own site. The "Obamamania" slide is No.19 - and is quite dramatic - and if you look at slide 42 and magnify it like mad you'll see all the C tools the company uses.

The other interesting things? Twitter pretty much lives in RAM - the database is "just a backend" for, well, when the RAM doesn't hold what is wanted. But because generally tweets have a short life, the database hardly ever needs to be queried - it's only stuff like old tweets, searches, "conversations" that are needed for those, and you can do that asynchronously.

All in all, though - aside from the interesting way of how to be above average - it's an interesting insight into what's needed to run such a big system.

The next question: can it keep growing that fast? And the second: can someone please figure out a way for it to make money so it won't vanish?