An interesting article appeared in the Independent today entitled Electronic Smog:

Invisible “smog”, created by the electricity that powers our civilisation, is giving children cancer, causing miscarriages and suicides and making some people allergic to modern life, new scientific evidence reveals.

This is hardly anything new: claims in the UK about pylons causing cancer have been made for years, and questions about mobile phones being a health hazard have been made for a long time. Both have been treated with the usual ping-pong of studies refuting the claims for and against (see here for pylons, here for mobiles). The BBC reported in 2000 about a woman who was so sensitive to electricity that she couldn’t even wear a battery powered watch, and experience sharp pain whenever walking on ground that covered power cables.

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“Out the box” is one of my worst business catch-phrases ever since I worked for a guy who was a walking catch-phrase dictionary. He couldn’t seem to talk without some abbreviation or acronym coming out his mouth. Regardless, the description suits this case because it’s good to see someone talking about new business models when it comes to music, file sharing, and copyright. The company in question is Nettwerk, run by a Terry McBride, and the model is something he calls “behavioural marketing”.

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DVD Review: Avalon
Studio: Bluelight
Run Time: 102 min
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Starring: Malgorzata Foremniak, Jerzy Gudejko
Webpage (UK Release): http://www.avalonthemovie.com/

Mamoru Oshii from Ghost In The Shell fame turned to real live acting in this amazing, thought provoking sci-fi flick. It took him ten years to fully realise his project, wanting to fuse reality and illusions to make a �??real picture movie�?� that more resembled animation.

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Polish author Stanislaw Lem, who died recently, held all of American science fiction in the greatest of contempt, except for one person: Philip K. Dick. It’s easy to see why today. Although it took a very long time for Dick to achieve widespread fame and recognition for his work, he is now considered a giant among giants in science fiction writing: around fourteen of his works are presented in the Gollancz SF Masterworks Series, and several of his books have been turned into popular blockbusters, such as Minority Report (from the book of the same name), Bladerunner (based on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep) and Total Recall (from We Can Remember It For You Wholesale).

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The Guardian has a damn interesting article about the new Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology about to hit consumers with HD and Blu-Ray: The Advanced Access Content System backed and co-developed by Sony, Toshiba, Intel, IBM, Panasonic, Microsoft, Warner Brothers and Disney. This quote from Mike Evangelist of HD Boycott puts it in perspective:

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Dear God Almighty … this has got to be the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages. I’ve long been a big fan of Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show, and Steven Colbert has always been one of the highlights of the show. This, however, has raised Colbert to another level (or a new low, depending on your outlook on life). The man has some serious balls to lampoon Bush to his face. Ten points! And if he gets shot, we know who did it.

Check out parts 1-3 on YouTube.

Update: Looks like the YouTube version got pulled due to copyright infringement (puke), so you can get another version here.

Just trying out a new Firefox extension I installed called Performancing. It’s pretty impressive as a quick way of posting to your blog via Firefox, allowing you to choose categories to post to, maintain multiple blog accounts, a decent WYSIWYG editor (or source code editor) and a few other nifty features.

And yes, I know my permalinks don’t work. Will try fix that up tomorrow. Hey, of course there are going to be some teething troubles!

At long bloody last I’ve got my blog up and running again. It only took me a year or so to get it done, but here it is. The reason my blog disappeared (not that I expect anyone was reading the last one and is still visiting) was because it got hacked by a bunch of phishers to set up an eBay scam. I like to think someone hacked in because I pissed off someone enough to get them to shut the site down. The truth is probably a lot less glamorous.

So, hey. Good to be back. Another voice to the bewildered horde of bloggers.