This is for the people of the sun, it's comin' back around again

Compliments of Forbes.com

"Google Inc. launched a search engine in China on Wednesday that censors material about human rights, Tibet and other topics sensitive to Beijing - defending the move as a trade-off granting Chinese greater access to other information.

Within minutes of the launch of the new site bearing China's Web suffix ".cn," searches for the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement showed scores of sites omitted and users directed to articles condemning the group posted on Chinese government Web sites.

Searches for other sensitive subjects such as exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama, Taiwan independence, and terms such as "democracy" and "human rights" yielded similar results."


I can't say I agree with that load of bollocks.

You're squeezing my mellon man!



I would happily commit heinous crimes if it meant I could locate even a single South African gem squash in Britain.

I'm struggling through a completely irrational desire desire for that golden flesh. When I was a kid I almost severed a finger (I got as far as bone) trying to cut one of these in half with a dagger. You may find it strange that I was using a dagger but I was camping and all men, even small ones, need a big knife when camping. It's conditioned into us while watching Crocodile Dundee as children.

After spurting claret all over the place and then bursting into tears, I found I didn't much fancy gem squash so much anymore. That stayed with me for a number of years after the incident. Thankfully I'm over it now.

Completely aside, due to the fact that Ananzi mail are pissing me off with their fucking daily newletter I've completely ported across to Gmail now. Anyone who has my MSN details, please update my contact address to ian(dot)r(dot)wilson(at)gmail(dot)com.

Dancing in the moonlight

So last night was good. Great even. Unfortunately the pay off for a great night was today... the whole of today. I hate that. I hate not having accomplished at least one thing of substance in a 24 hour period. It makes me feel a bit worthless.



I'm not going to say much about last night. Mainly because Nat leached the photo's off my camera early this morning while I was quietly dying in bed and I don't want to be accused of duplicating HER photo's again. Besides, she has a Flickr Pro account and I don't. Snooty cow. See the photo's here.

And just to clear it up, I blame the double shot of Jack Daniels at the end of last night for my intimacy with the porcelain god a few hours later. What the hell was I thinking?

Things with Nat are really good. Far better in fact than they were before the break up. I've actually come to a new conclusion in the wake of that experience. No one should get married before breaking up with their partner first. Seriously. You may think that they mean alot to you, but you actually have no idea until you've faced life from the other side. I learnt so many things in that month apart from her. And do you know what, all those small things... just ignore them. They're not worth the hassle.

Final bit of interest, for those of you who find it convenient to have a shared calendar. The nice guys at iCal Exchange are providing free accounts with webDAV extentions so you can run iCal compatible calendars off them. Why is this great? Because it's a free way to share your Sunbird calendar.

Money money money, it must be funny, in a rich mans world

The Problem.


The solution arrives next month courtesy of Amazon.co.uk.

Belkin Hi-Speed USB 2.0 7 port hub
Logitech MediaPlay cordless mouse

Linkage (I would have used a song lyric for a header as usual but couldn't think of any)

Coda orginally showed me the crazy shirt-folding link. It's ages old now but I'd still like to put it into everyday practice. I can never get mine to come out nearly as perfect as the one in the video, but I reckon if I can get it right I could shave about 10 seconds off my regular shirt folding time.

That probably equates to an extra 2 years of usable 'life' time.

We let our profit s go to waste, all that's left in any case is advertising space

I've had a obsession with advertising since Matric, when after a rather inspiring presentation from an advertising college, I was completely obsessed with being a copy writer. Now, nine years later (holy crap... NINE YEARS!), it's no longer an obsession but rather an interest of mine.

Something I've noticed about UK television advertising versus South African television advertising is that, while there is some absolutely top class work on air here in the UK, there is also a much higher proportion of crap. I think this has something to do with the relative cost of air-time in the UK and SA (although this is just an hypothesis of mine). If broadcast time costs you an arm and a leg (as in SA) then it becomes the domain of the mega-corp, who along with being able to pay for air-time can also employ the best agencies to create their ads (and campaigns for that matter). I get the feeling that air-time in the UK is (comparatively) less expensive, bringing it within reach of your more average business. Hence, if a company can suck up the cost of air-time by cutting their creation cost, they can afford to reach a massive audience through television. Hence you get a higher proportion of lower quality work on television.

Alternatively I may just be watching too much day time television.

This is all an aside anyway. I just wanted to link to this - possibly the best advert on UK television at the moment. It doesn't matter how many times I watch it, it always makes me laugh.

New years resolutions

One of my many new year resolutions was to blog more. I still intend to. I haven't given up on that resolution yet... even though it is 12 January. When the time becomes available I will blog. Or when things get interesting.

In the mean time I just thought a new date at the top of the page would be cool.

It ended on an oily stage

Found via The Times, regarding the recent gas shortages in Europe.

"Gazprom said that it had sent a telegram to the Ukrainian state gas company, Naftogaz, saying that it would send an extra 95 million cubic metres of gas into Ukraine’s pipeline network."

Thank goodness that emergency was resolved. But does anyone actually send 'telegrams' anymore? Where can you send them from? Next year you're all getting telegrams for Christmas!

She had a black eye, I want a black eye. She had a splinter, I want a splinter too.

It's not often that I fall in love with a band after hearing only one track. That's not to say that it doesn't happen, because it does, but it's rare. Even the Arctic Monkeys, as much as I adore 'I bet you look good on the dancefloor', needed to provide a larger volley of quality tracks ('Mardy Bum' and 'Fake Tales of San Francisco') before I truly rated them a great band.

For some nebulous reason the Crimea have proved different. A single perchance hearing of their single, 'Lottery Winners on Acid' and I was hooked. Even now I know very very little about the band barring that they released two critically acclaimed albums under a different name before being dropped by their original label. Even so I feel compelled to head out to Sister Ray Records this coming Monday to watch them play a gig coinciding with the release of their single.

I think the band are best summed up by the following quote, stolen from some other site whose name I no longer recall.

Instead of being simple pop songs without emotional or creative backing, the songs are simple on the surface and immediately accessible, but the second and third listens reveal the emotional weight behind the excellent melodies and lyrics.

Hammer. Nail. Head. On first listen the song is a very simple, hooky pop song. Only subseqent listenings begin to reveal the layers of instrumentation that the lyrics are painted on and the actual depth of the track.

But enough of me bigging it up. Decide for yourself.