As I mentioned before, updates for the rest of the week will probably be sporadic, so I'll leave you with the return of Ian's Dodgy MP3 Discoveries!

• Hangedup - New Blue Monday
  Included because it's funny. Hangedup are labelmates of Godspeed You! Black Emperor, so you would expect lots of post-apocalyptic instrumentals. What you don't expect is a cover of Blue Monday where the drum track is played by a viola. See? Even post-rockers can have a sense of humour.
• Life Without Buildings - The Leanover
  At first I thought this was a band from the early 1980s, but further research on the Interweb told me that they're much more recent than that (they split up a year ago). A punkier Altered Images. No! Come back! Altered Images were cool! Bah.
• ESG - You're No Good
  Remember all those stories about how only forty people turned up to a Sex Pistols gig, but all those present went off and formed bands of their own (last seen on 24 Hour Party People, where we discover that John Lydon is responsible for Simply Red)? Well, ESG are a similar case; about ten people bought their original single (released on Factory Records, fact fans!), but these people were members of The Clash, Public Enemy, New Order, the Beastie Boys, and Public Image Ltd. They seem to have been written out of music history somewhat (heck, I didn't even know they existed until last Sunday!), so have a listen to this, the A-side from their debut single.
• Panjabi MC - Mundian To Bach Ke
  Ah, the UNC memories…
• Boo Radleys - It's Lulu
  Okay, so not a recent discovery by any means, but it's one of my favourite records from the Britpop era, and you should all listen to it.

Section 11 is a classic. Bonus points for mentioning the Florida Electoral Commission…

We might be in need of his skills soon, as the Primary contest starts getting interesting. The Dean campaign continues to impress; this weekend it wiped the Vice President's fund-raising attempt off the map, by simply issuing a challenge to the Internet community. And a new poll out today shows that Dean is now tying for the lead in the Democratic nomination race. Of course, the same survey shows that only 66% of people questioned want someone who'll stand up for what they believe in, and 30% would vote for lying scum, as long as he would beat Bush. Sigh. One of these days, somebody should try and run for both nominations, just to see how many votes they can pick up…

Finishing off the US Primary talk for today, the neoconservative-leaning Weekly Standard handicaps the current Democrat contenders, and seems to be quite positive about Dean's chances. It's rumoured he's the candidate that the Bush team would like to face, as Dean is a loud critic of both the Iraq war and the recent tax cuts, and they'd dearly like to peg the Demoncrats as peacenik hippies who want to tax America to the hilt. (The typo was unintentional, but I thought it was amusing, so I left it in)

I really hope there's a department in the Pentagon that's dedicated to making up insane ideas in order to distract people from news they'd rather didn't get a wide airing (e.g. the increasing casualty figures in Iraq). Because, I'd like to think that DARPA didn't get all the way to announcing their terrorism futures scheme without somebody saying "Dude! You're planning to make a terrorist stock exchange? Are you nuts!!?!?"

It's just so negative. Why can't we be positive for a change? Dashboard looks like a wonderful application, full of interesting promise (in fact, it seems only a few steps away from the Apple Knowledge Navigator adverts from a decade ago, which is pretty cool). It uses the openness of Free Software to work with current software, unlike the Longhorn approach which is going to need a complete rewrite of applications and the filesystem, and it works today. We should be celebrating this stolen march over the competition, rather than shouting it down simply because it happens to use Mono.

On the bright side, if I cut down on the Slashdot-reading, I'll be able to get more work done. Hurrah!

Hmm, apparently, the new A Silver Mt. Zion album has leaked onto the Internet, so I'm now going to try and hunt down a copy for my train trip on Thursday…

Today, I'm very disappointed in the British record-buying public. Daniel Beddingfield at Number One? Replacing Beyonce? You poor fools.

Except, of course, that The White House has promised to veto the bill. Hohoho.

Right, going to bed now.

(Incidentally, CDBaby now has a contract with Apple, so the independent music artist now has a way to profit from iTunes without having to be signed to a major label. Seems to be a Factory-type arrangement: the label receives 9% of the profit from any music sold, and the artist retains all rights)

The slim plot revolves around Wario's attempt to break into the games industry, after realising he can make a quick buck like everybody else currently in the business (Wario is some evil relation of Mario, I think). The player's duty is to defeat Wario by beating his games. And there's a lot of them. 213, in fact. They only have one thing in common: they last five seconds. You can be picking a persons nose, racing in F-Zero, cutting steak, jumping sharks, saving penalties, and fighting WWI planes all in the space of thirty seconds. It's completely insane.

The game is broken up into several different stages, each of which have their own peculiarities; one will chide you for not having bought a Gameboy Advance SP yet, while another is set inside a toilet. Completion of a stage will allow you to play the games you have unlocked at any time, and may also reveal hidden features such as two-player activities or extended versions of particular mini-games. You probably won't unlock all 213 games when you first complete the main game, and The Grid will taunt you by showing a series of question marks. You will play, and play, until all those marks have been removed.

Your life will soon devolve into a series of simple verbs:

Jump!

Avoid!

Bounce!

Catch!

It commands you. A quickly barked order. A reaction test game. Then another. Then another. And another. You die. You reach the BOSS STAGE! You start again. Jump! Catch! Bounce! It's the greatest video game since, well, Tetris.

• Ali G impersonations ceased to be funny in the UK three years ago.
• Thank you so much for throwing popcorn in my hair.
• Couldn't you have sat outside and talked? It would have saved you £6.20, and we might have been able to hear the film.
• There's a special place reserved in hell for people who use their mobile phones in cinemas. A special place.

Laura: have a good time in Cuba! You do realise that this will put you on John Ashcroft's List? ;-)

Lisa: I've taped the first two episodes of Dawson's Creek for you. Hope you had a good holiday...

Listening to the New Order documentary at the moment. It's quite funny in places: "We made a fortune off the back of the Greatest Hits, and of course it was all swallowed by the Haçienda"; the attempts to get the English football team to rap (there's a reason why John Barnes is the only one of the team on the record), and how they slinked off to Ibiza to spend Factory Records' money.

"We thought: we'll just go to the club tonight, come back at twelve and work on the record. We'd come back twelve the next day..."

Bah. It's making me miss Manchester now. Even if the Haçienda was closed by the time I got there. Ah, we're now getting to the obligatory band breakdown bit.

"We still don't know to this day how many records we sold; Factory Records could never tell us."

At this point, I'd like recommend 24 Hour Party People again. It's a completely fictional retelling of Factory, but like all stories, it's all true.

Time for the happy reunion. I'm going to lie down. See you tomorrow...

Hello to Parthe, who discovered my site yesterday. Look forward to seeing you in September. Apologies to everybody who comes to this site searching Johnny Unitas pictures (and yes, there are quite a few). May I suggest that you go here instead? You're welcome to stay, but I doubt I'll be talking about American Football at any length.

Continuing today's university theme, the International Center sent me an email yesterday, telling me that they've completed my new I-20 visa form, and could I tell them where to send it to? This was a little surprising; by failing last year's courses, I should be out-of-status and thus illegible for the visa. Not that it does me too much good, as an I-20 isn't valid by itself; you need a letter of enrollment plus evidence of financial support to get through Immigration. I'd better tell them I'm not going to be coming back in August though, as it might cause problems with my arrival later in the year.

Kill Bill! Out on Oct 10th! Yay!

Howard Dean starts his residency at Lawrence Lessig's weblog today. I'm in two minds about Dean at the moment. He sounds like a wonderful candidate: he's passionate. he wants to investigate the reasons why America went to war, and would dearly love a form of *gasp* universal health care. While the other Democratic candidates are staying firmly in the centre, daring only to attack the current Administration on a few issues, the Dean campaign is as diametrically opposed to Bush as McGovern was to Nixon in 1972.

But we all know how well that turned out.

Like McGovern, Dean is reportedly unhappy with the structure of the current Democrat party; he also seems to be tapping into a new demographic, the Internet generation, just like McGovern initially attracted the support of the Freak Power generation. The lizard brain of the Democrats will probably react in the same way as it did thirty years ago, so expect some interesting primaries, followed by an intense convention. Can Dean beat Bush? I don't know, but they tried fighting Bush on his own terms last time around, and that didn't work out so well (granted, there's the Florida affair, but Gore didn't even manage to win his own state...). Perhaps a clearer distinction between the two candidates will lead them back to The White House. The danger is that they may end up with just Massachusetts once again…

Anyway, enough politics for one evening. Digiworld opened its doors today, and jolly nice it is too. You have to register to actually read the magazine, and if you're American, you may not have a clue what it's going on about, or why it looks the way that it does. A short explanation: in Britain (and most European countries), normal TV signals also carry extra pieces of information, known as teletext. A TV fitted with a teletext decoder accesses this information to provide extra services, e.g. news headlines, the current weather, travel reports, and subtitles.

Back in 1992, a magazine started on the ITV/Channel 4 teletext system. It was called Digitiser, and it was about video games. Which sounds relatively boring, but it was intelligent, funny, and unmissable . It quickly became one of the most popular features on the service, providing witty commentary on games, comics and anything else they felt like discussing. Plus A Man With A Long Chin. After nine years, it was still going strong, but a series of editorial changes at the end of 2001 reduced it to three-times-a-week updates instead of daily, the humour was removed, and the weekend columns were axed. Digi wandered on, arms chopped off, but brief flashes of its former brilliance still crept through every now and then. The magazine was now down to one writer, affectionately known as Mr. Biffo. He announced at the start of 2002 that he was quitting, just as an Internet campaign saw the full return of the Digi experience. In March, Digitiser broadcast its final edition; Mr. Biffo became the more sensibly-monikered Paul Rose, and started writing for Edge Magazine. The UK was enveloped in shadow, mourning for its passed love (note: might be slightly exaggerated).

But a secret cabal of videogame journalists, led by Rose, began to plot a comeback. Together with Stuart Campbell, a controversial games journalist (currently the brains behind the FairPlay campaign) and Kieron Gillen (quasi-goth, Kenickie-lover and ex-deputy editor of PC Gamer)*, he's back with an all-new incarnation of Digitiser. It's teletext. On the web. PRESS REVEAL.

* Oh, and Jonathan Nash**. ** Everybody else is doing it.

There's not a lot to talk about, though. I submitted the draft of an article to a computer magazine last week; they liked it and didn't want any changes, so it should be published sometime in the next six/seven months (the deadline was for September). I have a few ideas for other pieces; if anybody wants a 2,500-3,000 word piece on the UNIX Systems Lab vs. University of California Berkeley lawsuit and how it relates to the current SCO vs. IBM case, I'm your man. I finished the first draft of one of my scripts back at the end of June; I'm now working on another idea, and I'll hopefully get those both finished before the end of August.

The Chapel Hill withdrawal symptoms are in full effect, and I expect them to get worse when August finally rolls round, and everybody goes back to UNC. Still, my visit back in September/October is now organised, so I only have to wait two months until I'm back there, if only for a few weeks. But, if anybody wants to chuck me a H1-B visa, I wouldn't complain…

Jon Stewart on the current state of the America Media.

Mark Radcliffe chronicles the history of New Order.

A collection of Swiss posters.

The long-awaited Cassandra Project.

It loses me somewhere around step 4.

Yes. Well. Words fail me…

The Government claims that this vindicates their position, and demands that the BBC should retract their earlier report. The BBC continues to tell the Government what it can do with its demands, and then finds a source in Whitehall admitting that weapons of mass destruction may never be found. The moral? Accusing the BBC of bias is not something a Government should do lightly :-).

Back in America, attention has turned to the President's State of The Union address back in January, where he made the claim that Iraq had attempted to buy nuclear material in Africa. This claim has been refuted by the International Atomic Energy Board; the documentation that provided the evidence turned out to be forged. So far, nothing new. But it appears that the CIA knew that the Niger claim was false before the speech, and told The White House as such. And yet, the claim still made it into the Union address. Sure, it's not lying under oath, but it was a lie against the combined Houses; oh, and the Americans who happened to be watching. The Administration's response? A little revisionist history. According to Donald Rumsfeld, we went to war not because of a imminent threat (excepting us Britons, of course, who were told that we were only 45 minutes away from disaster), but because "we saw the existing evidence in a new light through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11." Which is a little harsh, considering that Iraq appears to have had nothing to do with the WTC attack. He was also rather defensive about the cost of the continued presence in Iraq, only providing answers after he had finished testifying in front of the Senate Armed Forces Committee. So far, the occupation of Iraq is costing America $4bn a month, on top of a $1bn/month bill for the presence in Afghanistan. They're hoping that that'll go down somewhat as NATO troops begin to replace some of the US soldiers, but that's an awful lot of money. Especially when going into an election year.

Meanwhile, the President is touring Africa. The people of Uganda seem to be doing well in fighting AIDS, but is it at odds with the USA's preference for abstinence programmes? Bush has also given a speech deploring America's past use of slaves, although this passage of the speech worries me somewhat:

In America, enslaved Africans learned the story of the exodus from Egypt and set their own hearts on a promised land of freedom. Enslaved Africans discovered a suffering Savior and found he was more like themselves than their masters. Enslaved Africans heard the ringing promises of the Declaration of Independence and asked the self-evident question, then why not me?

In other news, I made a shocking discovery this afternoon: my 20GB music partition was almost full. Obviously, not a good situation, so I spent the day giving my collection a new 40GB home. That should keep me safe for a few years. I hope.

And in the time it took me to write this entry, I've made 3¢! Exxxxceelllent.

More weird Japanese stuff.

A rather long, but interesting article about McDonalds. Rather depressingly, it seems to take the view that the canning of the Innovate system was a bad thing. I can't think of anything more soulless than a restaurant chain where everything is identical, right down to the temperature of the cooking fat. *shudder*.

"Would you die for her?"
"I would, but, er, I'd rather live."

Secondly, the RSS files now include HTML formatting, and look nicer in a newsreader (at least they do in NetNewsWire). I'll be updating to a Necho feed once the new format settles down.

Finally, I've added a sideblog. This works in conjuction with an AIMbot that I wrote this afternoon. It's called barbelith49, and lives on AOL's AIM network. Currently, it supports three commands (IM barbelith49 as you would a normal person, and type one of these words instead of a normal message):

1. where is ian — tells you where I am right now (in case you have some strange need to know, or if I forget where I am)


2. mail — how many mails are currently in my inbox


3. blog (your text here) — the main function of the bot. Anything after the word blog will get posted to the sidebar. All HTML is stripped out before the entry is posted (I'll probably add link support in the next few days).

We'll see how this works, shall we?

UPDATE: Okay, basic hyperlink support has been added. If you want to add a hyperlink, enclose it in square brackets, e.g. [http://www.x.org]. The bot will replace the text with the proper HTML, making it look like this: [link]. I imagine the code is a little fragile, so if you break it, let me know.

In addition to Travis's stories, the films I watched, and the magazines I read reinforced the notion that shopping malls were *the* place to be; Marty McFly went into the past outside a JC Penneys, while in Smash Hits I read interviews with Tiffany where she said that her favourite hobby was "hanging out in the mall, playing Lazer Tag" (this is the part where I am forced to admit that I own a Tiffany album, isn't it? Curses). I saw images of people skateboarding, rollerskating, and having a great time. I wanted to be those people, enclosed in this vast, safe space, shopping, not having to worry about being run over when I wanted to go from one shop to the other.

Eventually, Travis's dad was transferred back to America, and he told me stories about Phoenix, and Las Vegas, where he still lives today. On our first visit to America in 1994, we went to the Meadows Mall. I had grown up a little in the meantime, and Britain had got a few shopping malls, so I knew what to expect, but it was still an impressive experience. The shape, with the big department stores at each end, the food court, the people milling around; it was fantastic. No Lazer Tag, though (I strongly suspect that Tiffany was making that up. See if I buy any of your comeback records!).

Yeah, I have a well-read copy of No Logo, and I followed the protest at The Streets of Southpoint. I know that unlike the commons of the town square, malls are/were private property, clamping down on public speakers, forcing local proprietors out-of-business, and a host of other undesirable things. Still, they're preferable to the out-of-town boxes and strip malls; the shopping mall at least had some personality, as opposed to just being a giant car park with a Wal-Mart, an Old Navy, a Best Buy, and a few other little stores arranged in a circle.

The mall isn't dead yet, of course. Large-scale operations, like Southpoint, seem to do well. But I think the 1980s concept of the local mall is on the way to joining the diner as a piece of American cultural history. Incidentally, considering that most malls won't let you take pictures, it'll be interesting to see how much documentary evidence of them remains fifty years from now...

Have a look at some pictures in the meantime.

"I play terminator, but you guys are the true terminators"

Yes, I'm sure the US Army loves its troops being compared to an emotionless killing machine. Well, at least he can't become President.

Bonnie saw Bill Clinton tonight! And Hillary!

Switching to live commentary, as some of you aren't blessed with a UK radio feed :-)

Simon Mayo asked when we last bought a single. Scarily, I don't think I've bought one for over a year. This is rather surprising; when I was at Manchester, I'd head off into the Northern Quarter every Thursday, coming out with at least two or three singles. Phil would then spend the evening complaining that I always brought obscure rubbish into the hall. Of course, he spent most of the final two years listening to Celine Dion, so I think my taste prevails.

They're not giving the record companies any breaks here at all, pointing out that the destruction of Napster without a viable legal alternative just encouraged illegal downloading, and that sharing itself is put of the music experience. It's never a good idea to declare that your main enemy also happens to be your core audience. D'oh.

Time for some Clear Channel bashing. Always a good thing, I feel 8-). 98% of music sales in America are domestic? That's quite scary.

I'm supporting the evening by downloading tracks as the debate rolls on. My conscience is having a day off today; I'll probably get guilty about it and buy the albums on Friday.

Stuart Maconie is reading out comments from listeners. If I was the record industry, I'd be scared. The programme has been on for two hours, and I haven't heard a positive listener response yet. The general public despises them. I don't think it's going to get better, either, what with the BPI threatening to use legal action against filesharers.

The debate itself is about to start. Jeremy Vine. Oooh. The return of the fabled Tony Wilson cycle theory! The head of EMI says that record companies should try to encourage and nurture talent. Which is probably why they dropped a host of small bands, fired a bunch of staff, and then handed Robbie Williams an £80m contract, on the increasingly absurd idea of him breaking America...

(Interestingly enough, Radiohead's contract with EMI will be up soon. I wonder whether they'll re-sign or not?)

Time for the scary statistics bit: a Number #1 hit in May only had to sell 36,000 copies to reach the top. The single is dead. Let's ram a stake through its £3.99-priced body.

Independent Label woman (I'm hopeless at names, sorry) is bored of all this talk of doom and gloom; apparently the small labels are doing quite well at the moment. So far, this is all shockingly positive; all the record heads are admitting that the demise of the single format isn't the end of the music industry. Meanwhile, Beverley Knight is trying to dig herself out of a hole, after falling into the "things aren't as good as they used to be" nostalgia trap. Selective memory is a bad thing; there were an awful lot of bad records in the 1980s, as the rest of the panel are currently pointing out.

Moving on to downloading again. 12 year-olds explaining how to get music from the Internet. Heh. Beverley Knight is continuing to be annoying and patronising. And she's the only artist represented on the panel. Pricing is not the issue, apparently. Music companies are not Luddites. So, Napster - 1997, was it? In the end, it took the intervention of Apple to come up with a workable legal solution. That's six years, and only because somebody else did the work.

Compulsory licensing! Compulsory licensing! Compulsory licensing!

Paul Weller's "I think they're [record executives] all scum" gets a huge cheer from the audience. They're starting to get a little defensive now. Deflect the attention back to radio playlists! (Mind you, the story of Radio 1 wanting to see a video before they add a track to a playlist is a little weird and depressing)

Another depressing story; the singer who got radio stations interested in her single, until they discovered she's only on an independent label, and she didn't have a 'plot' (marketing plan, how much money is behind the record, etc.). The playlist controller of Radio 2 is now doing an advert for the fair and balanced selection process that they offer :-). Of course, the big game is Radio 1, which is now receiving a fair bit of criticism, specifically the rather bland daytime playlist. On the other hand, without the playlist, we wouldn't have the classic Mark & Lard sideswipes after they've played a record for the 100th time…

Apparently, EMAP video channels won't accept videos unless the management accept certain advertising packages. Payola is not just limited to the USA.

Okay, when I left Britain, it was full of generic rock clones and garage tunes. Where did all The Cure-style bands come from?

More later…

Liz Phair responds to the NYTimes review of her latest album. Genius, or a further indication that she's completely lost the plot?

The British Phonographic Industry threatens to follow the RIAA's lead and sue P2P users. Meanwhile, there's renewed interest in the anonymous Freenet Project. This next-generation P2P platform is designed to allow untraceable filesharing. Oh, and it works.

Officially endorsed R.E.M. and U2 trading posts, collecting hundreds of live recordings.

Cat Stevens is slightly better off as of last weekend, as EMI settles a lawsuit over similarities between his "Father and Son" and The Flaming Lips' "Fight Test".

In other news, I'm grateful to Apple for giving me lots of warnings about installing Panther. I've decided to wait until the official release comes out, as the Preview can't be upgraded to the final version. That's probably not a good idea. I can wait. Honest.

In further other news, my face appears to be peeling off.

• I will wear sunscreen in future.
• I will wear sunscreen in future.
• I will wear sunscreen in future.
• I will wear sunscreen in future.
• I will wear sunscreen in future