Amazon MP3

If you’re looking for music, I suggest you take a look at Amazon’s MP3 store. At the moment, they’ve got some really huge bargains on current albums starting at £3.
I’ve tried it, buying the Ting Tings, and the Amazon utility downloaded the tracks OK and integrated just fine into iTunes. There are 4 tracks I […]

Photosynth and Silverlight

Quite by co-incidence, I was informed by Neville Hobson and a commentor on this blog that there’s now an experimental Silverlight viewer for Photosynth. Which means that Mac users can now natively view Photosynths (you just need the Silverlight plugin). Not sure about the Linux situation with Silverlight - I think that the Mono team […]

Working Time Directive

It looks like the EU has passed this piece of nonsense. It’s bad enough, but then I stumbled across this piece, and the following comment:-
Finally, the parliament reinforced its previous decision that the time spent on call by workers - particularly doctors, firemen or social workers - should be calculated as a proper “working time,” […]

Jaguar Bailout

Can someone tell me what the government actually wants?
For the past 10 years, we’ve had government telling us all how bad it is to drive big cars, and has through numerous incentives (fuel tax, road fund license, congestion charge rules, subsidies to rail, bus lanes) made big cars (or cars in general) less of a […]

Wine Recommendations

Had a few tastings at Majestic Wine yesterday. I really like them, and I think they keep getting better. I think they’re more selective than the supermarkets (although you pay more).
Here’s some recommendations:-

Casillero del Diablo Pinot Grigio 2008 Casablanca Valley. The sort of wine that’s probably best drunk in front of the TV or on […]

Microsoft Common Softwear

The words “Microsoft” and “cool” don’t generally go together, but these t-shirts by Common and Microsoft are very cool. Just want to know where I can get one now.
I particularly like The Vision:-

Those Olympics Justifications…

From The Times:-
Game Plan examined five types of benefits widely used to make the case for investing in large-scale events: urban regeneration; sporting legacy; tourism; celebration and culture; and wider economic uplift.
It concluded: “The quantifiable evidence to support each of the perceived benefits for mega-events is weak. . . be clear that they appear to […]

QOTD

Brooker in The Graun:-
Start by changing the wording. “Community payback” is rubbish. “Community” is pure British wonk-speak - the simpering language of milquetoasts - while the embarrassing yee-haw showboating of “payback” must have been included in a half-arsed attempt to impress the tabloids. Put the two words together to make “community payback” and the result […]

More Alcohol News

From the Daily Mail (also The Times)…
Leading supermarkets are still selling some cut-price booze for less than bottled water, research has found.
Discounted own-brand alcohol goes on sale for as little as 23p a can, according to charity Addaction.
There’s one problem with this survey (I have the numbers that Addaction used). It’s comparing unbranded lagers with […]