Offmessage

This article about what goes on in the real world of UK estate agents makes shocking reading.

Tom Lunt has a brain tumour. A damn sight more interesting than it sounds. A friend of mine had a similar diagnosis. The thing that had caused him to know something was wrong was the fact that he kept losing his bike. The minute he parked it up anywhere that wasn’t his house it was lost, and took ages to find…

Amazon Grid Storage Web Service Launches.

Yet more data land grab from another Internet mega-brand

I didn’t realise Isaac Hayes was a scientologist. Twonk. He may have released one of the finest albums of all time, but he’s made himself look like a right idiot:

Singer Isaac Hayes is to stop providing the voice for a character in cartoon South Park because he objects to its “inappropriate ridicule” of religion. […] But co-creator Matt Stone said Hayes had “never had a problem” until the Scientology Church, to which Hayes belongs, was parodied.

I’ve been literally waiting 15 years for this. Earth Inferno (the last ‘real’ Nephilim album) was released in 1991. Since then, like the collapse of the Sisters of Mercy, there have been side projects, acromonious exchanges, failed reunions and rumours of a new album just around the corner. 15 years is a long time. I bought Zoon when it came out (and if I’m honest, hated it) and then I gave up waiting. Brief returns to the official site showed little or no activity and despite continued rumours on fan sites there was nothing to hold my interest and I stopped even checking. Which was obviously a mistake, because in November of last year the new album finally arrived. And then immediately became unavailable.

It was worth the wait and the �12 off ebay though. Seriously this is old school Fields of the Nephilim, on a par with The Nephilim, if not Elizium. Floyd-esque soundscapes with Carl McCoy’s gravelly vocals pouring arcane spells over powerful bass and pounding drums. This is a real and unexpected return to form.

The other good thing is that although I can no longer take all this pomp and ceremony quite as seriously as I did back then, it appears that like Andrew Eldritch Carl McCoy has gained a bit of a sense of humour. The 9 minute epic reworking of Zager and Evans’ dystopian kitsch classic “In the year 2525” is simultaneously both classic Nef and fucking hilarious. No doubt those among the Watchmen that long ago I used to call my friends will disown me for saying it, but it is, and the album’s all the better for it.

Truly the great have returned, even if hardly anyone noticed.

OK. So. Is it Microsoft’s Pearl Harbour or not? Over at El Reg they think not. And, much as I enjoy disagreeing with Andrew Orlowski, I think he may have this one.

I’ve just watched the most awesome day’s cricket I think anyone will ever see…

SA shatter record to beat Aussies

Seeing the Aussies stuffed like that almost (almost) makes up for England’s poor showing in the cricket and appalling showing in the rugby today.

Not sure whether this would work in the UK - definitely worth investigating though. Get a credit card from a torn up application form.
Found at waxy.org

Seriously stuck as I was with the Plone Skins tool I resorted to the source, whereby I found this little gem right where I was stuck:

 # if val is a list from the new lines field
 # then munge it back into a comma delimited list
 # for hysterical reasons

A very interesting opinion (from someone admittedly oozing XML from every pore) as to why writely matters.