Rapporn.

Writing about: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5273706.stm

Only in Sweden could a national broadcaster put out a news bulletin showing explicit Czech porn in the background and yet have no complaints from the public whatsoever.

Twelve Stops And Home.

I bought this album last week and I love it more and more each time I listen to it. The Feeling are a great new band and Twelve Stops And Home is a fantastic debut album. My particular favourites include Love It When You Call and Fill My Little World. Go and buy it now! Check out their MySpace page - if you're lucky they might add you as a friend!

Billie Piper to leave Doctor Who.

The BBC have confirmed today that Billie Piper, who plays the Doctor's assistant Rose, will be leaving Doctor Who at the end of this season. They have not said whether she will be killed off or not, however, in last week's episode - The Satan Pit - The Devil told Rose that she would die in battle... a subtle hint at what is to come if ever I heard one. I will miss Billie, she is a fantastic actress and has made the past two series of Doctor Who very watchable indeed. But as Dave Bradley is quoted as saying in the BBC article - no-one ever stays dead in science-fiction.

STORYFix.

BBC News 24 have started producing a jolly little five-minute summary of the week's news seen from a witty slant. Called STORYFix, it's presented by Emily Maitlis and gives viewers a fly-by recap of the usual news in an unusual way and brings us the news that wouldn't normally make it into the BBC's definition of 'news'.

I've been trying to find out what the music is that plays in the background - I quite like it. A Google search has proved fruitless, which probably means it was produced in-house by the Beeb.

Apparently, STORYFix is just a trial - I hope it lasts.

Update: I've found it! On the off-chance of finding it, I Googled for the STORYFix music again today and discovered the Blog of the guy who made the music! His name is mrdiscopop (aka Mark Savage) and you can hear a clip of the music on his site. [11/06/2006]

Refreshment like no other.

Tango have released an advert that parodies the excellent Sony BRAVIA advert but insted of using bouncy balls, it uses fruit. The ad uses the same José Gonzalez track as the Sony ad and mirrors it almost frame-for-frame. In place of the 'Colour like no other' tag line on the Sony ad, the Tango ad reads 'Refreshment like no other'. The ad is available in video from the website of a supposed residents' association of the Swansea village that was used for the filming. The site though is, of course, all part of the campaign and is created by Tango themselves. It has some quite amusing interviews with annoyed 'residents' and a petition which you can sign to show your support for their plight. I particularly like what is said on the download page:

We think as many people as possible should see what happened to our neighbourhood, so with the kind help of Huw's nephew David we have made the advert available in various "formats".

Even though we hate what was done to our street, we do like the nice, gentle music they used. None of that modern thumpy-thumpy loud noise nonsense. You can listen to more on the nice man's site.

All highly amusing! Below are some more stills from the ad.

Why you should never con people on eBay.

Writing about: http://amirtofangsazan.blogspot.com/

When Amir Tofangsazan sold his broken laptop on eBay pretending it was working, he didn't count on the unsuspecting purchaser taking his revenge in the most exquisite fashion possible. When Amir refused to refund the purchase money, "laptopguy" removed the hard drive from the laptop and found that it contained all kinds of personal stuff. Not only did it contain bank details and scans of his and his family's passports but there was also a large collection of porn, camera phone pictures of women's legs on the Underground, various strange webcam pictures and, shockingly, pictures of the 9/11 attacks in America and the 7/7 attacks in London. And so, laptopguy created a website to host these amazing finds and has written it mostly from the point of view of Amir. Genius!

What I also love is that it appears Amir has left a series of comments written under various pseudonyms accusing laptopguy guy of being, among other things, a "peodofile" (yes, that's how he spelt it!) and "unemployable" - laughable!

laptopguy, you are my hero!

Update: Oh dear, things are getting serious now. [30/05/2006]

Boot Camp: Windows on a Mac.

Apple today released a public beta of Boot Camp, a utility that allows owners of an Intel based Mac to easily partition their hard drive and install a retail boxed copy of Windows XP Home SP2 which will run natively - it's not an emulator.

This is a total surprise. For months now, since the release of the first Intel Mac, hackers have been trying to get Windows to boot on a Mac. Just three weeks ago, a pair of programmers won a $13,000 prize for being the first to achieve such a feat. And now, Apple have introduced their own, highly polished, version.

The beta will only be available for a limited time but it is expected that Boot Camp will become a permanent feature of the next major OS release - Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard when it is released later this year/early next year.

Hats off to Apple for this one; a big kick in the balls for Microsoft's dominance!

iPod video video.

With the failure of Apple to announce an iPod video last Tuesday, speculation, rumour and the inevitable mock-ups have stepped up a gear. The site macshrine have some pretty convincing pictures of an 'iPod AV' shown with the ipod nano and the new iPod Hi-Fi. They're pretty good fakes - very convincing and extremely well done but nothing we haven't really seen before. Whereas YouTube has an amazing video of what appears to be the 'iPod AV' in action. The fact that it's pretty dark, only four seconds long and still hasn't been removed by Apple would suggest it's a fake - but what a fake! Someone has clearly spent a lot of time and effort on this. Whoever you are: I salute you!

Video iPod for real?

This picture has emerged today and it looks like it could be a shot of the much-rumoured, much-hyped touch sensitive Video iPod. The picture is remarkably similar to descriptions of the product and the shot bears a resemblance to the photo that was leaked just prior to the announcement of the 5G iPod with video. Of course, it could also be a small tablet Mac. Only five days 'til we find out, unless Apple force the removal of the picture from Engadget, then it would be pretty much confirmed!

Update: Engadget have called fake on this one. Apparently the guy who made the fake has produced a video demonstrating how he did it - all through the magic of Photoshop, supposedly. Though some on Engadget are calling fake on the video of the fake - some discrepencies in the pictures. Who knows. We'll find out tomorrow. [27/02/2006]

Apple special event.

Apple have sent invitations to selected guests to attend a special event where Jobs will announce "fun new produts" on 28th February 2006 at the company's Cupertino base in California. Due to begin at 10.00 (PST) (18.00 GMT), it's anyone's guess what Steve will announce. "Fun" suggests entertainment which may point to a touch-screen iPod or the rumoured iPod Boombox. Only seven days 'til we find out!

Update: Well, the special event came and went and nothing of note was released. There was an Intel Mac mini, leather iPod cases and an iPod Hi-Fi - a boombox with iPod dock. [07/03/2006]

A city of pure confection.

Chinese artist Song Dong is creating in the basement of Selfridges on London's Oxford Street a city made entirely of biscuits. From bourbons to hobnobs, he is using an estimated 72,000 teatime treats to build a part traditional, part modern city to highlight his concern that Asian cities are recreating common building designs rather than coming up with their own, original designs. To emphasise this, Dong has asked his helpers to make a lot of the buildings up - creating whatever comes to mind.

The city will be on display until 16.00 (GMT) when shoppers will be invited to help themselves to the biscuits. One artist helping Dong, Kieron Stone, expressed concerns about them being stale by then and gave this piece of advice: "Go for the ones at the bottom".

Would the real iPod video please stand up.

Think Secret are claiming that they have credible intelligence indicating that Apple will introduce the real iPod video around April time when Apple celebrate their 30th birthday. It will reportedly have a 3.5inch touch sensitive display covering the entire front surface of the device. The click wheel will have a software implementation that appears and disappears when the user touches the screen.

Bring it on!

Grandpa Munster dies.

Al Lewis, the actor who played Grandpa in the cult 1960s TV show The Munsters, died at the age of 82 on friday. I had no idea that he was a former basketball player who became a respected talent scout, ran a restaurant in New York's Greenwich Village, wrote two children's books and campaigned as the Green Party candidate for governor of New York.

I used to love watching The Munsters when it was on BBC TWO. I loved the theme tune and loved their car even more. They don't make 'em like they used to. I'm sure Eddie now works in the photocopy shop oposite where I used to work!

Pavement drawings.

This guy's pavement drawings are amazing. Some of the three-dimensional ones are fantastic. I can't imagine how he's able to visualise the distortion he needs to add to the two-dimensional drawings so they look 3D from a certain angle. Talented guy!

TOTM: Is there life after death? Part 1.

My initial (scientifically minded) reaction to this question is an emphatic NO. As far as I have ever been concerned, once we die: that's it - we cease to be as the Monty Python crew would say. How can any part of us possibly survive and continue living once our heart has stopped beating and our brain stopped functioning?

And yet, virtually every major religion in the world carries with it a promise of life after death. Be that in Heaven (or Hell) or in another, reincarnated, life. So why does the concept exist at all if there is no proof of it?

Perhaps the truth lies in the human psyche. Many of us may live lives that seem relatively unfulfilled. We think: there must be more to life than this. And so, we create another world, a world full of promise and hope, giving meaning to our lives. If we are good in this life, we will be rewarded in the next. In an NBC10.com poll on life after death, an astonishing 86% of people who voted said they believed in life after death. Surely they can't all be wrong?

So, some people clearly don't need proof to believe in it, but I do. However, the more I read the arguments, the more I question my opinion. If something can't be proven or disproven then you can't say it definitely exists but, equally, you can't say it definitely doesn't exist.

Where does that leave us? Is there life after death? Possibly, but possibly not. It certainly is an attractive proposition but I can't help but sway towards my scientific upbringing. I read an article online by Prof. Peter Kreeft in which one of the arguments he puts forward for there not being life after death is as follows:

"The strongest positive argument against life after death is the observation of spirit at the mercy of matter. We see no more mental life when the brain dies. Even when it is alive, a blow to the head impairs thought. Consciousness seems related to matter as the light of a candle to the candle: once the fuel is used up, the light goes out. The body and its nervous system seem like the fuel, the cause; and immaterial activity, consciousness, seems like the effect. Remove the cause and you remove the effect. Consciousness, in other words, seems to be an epiphenomenon, an effect but not a cause, like the heat generated by the electricity running along a wire to an appliance, or the exhaust fumes from an engine's tailpipe."

I'll leave it at that for now.