Monday, February 24, 2003

After long deliberation on a suitable name, Kate's just put up her first blog entry as the milkywaykid. Check it out if you get a chance.

Monday, February 17, 2003

I've been thinking as a result of this weekend's peace marches around
the world. The turnout was incredible, with more than a million people
turning out to protest together in each of London, Madrid, Barcelona and
Rome. It is certainly for a cause that people consider important, but
I've been wondering why this weekend's demonstrations were more well
attended than, say, those that were conducted during the height of the Vietnam
war; at the moment we are trying to stop a war, but one would think that
the imperative is surely even stronger when a war has begun.

Possibly part of the reason for the strong turnout this weekend not only
has to do with the cause, but also with the ability to promote
alternative viewpoints, organise support and spread information as we
are now able to do with the mass media and technologies such as the
internet and email.

Now that people can communicate instantaneously worldwide with others,
communicating their message to individuals or en masse to large groups,
maybe we are seeing a change in the operation of society.

This reminds me of an article I read recently, which was arguing that
the nation state as we have known it for the last few hundred years is a
dying institution; with mass communication, as well as mass travel,
people are able to form affiliations across geographical boundaries much
easier than would have been the case even ten years ago.
It could be that what we are witnessing is the emergence of a new form
of collective social consciousness, one that is not necessarily
represented by our elected officials at a national level.

If so, I guess we can expect more campaigns in future on a global scale
similar to that witnessed on Saturday. And it's going to be very
interesting indeed to see how the exsiting instituations rise to meet
such challenges.

Sunday, February 16, 2003

Yesterday's anti-war march was a huge success - around a million people flooding through central London to converge on Hyde Park. The crowd was very well behaved, made up of people from ever background imaginable, and included many people for whom this was the first protest march they'd ever been on.

As a result of this sucess, it leaves Tony Blair in a very awkward postion. Realising that a significant part of his population does not support the impending war, he is risking his future if Britain ends up involved without clearly justified reasons.

Some pictures from yesterday's march can be seen in the gallery.

Thursday, February 13, 2003

Just discovered, via a flyer that someone handed me on the street, that BBC have started up a new digital-only radio station, 6 Music. And it turns out that it's great - a radio station for the Mojo generation.

Once upon a time (i.e. about 3 or 4 years ago) the London BBC station was called GLR and had some great presenters, such as the likes of Phil Jupitus, Mark Larmaar, Peter Curran and Gideon Coe, all DJs who not only were much more intelligent and funnier than we're normally allowed to expect, but who also played great music, often from their own collections.
GLR was the best thing on the dial, especially given that London doesn't have anything along the lines of a student radio station, but unfortunately the bueracrats got in the way, and GLR became London Live, and most of the DJs defected (although I still catch Peter Curran and Sean Hughes ocassionally).

Although Xfm came along, it was not the champion of the diverse, eclectic and wonderful that eveyone was hoping it was going to be, instead it ended up playing music from too narrow a range, typically the louder indie guitar bands.

So, since the demise of GLR, there's been nothing much to get excited about on London's airwaves, however this new station, 6 Music, has some great presenters (Gideon Coe, Phil Jupitus) and plays some great music - in the space of the last twenty minutes I've just listened to Sonic Youth, Cocteau Twins, Goldfrapp, Blondie and Ron Sexsmith (the tail-end of Gideon Coe's show).

Fantastic! So our ears are saved at last!.
Well, there's one small problem, which is that 6 Music is entirely a digital station, meaning you can pick it up on digital TV, digital radio, and the web via real-audio (there's some great real-audio sessions from people like J Mascis and the Go Betweens on the web-site), but unfortunately it's not available via normal analogue radio.

I guess this is the way that all radio is going to go, as the powers that be would like to free up large parts of the radio spectrum currently used for analogue transmissions for other uses, so eventually we'll all have to invest in a digital radio if we want to listen to stations like this.

In the meantime, I can pop my headphones in an listen while I'm working at my laptop at work - that'll do nicely for now.

Wednesday, February 12, 2003

What a great idea!
The Wikipedia is an example of a WikiWiki, which is sort of like a blog, except that it's updatable by all users.
This means that you can have huge collaborative projects, where any person visiting the site is able to change the content - in this case the Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that has grown from the submissions and editing of those visiting the site.

If you (like me) think that blogs are what the web should be all about (i.e. the ability of anyone to easily publish their views/thoughts/opinions on the web, resulting in a conversation with the world at large), then WikiWikis take this one step further and turn the web into a place where freedom of expression meets collaboration.

By the way, WikiWiki comes from "quick" in the Hawaiian language, in case you were wondering.

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Where is the puffer fish?

I hope I'm mistaken, but it seems that the puffer fish in the tank in
the O2 centre has disappeared (it's possible that I'm wrong, as there is
a large rock in the tank that it could be hiding behind).


It's a great shame if it has gone, as it was the most interesting thing
in the O2 centre by far.

Friday, February 07, 2003

We've been having horrendous problems recently with our gas suppliers, Atlantic. Seems they decided to bill us for a non-existant meter, and Kate's been bravely battling them to get things sorted out.

Altantic is a newish reseller, so I guess we should have expected problems like this, however, it looks like even the big boys are having trouble billing customers, and in some cases not billing customers for years!

Saturday, February 01, 2003

Just managed to update the website to the new domain (now uses www.twoducks.net, instead of www.twoducks.com, although the old location should function for a few months yet).

Put up some pictures from the day that we spent wandering around Brighton with Gloria and Richard. Tres cold!

Also, put up some pictures of my walk to work through the snow the other morning, taken on the camera that attaches to my Sony t68i phone.