Why? What’s so bad about the Digital Economy Act? My objection to this law is that it gives corporations the power to ban a entire household from the internet and I feel very strongly that everyone should have the right to be online. I would go so far as to say, for me, life without the internet wouldn’t be worth living. Just because someone in the household has broken some licensing agreements shouldn’t mean they are stopped from all the useful online stuff such as paying for road tax, campaigning for freedom, conducting research, enjoying art, planning travel, etc etc.

Other reason this Act seems unfair to me:

• The Act’s uses a guilty-until-proven-innocent system.
• The Act’s will add extra costs on wi-fi providers – meaning less public wi-fi. I had hoped the whole country would be blanketed in wi-fi by now.
• The Act is a threat to sites that permit user-generated content. This is because it has web blocking provisions that let copyright holders get a site taken down for inadvertently hosting a small amount of copyrighted content.

Another fantastic government website is http://www.number10.gov.uk/.

A great computer game history book about how the two Johns started a company and developed some of the epics games of my childhood, in particular: Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Quake.

Loved John Carmacks programming dedication and legacy – what a hero!

Three whole days without even a single scrap of food entering our bodies, only having water to keep us going.

I’m joining in – it started at 11am:

I ate the following a few minutes before 11am:

• Massive plate of home-made lentil curry.
• Massive bowl of nut based cereal.
• Massive energy drink.
• Some vitamins that were lying around from years ago.

I’m totally stuffed now – let’s see how I am in 72 hours, cold turkey! I’ll probably miss coffee a fair bit too.

Friday, 26th March Update.

Proof! Wii Fit can't lie!

I managed it. The first 30 hours were the hardest then it plateaued and I coped fine. I wasn’t even all that hungry by the end. I was very busy with work so I had a lot to take my mind off being hungry. After the firth 24 hours, I had lost 4lbs, then 6lbs, then 4lbs – so I lost 1 stone in total – not that it means anything because I’m sure it’ll just go back on (but I’ll try not to let it).

I expected to feel drained and have trouble sleeping or getting up early, perhaps even stomach cramps but none of that happened, my energy levels were ok, physically.

Apart from feeling hungry, there were some other negative side effects:

• Mild headache started on day 2 and lasted into day 3.
• My brain stopped firing on all cylinders part way through day 2
• Upset stomach started on day 3.
• Aching carve muscles started on day 3.
• Felt a bit “away with the fairys” from day 3 – not dizzy but not quite right.

This story is set in a Shakespearean-like era with kings and princes and swords and battles – minus the romance. Actually, it’s more like medieval Merlin and the knights of the round table because the civilization is shrouded with myths and has the equivalence of dragons because it is semi-integrated with alien cultures and alien artefacts. I didn’t find the story all that engaging but I did find the planet the story is based on well worth reading about. Banks calls it a “Shellworld”, a ancient alien construction built up from several separate layers, each effectively a world in itself, with its own planetary conditions, civilizations and even artificial suns. The tech level of the story builds and builds and the ending is true action Sci-fi.

My favourite bit of all the culture novels is reading about the ship minds and AI. Banks really captures my imagination and hits the Sci-fi sweet spot.

Tuxradar did a open ballot to gather peoples thoughts on the subject. They discussed it on episode 1 of season 2 of their podcast and they even mentioned me at 35:23. I was making the point that the default search engine of Firefox is moot because many people are switching to Google’s Chrome browser.

• The jQuery theme song by Jonathan Neal – http://jquery.thewikies.com/jquery.mp3 – It’s catchy.
• The free software song:
  • By Phoenix Imago – http://www.gnu.org/music/freesoft.ogg
  • By Fenster – http://audio-video.gnu.org/audio/Fenster-Free-Software-Song.ogg
  • By RMS (the orginal) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sJUDx7iEJw
• Coder girl by dalechase – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-m6JDYRFvk
• Search Engine Rap Battle: GOOGLE vs YAHOO and MSN vs GOOGLE
• Kill dash 9 Rap – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fow7iUaKrq4

I’ll try to add more as I come across them… know any good ones?

I liked the “bubble mode”, it’s like a get out of jail free but without making it feel like cheating.

Google is trying to teach me to suck eggs. They obviously know what Operating system I’m using so I thought they would be clever enough to detect what browser I’m using and serve me something more targeted? What scares me more is that I suspect they are actually paying someone for me to see that advert.

A friend of mine is planning to write 52 songs in a year.

It sounds extremely challenging but I love the first three. He’s releasing them under a copyleft license.

Go for it Rob!