You could say that.

‘Try out 0.2.8 now, and stop reading The Register!’ …. says David Hyatt in reference to this article. David Hyatt is one of the programmers responsible for Chimera, the excellent web browser for Mac OS X. Chimera is causing a real stir amongst OS X users who are fed up with the bloatedness of Internet Explorer and want a lean, fast browser without unecessary features and this is exactly what Chimera delivers. The rumour is that Apple are wanting to use Chimera as the basis for their own browser, possibly called ‘iBrowser’ [what else?]. Hyatt says that the rumours are untrue, but still, it’s intriguing stuff.

Inspired by Phil at xlab, I’ve added yet another section to the sidebar. Kung-Tunes is an OS X utility working in combination with a PHP script that uploads live information about the track I’m currently playing on iTunes.

Chicago Underground Duo played in Newcastle again on Friday night. Or more accurately, they played at the Cumberland Arms in Byker. You invariably have a slightly odd evening when you go to that pub. After the gig, the duo came over to our table to finish their beer. I managed to have quite a lengthy chat to them which was great, although I think I had one too many and conversation wasn’t exactly coherent. So we went downstairs to the bar at about 1.30am which was unexpectedly full of partying sword dancers. There was food; I offered chicken drumsticks and onion bhajias to Rob Mazurek but I think he prefered the bhajias. An odd evening indeed. The BBC has a review of their latest album, Axis & Alignment.

Here’s a response from Warwick University regarding my last post:’Please do not believe all you read in the newspapers. The Daily Mail for instance could not even get my name right! -the University is actually

actively encouraging students to put out their flags during the world

cup and their are many university posters around the campus saying this.

All we asked was that they wait until the world cup starts, which of

course it has now begun the England team are now on site, and to take

them down when the world cup is over.

Out of our 18,000 students only 6 refused to wait and refused to take

their flags and bunting down until the World cup campaign had started

which of course it has now with England arriving in Korea. IF those 6

want to be unco-oparative that’s sad but fine – we are leaving them to

it.

As for non externally visible flags they can have them up in their

rooms whenever they like – there have never been restrictions on this.

We restrict external flags to special occasions such as Royal events

etc.

The University has no problem with UK flags – if you look at the

University’s home page www.warwick.ac.uk You will even see a link to the

world cup stuff and a St George’s cross and a history of the flag so we

clearly do not believe in that politically correct nonsense about the

flags upsetting other nationalities or being racist.Peter Dunn


Press Officer


University of Warwick’

There’s a big difference between using a flag to show pride for your country and using a flag in the name of nationalistic hatred of other countries. Unfortunately, it seems that Warwick University sees the English flag as being a symbol of the latter; they have banned it from being displayed on-campus during the World Cup. It seems that the St George’s flag has become inextricably linked to football violence and this action by Warwick University will not help to lift the image the flag, already tarnished by hooligans who use it as a symbol of supremecy.

“Science is not a heartless pursuit of objective information. It is a creative human activity, its geniuses acting more as artists than as information processors”I can’t say I’ve read any of Stephen Jay Gould’s work, but I think I should.

Playing It Safe. I must admit, the apathy when it comes to the wrapping of baguettes in supermarkets has always puzzled me. Ashley Frieze expresses his concern on the matter. [via minimal]

Today is officially ‘Test Technology Before it is Ready’ day. Why not go to labs.google.com and test out some things they’re working on. Or if you’re a Blogger Pro user, you can try out the new publishing engine by going to tps.blogger.com.

Dave’s Diary 2002, not yer average blog.

Coming soon to AIlog: contributor profiles, colour customisation and hopefully more content! I’ve also fixed a problem which was causing the layout to break when viewed in Opera.

That line had to be in there somewhere, but overall, I really enjoyed the latest installment. Christopher ‘Bruce’ Lee’s performance made it for me though.The Case for the Empire is a ridiculously in-depth analysis of the political struggle portrayed in the Star Wars saga. As Jonathan V. Last argues, things aren’t as they seem.

I love record players. As a youngster I used to have fun playing records at the wrong speed or playing them backwards; it was really about making something new from the music. Last night, I went to a gig entitled Turntable Hell, in which eight musicians – each armed with home-made turntables, gramophones, cheap sixties portables and an array sound mangling units – sat and made noise by hitting, cutting, scratching and warping their collection of vinyl. Some of it was so difficult to listen to that people ran out with their fingers in their ears. I’ve been to a few avant-garde gigs before, and to be honest I find much of it boring and pretentious, but I really enjoyed this gig. I enjoyed its playfulness, its ridiculousness and I don’t think it took itself too seriously. Here are the tour dates.

It was eight in the evening, the sun was disappearing and we decided to get an ice-cream. In the queue behind us was a woman wearing clown make-up and spectacles; she had been performing in the travelling circus earlier that day. In her right hand was a bright orange knap-sack containing what looked – in the dimness of sunset – to be a dead chicken. We ordered two ninety-niners from the ice-cream man and turned, slightly perplexed, to look at the clown and the chicken again; it was her turn to order. Before she started fumbling for change, she gently put the knap-sack on the counter of the ice-cream van; the head of the chicken was poking out from underneath the orange material and its eyes were tightly shut. As the man waited for payment, he looked down at what was lying on the counter and chuckled in a ‘is this really happening’ kind of fashion. The chicken, still motionless, opened its eyes to survey the situation… and what a strange situation it was. The clown turned to us and smiled ‘The farmer gave it to me… I hypnotised it and now it’s my pet’. We smiled back and asked her how she hypnotised it, to which she replied ‘Now that would be telling!’. She took her ice-cream, gathered up the chicken and the knap-sack and jaunted off into the darkness.

‘The Web Berners-Lee envisioned and forged wasn’t really the one that has emerged in recent years. He believed that the Web should be a medium for writing, not just reading, a medium for robust collaboration.’- Dan Gillmor

Introducing AIlog: A weblog about artificial intelligence.

The Register has some inside information on Jaguar, the new version of OS X due to be released at the end of summer. The improvements look impressive.

My only experience of the Queen’s visit to Newcastle yesterday was watching the 10 O’Clock news last night. Of course, the headlines weren’t just about the Queen’s tour of the north west east, they were also about the chap who decided to streak infront of the Royal entourage. Once again, Newcastle is put on the map for all the wrong reasons. A few weeks ago, there was a report on a local BBC news programme about Londoners’ perceptions of the north east of England; their response can be summarised by the following key words: unemployment, working mens clubs, grime, coal, drunk people and old geordie geezers in cloth caps. Of course, the north east just wouldn’t be the north east without some of those characteristics, but the general level of ignorance from these people was shocking. Even though I’m not originally from Newcastle, I’m proud to be living in a city that is moving forward so rapidly. Some of the reasons for the Queen’s visit – the Millenium Bridge and the redevelopment of the Newcastle and Gateshead Quaysides – are really quite awesome achievements which those outside of the area should experience for themselves. Incidentally, last nights report on the national BBC news had interviews with locals about what they thought of the redevelopments; who was one of the interviewees? An old geordie geezer in a cloth cap, that’s who.

Mr Allen of Textism needs your help in an act of retaliation on behalf of Leslie Harpold, who – as a result of complete inconsideration by Verisign – had her hoopla.com domain name taken away from her. This link to ‘Verisign’ ought to do it.

Well everything has gone robo-rodent crazy round here; the RSS feed to the right seems to be devoting itself to the subject at the moment. It must be big news.

“Nonetheless, the idea is sort of creepy. I do not know what the answer is to that.”

So says Dr Sanjiv Talwar, of the State University of New York. He has successfully implanted electrodes into the brain of a rat so that its movement can be remotely controlled. Is Dr Talwar secretly planning world dominition with his army of cyborg vermin? I mean forget weapons of mass destruction; imagine armies of rats invading cities, driving people out of their homes, speading disease and terror across nations! OK, so the real world applications of this technology are much more positive than that; the 6 million dollar rats could be controlled to seek out earthquake victims trapped in rubble, although the last thing I’d want to see if I was trapped under a building is a pseudo-intelligent rat staring me in the face. So, further indication that humankind wants to control the natural world solely for his / her benefit, or a useful leap forward in artificial intelligence? I’m sure the debate will rage on.

BBC News | SCI/TECH | Here come the ratbots

Here’s an AIM chat I had with Stu on the subject…

(01:28) stootang: I guess if you were stuck the rat could find you and then you could eat it while you wait to be rescued

(01:29) stootang: if you were really hungry I mean….

(01:29) mattj3002: yeah… they could be genetically modified to taste good

(01:29) stootang: well, naturally

(01:29) mattj3002: to taste like er… a MacDonalds

(01:29) stootang: maybe they could make remote controlled donuts

(01:29) mattj3002: haha

(01:29) mattj3002: now that’s an idea!

‘32 designers, artists, programmers, and theorists publicly expose their visitor logs and browser histories. Taken together, this aggregation of in/out data paints a microcosmic portrait of the web as a personal communications medium.’