Eminem’s ‘Mosh’ Video encourages America’s youth to vote
_{Quicktime Movie. However you rate Eminem and his music, this is powerful stuff.}

A former TV news reporter offers her thoughts on how Wikinews may (or may not) work

Question Time US Election Special with Michael Moore on the Panel
_{Realvideo. There appears to be a couple of minutes worth of Crimewatch at the start, so don’t have nightmares.}

S⁵: A Simple Standards-Based Slide Show System
_{Using only XHTML, CSS and a smidgen of Javascript}

If you’re outside of the U.S. and visit George W. Bush’s re-election web site, this is what you see:

Not even a decent looking or informative HTML page explaining why access has been denied. BBC News has a piece that goes some way towards explaining this stupidity. Isn’t this just typical for a President with such a blinkered view of the world?

iPod Daring Fireball Special Edition
_{Looks better than the U2 one}

Brian Eno and Thom Yorke talk about John Peel on this morning’s Today programme
_Realaudio

According to Boing Boing, Mark Perkel spent $2000 on a 100MB line to allow him to distribute it like this:

• Fahrenheit 911 AVI 650MB
• Fahrenheit 911 MPEG 780MB
• Fahrenheit 911 WMV 122MB
• Fahrenheit 911 WMV 40MB
• Fahrenheit 911 torrent file (you will need a BitTorrent client for this)

John Peel has Died aged 65
_{What terrible news.}

Errol Morris’ Democrat Switch ads
_{He did Apple’s Switch campaign. If only Ellen Feiss voted Republican in 2000.}

The LOMO LC-A camera is a copy of the Cosina CX-2
_{Never knew that!}

Bush-earpiece-conspiracy iPod ad
_Predictable

Over the past month or so, I’ve been using Rails, David Heinemeier Hansson’s excellent web application framework based on the Ruby programming language.

Its name is a great analogy; if the rails are the guides that the engine runs smoothly upon, the engine is the web application that you create, whatever form that may take. Using its Model View Controller system of development, every component of your web application is in its right place, meaning that applications are both easier to develop and maintain. If you’re developing as part of a team, it also means that work can be delegated to team members with particular areas of expertise.

Rails grew out of Hansson’s work developing 37 Signals’ project management tool Basecamp, and because Basecamp is a particularly fine as well as a high profile piece of software, Rails is getting much in the way of attention. Some would argue that Rails is getting overly hyped; there’s plenty of other web application frameworks using MVC out there, and ones which use more widely embraced languages like PHP.

I started looking at Rails because after a year or so of developing somewhat unwieldy content management systems using PHP, I wanted to try something new, and the Ruby language itself looked interesting.

If you’re thinking of developing a web application using the Rails framework, a major stumbling block is that many hosting companies are likely to laugh at you if you request Rails to be set up on your account. The only answer is to take the plunge and configure your own web server, or find a decent hosting company that will set Rails up for you, preferably one which doesn’t have ‘women in telephone headsets ready to take your call’. Take Textdrive for example, now there’s a hosting company who are up to speed with what’s new and interesting on the web at the moment.

If you’re after an example of a web app developed using Rails, take a look at Sarah Wedde’s weblog management tool or check out the other apps in the Rails demo list.

Not content with indexing 4,285,199,774 web pages, Google now wants to index your hard drive. This is not for the benefit of others of course; it’s so that you can search within your own Word documents, emails and visited web pages. Still, it’s a little scary though isn’t it? Think of all that information Google has access to.

Maybe, in a few years time, we will give the Googlebot direct access to our brains. Could be handy, I’m always forgetting where I put my car keys.

Alien from the new Dr Who series takes a cigarette break
_{Or maybe that’s how he appears in the series?}

Was Bush prompted through an earpiece during the Presidential debate?
_{Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest}

Michael Fish retires from weather forecasting. I need that Jumper.

The BBC News Online Wikiproxy
_{BBC News with hypertext links to Wikipedia entries.
Via SR}

Slam Bush – National Rhyme Contest
_{Make sure you watch the video}

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