One of my second tier of favourite* bands back in the day was Kingmaker. They were a pretty typical indie band of the time, though perhaps a little less miserable, and certainly more talented musically and lyrically. For various reasons they didn’t quite make the big time, but as this tune turned up on random play this week I thought I’d share:
(*yes, I used the ‘u’, so?)
I’m in a state of mild shock after having a smooth experience with DRM-enabled video (at least I assume it’s DRM ‘protected’). We realized we’d missed an episode of a new show, so fired up Safari (a new version at that), loaded iPlayer, and started watching. And here’s the thing. It worked. No messages about video codecs. No ‘browser not supported’, or OS errors, not even any stuttering. The quality isn’t fantastic, but it’s closer to broadcast than YouTube – certainly watchable on a 32″ LCD.
I have seen the future, and it doesn’t involve plastic. Except to pay for the TV.
Awesome self-amusing dog (no, not like that)
Gateway Pundit goes off on one about a report in McClatchy Newspapers about Al Qaida’s operations in Iraq. The reporting is quite interesting, but also rather clumsy, especially in the passage the Pundit takes offense at:
…As recently as last July, Bush tried to tie al Qaida to the ongoing violence in Iraq. “The same people that attacked us on September the 11th is a crowd that is now bombing people, killing innocent men, women and children, many of whom are Muslims,” he said.
The rest of the piece pretty much makes the point that Al Qaida wasn’t operating in Iraq before the war. That’s only technically true; the two sides did meet on several occasions to discuss cooperation, though it’s not clear whether their shared aims or natural antipathy would have won out. But in any case the article is making a reasonable point until it hits the above quote, where it apparently just goes nuts.
Here’s the thing, though. Al Qaida in Iraq (‘AQI’) is not the same as Al Qaida. AQI was created as a direct result of the American invasion of Iraq by people not blind to the value of the Al Qaida ‘brand’. That decision appears to have been one-sided; AQI decided that they were Al Qaida first, and negotiated with the Al Qaida leadership after. In fact to this day it’s not clear how much of a link there is between the two organizations. Certainly they have (some) shared goals, and shared sympathies. But to say that they are the same entity is a case that can be made, but for now at least not proven.
So the McClatchy piece, or at least this paragraph, is startlingly clumsy, and quite possibly wrong. It is not, however, nuts.
An update to my campaign to deslug my life. Changing jobs has thrown a spanner in the works, though mainly a good one as the onsite gym is jolly handy. My knee hasn’t cleared up as fast as I’d hoped, so I’m doing almost no cycling, but I’m hopefully I’ll be able to start commuting by the end of the month. My weight has fallen slightly, but only slightly, and without the cycling that’s going to continue to be a problem. The biggest issue is the weight training I’m doing for my ab (I only have the one) and pecs (definitely two of those); they’re starting to firm up the relevant areas, giving a much sturdier platform to hang my lard from, so I think my big gut and flabby man-boobs are actually getting worse, not better!