Skellywag

Mousetraps

2009-06-10T00:53:00.003Z

Languages in Danger

2009-02-19T21:06:00.003Z

The number of distinct languages in the world gives pause for thought, as shown by this Interactive Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. Loss of language means loss of a capability of expression.

How classical music lost its audience

2009-02-17T20:56:00.003Z

Contemporary classical music is increasingly irrelevant to most people today. Yes, orchestral scores are written for film, some very inventive and beautiful, but as a genre, western art music has pretty much lost its way, disappeared so far up it's own arse that it can see the conductor just past the tonsils. Why is this?

ISJ has published an excellent article by Simon Behrman on the subject of classical music today, noting how what was once popular music (in the sense of populace) was in effect stolen by bourgois wankers intent on seeing themselves as superior. For example, prior to (and even during) Beethoven's time, the "town band" was often synonymous with "orchestra", in that the musicians were skilled but not isolated in a "classical" tradition which scorned (say) fairground dance music - the performers would have played all kinds of music.

I myself suspect that in fact the MAJORITY of melodies and forms of classical music have been lifted directly from "popular" music; not just obvious examples such as Bartok, RVW and Ives, but the work of almost every "composer" since and possibly before Bach. My contention is that this debt to "folk" music is rarely acknowledged by those who consider themselves connaisseurs of classical music... though I need to investigate this further.

The Iraqi people won

2008-12-21T21:23:00.002Z

Patrick Cockburn notices the quiet victory of the Iraqi people:

Private security companies will lose legal immunity. US military operations will only be carried out with Iraqi consent. No US military bases will remain after the last American troops leave in 2011 and in the interim the US military is banned from carrying out attacks on other countries from within Iraq.

This almost equates to a complete neutering of the American war machine in Iraq, and is a major U-turn from the wishes of the US at the beginning of 2008.

Shakespeare, Zim-style

2008-12-21T21:17:00.002Z

Thanks to a friend of mine, who knew the director, I saw an excellent production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, by Two Gents productions at the Oval House Theatre.

Very refreshing to experience Shakespeare so fresh and full of life, and so close to the action too. The two actors played all the parts, bar one or two, for whom they borrowed astonished members of the audience.

An Address in Mayfair - Hedge Funds 101

2008-11-30T16:20:00.002Z

Accessible article at LRB about Hedge Funds - how they work, what they are, how their role might change after the recent financial hoo-haa.

Paradoxically, though, the dramatic events of this autumn may lead, over the next few years, to an even greater role for the hedge funds that survive. With so many banks having been bailed out by the world’s taxpayers, they will be under considerable pressure from governments and regulators to concentrate on their core functions (receiving deposits, making loans to individuals and businesses, processing payments etc) and to reduce proprietary trading – that is the trading of financial instruments in order to make a profit for the bank, not to serve the needs of customers. Even banks that haven’t needed to be bailed out are moving in this direction: on 4 November, J.P. Morgan announced it was closing its global proprietary trading unit. As banks retreat from trading risky financial instruments, a potentially very profitable space will open up for those still prepared to do so, and hedge funds will step in to fill it.

I got the bsatards

2008-10-28T00:31:00.004Z

Rode my machine to work today for the first time in a long while. Promptly got a parking ticket from the City of London.

Couldn't be bothered arguing, so I went to pay online. After registering and logging in, I went to update my password and BANG the site went down... and STAYED down! No amount of refreshing the home page brought it back.

Where is the custom error page, the Global.asax handler, or at least the "remote only" setting? ASP.NET newbies built their site?!

Update: looks like cScape is to blame:

Eco-tastic Turnips

2008-09-14T08:56:00.002Z

Shiatsu, odd-vegetable competition, bmx-ing, and lentil-fuelled carbon-neutral farting for world peace.

All part of the new Brixton Transition Town thingy. Just remember to get that combined tetanus-HIV jab when pulling those spuds from the soil behind the lock-ups, kids!

Large Hadron Collider

2008-09-12T13:08:00.003Z

Well, the world did not end when the Large Hadron Collider was switched on the other day. There are now two webcams set up at CERN so you can see what's happening inside the giant torus.

Verified by Visa is totally broken

2008-09-01T20:05:00.005Z

My bank uses Visa credit cards. Visa has just rolled out a new "Verified by Visa" (VFV) system, which is supposed to be more secure.

In fact, VFV relies on XSS, random, unrecognisable third-party sites, and a generally woeful user experience which completely goes against security best practice.

There is background here: The 'Verified by Visa' fiasco ... courtesy of ANZ

In my case, thank fuck I was using Firefox with NoScript, for just look what it detected:

[NoScript XSS] Sanitised suspicious upload to [https://secure5.arcot.com/acspage/cap?RID=1234&VAA=B] from [https://select.worldpay.com/wcc/card]: transformed into a download-only GET request

What the hell is "arcot.com"? Why is at least WorldPay not processing this? Who authorised some random third-party site to access my credit card AND bank-specific security questions? And why the FUCK does it all rely on dodgy cross-site scripting to work?!?

All extremely shoddy, and designed to vapourize human confidence in online shopping. Well done Visa, you utter fuckwits.

Stick this up yer blockade

2008-08-24T20:10:00.004Z

The 44 activists had set sail from Cyprus on Friday aiming to defy an Israeli blockade of the territory which was tightened when the Islamist Hamas movement seized power in June 2007. Since then Israel has sealed Gaza off from all but vital humanitarian aid as it aims to put pressure on Palestinian militants who, before a truce took effect June 19, were launching daily rocket attacks on southern Israel. The activists had expected to be stopped by the Israelis, who had warned them to stay out of Gaza's coastal waters, but on Saturday Israel decided to allow them through without incident in order to avoid a public standoff.

There was a certain naivity in the earlier protestations from some of those on board about being targetted by the Israeli navy, but perhaps that was delibrate. The news coverage was certainly ample. Prior to this most people wouldn't have been aware of any kind of blockade.

Further reports:

Announcement anomaly

2008-02-04T19:23:00.000Z

Watching a DVD last night, it struck me how odd it is that films are often preceeded by fanfares: 20th Century Fox and Universal both employ fanfares in the traditional mould, with brass and percussion. As such, this orchestration hasn't fundamentally changed for perhaps 1000 years. Its use before a film serves to "regify" the film, lending ann aura of regal pomp and splendour... but hang on - it's just a film!

Bilbo and Existentialism

2008-01-28T20:02:00.000Z

http://groups.google.com/group/ fa.philos-l/browse_thread/thread/c747995814c0b402

Call for Abstracts: The Hobbit and Philosophy
Gollum and selfhood; ... the ‘bourgeois’ hobbit; ... hobbits’ homespun wisdom; ...

I will be submitting a paper on "The Elf-Dwarf dyad as a homoerotic ideal".

Mug

2008-01-04T19:36:00.000Z

The most curious thing about being mugged last night was my realisation that the reason I dealt with the guy so calmly was that I am forced to do the same every day at work. That is, the feelings I had after being threatened with a knife for £20 were only degrees stronger than those I feel every day in my job, and - in effect - it feels like I am being mugged at work.

Zazie

2007-12-21T21:28:00.000Z

Musician to watch: Zazie. She is noted for her playful use of language, which has led to the coining of the French word zazisme

Sacred Harp

2007-12-04T03:51:00.000Z

Stumbled across a way of singing I hadn't come across before: Sacred Harp. Here is the (amusingly named) "movable d'oh" and an example of "shape-note music".

Bethlehem 2007 AD

2007-12-04T02:34:00.000Z

National Geographic article on Bethlehem:

The birthplace of Jesus is today one of the most contentious places on Earth. Israelis fear Bethlehem's radicalized residents, who seethe at the concrete wall that surrounds them.

Formosa est

2007-12-01T21:25:00.000Z

Along with Scris and Rap I ate at the Formosa Dining Room on Weds night. The most excellent pork I think I have ever tasted, and staff who were friendly and helpful. Huge portions, well worth the price.

Seeing Debussy, Hearing Monet

2007-11-30T01:18:00.000Z

Went to this gig at the Barbican tonight: http://www.barbican.org.uk/ music/event-detail.asp?ID=5621. Slightly more pedagogic than I expected, but after an initial alarmingly elementary introduction to the concept of the tonic and dominant, the verbal exposition of the similarities and analogies between Monet's painting and Debussy's orchestral works was actually both eloquent and illuminating.

... in the first minute of the piece, Debussy mischievously throws in a bar of complete silence, giving the listener the opportunity to explore the musical quality of negative space within a gentle flowing river of sound. [...]

Most notable was the explanation of the sheer simplicity of the musical motifs or devices which Debussy employed to lend a (minimal) structure or self-coherence to his works; even something as simple as a semi-tone shift could be transformed by Debussy's masterful technique into a memorable shrift of melody.

My alma mater in the news

2007-11-30T00:30:00.000Z

My school hit the headlines this week. Excellent exam results? Success at sport? Radical teaching? No: Get pregnant to get benefits, teenage orphan is told

A promising A-level pupil whose parents died within months of each other has been told the only way to get benefits to continue her education is to have a baby.

Just why didn't the school sort this out before it got to the press?!?

Once in a while

2007-11-19T01:54:00.000Z

Saw this film with Ms B last week. I had ignored it, as the movie poster looks rather fromagé, but in fact it was surprisingly rewarding, and not soppy at all.

Even though initially they were only to write the songs for ‘Once’, Carney decided to go with the two musicians in the main roles instead of professional actors.

Aside from the "redemption through music" theme, and welcome lack of corny sex shots, an inspiring sequence was the singing jam session, where those present had to sing or get out!

Wealth has many arms

2007-11-17T14:41:00.000Z

Doctors in India who completed a gruelling 24-hour separation procedure today on a two-year-old girl born with four arms and four legs have declared it a success.

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/india/ story/0,,2206597,00.html]

What struck me as interesting here is that here is a naturally-occurring precendent for (here, Indian) mythology: Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, has four arms. Given that developmental abnormalities are more common in areas or societies with greater in-breeding and greater local pollution, the source of many of the more fantastical mythological beings is likely to have been based on actual experience of unusual births.

Living in the past

2007-11-16T19:37:00.000Z

Before switching to O2, I didn't expect something like SMS delivery reports to be unavailable: http://www.3g.co.uk/3GForum/archive/index.php/t-15834.html. Pisspoor!

Dragon on Bishopsgate

2007-11-07T02:48:00.000Z

Walking back from lunch today, I spotted this dragon emerging from a pile of sand by some roadworks on Bishopsgate. The navvies had already removed her arms, but she is a rather fine specimen of, I believe, Welsh Red variety.

Loads of new photos in Urban (Flickr)

Design Simplicity, or Why The Button Fetish?

2007-10-19T13:36:00.000Z

Jeff Attwood echoes exactly my feelings on system control, as explifed by microwaves:

I wonder if older microwaves weren't a better, simpler design, with their single giant analog knob.

Who needs so much control from a microwave that you need a degree in programming to control one? Surely Power * Duration _approx is absolutely fine. Seems like a control fetish gone mad...

Top 5 Graffiti

2007-10-19T13:10:00.000Z

The King is Dead

2007-08-01T18:36:00.001Z

Talking to a French-Algerian guy the other day round our gaff, about Arabic and its presence in contemporary European culture, and he pointed our that checkmate is Arabic for '[the] King is dead'. The Wikipedia link suggests Persian, using 'shah', but modern Arabic would use 'Sheik myaq' (I think) which is a lot closer to "check mate".

Robert Fisk on Hamas

2007-06-19T13:24:00.000Z

No one asked - on our side - which particular Israel Hamas was supposed to recognise. The Israel of 1948? The Israel of the post-1967 borders? The Israel which builds - and goes on building - vast settlements for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, gobbling up even more of the 22 per cent of "Palestine" still left to negotiate over?

Some sober and good-sense analysis from Fisk, highlighting the absurd double-standards inherent in the policies of the White House and Downing Street.

Junk DNA useful after all

2007-06-18T13:29:00.000Z

The ENCODE consortium’s major findings include the discovery that the majority of DNA in the human genome is transcribed into functional molecules, called RNA, and that these transcripts extensively overlap one another. This broad pattern of transcription challenges the long-standing view that the human genome consists of a relatively small set of discrete genes, along with a vast amount of so-called junk DNA that is not biologically active.
The new data indicate the genome contains very little unused sequences and, in fact, is a complex, interwoven network. In this network, genes are just one of many types of DNA sequences that have a functional impact. “Our perspective of transcription and genes may have to evolve,” the researchers state in their Nature paper, noting the network model of the genome “poses some interesting mechanistic questions” that have yet to be answered.

This seems a pretty reasonable finding. More crucial though, is that the idea of a "gay gene" or a "criminal gene" is pushed yet further away, and that we have a system whose form and function depends on interaction with multiple environments at multiple levels.

Cities and Countryside

2007-06-17T22:45:00.000Z

Entirely pertinant, as I have just returned from the rolling hills and smoke stacks of Yorkshire: Town and Country on Radio 3. Calvino is in there, along with Holst, RVW and prose by WH Hudson:

To lie on my back on the rust-brown grass in January and gaze up at the wide hot whitey-blue sky, peopled with millions and myriads of glistening balls of thistle-down, ever, ever floating by; to gaze and gaze until they are to me living things and I, in an ecstasy, am with them, floating in that immense shining void!
And now it seemed that I was about to lose it--this glad emotion which had made the world what it was to me, an enchanted realm, a nature at once natural and supernatural; it would fade and lessen imperceptibly day by day, year by year, as I became more and more absorbed in the dull business of life

The landscape around Bradford becomes more treasured for me each time I visit: the contrast of archaic and modern industry with sheep fields and wooded hills is so rich and rewarding. Of course, it help s to have hills to be able to take in all this in one glance.

Making the Renaissance

2007-05-30T13:57:00.000Z

I attended an excellent lecture by George Saliba on Arabic-Islamic Science at SOAS last night.

He sought to dispel three myths:

Arabic Science simply "kept Ancient Greek Science alive"
the Renaissance in Science was an attempt to return to Greco-Roman ideas
the Arabic contribution to Western Science stopped around the 12th century

Saliba did a good job of evaporating all three of these commonly held ideas. From (for me) familiar evidence (such as arithmetic and therefore number order using 'Arabic' [actually Indic] numerals is from right to left), to more detailed revelations, such as the origin of the words 'algorithm' and 'algebra' (a Persian mathematician called al-Khwarizmi, and Arabic for 'the forcing', referring to variables 'forced' to take a value), to more obscure but ultimately compelling evidence, such as that gleaned from the Vatican library, and translations in the 18th century of 300-year old Arabic texts by a Leiden professor.

Far from just keeping the embers of Science warm, the various Arabic-seaking scholars (male and female) did a great deal to move Science forward, away from the erroneous presumtpions of the Greek tradition, and towards a more rational, observation-based discipline. Some of the core observations and theories ascribed to Copernicus in fact seem to have been published in Arabic up to three hundred years prior to Copernicus and his contemporaries. Likewise, the Pulmonary theory of blood circulation (that blood passes to the lungs to be oxygenated) was also first published in Arabic. In these, and other cases, there is substantial evidence that western scientists knew of these texts, valued them, and studied them.

Magisterial historian of Portugal

2007-05-27T21:45:00.000Z

This guy was the uncle of my great great grandfather: Charles Boxer. Seems like he was an interesting character:

As Boxer discovered, the secret of Portugal's longevity as an imperial power was a singular record of repressive and obscurantist rule, aided and abetted by its historic alliance with Britain.

His range of themes, as exemplified in books such as Race Relations In The Portuguese Colonial Empire (1963) or Mary and Misogyny: Women In Iberian Expansion (1975), were early explorations of the themes of feminism and anti-racism...

I am not really one for family connections, but the an arresting person is undeniably interesting.

The Lives Of Others

2007-05-17T00:10:00.000Z

Saw The Lives Of Others with H on Monday. An excellent film, with some superb performances, particularly from the guy playing the Stasi agent. The power of Beethoven and Brecht, and the dangers of the UK's obsession with CCTV culture; for the surveillance present and encroaching in this country is in some respects far more sinister than that in the DDR.

No Gray In My Day

2007-05-16T23:53:00.000Z

Roger Molloy is an East Londoner who has just opened his own gallery after selling £1 prints of photos taken with his mobile phone. The first exhibition starts on 10 June, with further exhibitions planned - new photographic work is sought.

We in PartSuspended are thinking of performing The Outside In in the gallery space.

I walk past this guy every day on the way in to work. He has been outside his gallery space (at one point, limited to the front step, due to council regulations) pretty much every day since the beginning of this year: rain, shine, snow, frost. Dedication indeed.

The real scandal at the World Bank

2007-05-12T17:42:00.000Z

Johann Hari has a rather more sober comment on the World Bank (as opposed to the hoo-haa about the President giving his girlfriend a job):

...its mission to end poverty has always been mythical. As George Monbiot explains in his book The Age of Consent, the World Bank was created in the 1940s by US economist Henry Dexter White to be a further projection of US power. The bank's head is invariably American, the bank is based in Washington, and the US has a permanent veto on policies. It does not promote a sensible mix of markets and state action - the real path to development. No: the World Bank pursues the interests of US corporations over the poor, every time.

Practical action is not revolutionary, although it is simple and effective: divestment:

The campaign to make World Bank bonds as untouchable as apartheid-era investments has already begun. The cities of San Francisco, Boulder, Oakland and Berkeley have sold theirs. Several US unions have also joined. Even this small ripple has caused anxiety within the bank about the threat to its "AAA" bond rating.

This worked for apartheid South Africa, it's working for Israel, and maybe it can work for the World Bank, at least insofar as it opens up debate and makes a few more people wake up.

RAIDing the hardware graveyard - FDD RAID

2007-05-12T16:28:00.000Z

This guy got bored and made a FDD RAID system: http://ohlssonvox.8k.com/fdd_raid.htm

ALSO...
I have made a SONY Memory Stick RAID as well using 4 YD-8V10.
It works just fine I used 4 16MB memory stick cards, but does not have the same luster and appeal of the USB FDD RAID...

Scorching speed!

Viking Lenses

2007-04-14T17:48:00.000Z

Whilst reading up on laser eye surgery and 20/20 vision, I came across this page on Viking lenses. A quote:

The shape of the lenses gives them a resolution and an optical precision which greatly surpasses the best glasses available today, in the year 2000. Only special lenses for scientific or professional use are made to an optic resolution as high as the Visby lenses.

So much for perpetual progress, then. My ancestors were rather adept at fine jewellery, as well as (say) discovering America, empowering women, and architecture.

Overheard on Eurostar from Brussels

2007-04-04T09:33:00.000Z

"...Ladies and Gentlemen, the bar remains curiously quiet, and is still open for your custom in car thirteen...

WOTD: paraskevidekatriaphobia

2006-10-30T20:46:00.000Z

paraskevidekatriaphobia: A morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th.

...[snip]... Some even think that Friday was the day God threw Adam and Eve out of the garden of Eden, which is unlikely since the concept of Friday hadn't been invented yet.

WOTD: trivia

2006-10-23T01:03:00.000Z

n. pl. triv·i·a (--)
The lower division of the seven liberal arts in medieval schools, consisting of grammar, logic, and rhetoric.
[Medieval Latin, from Latin, crossroads : tri-, tri- + via, road; see wegh- in Indo-European Roots.]

Odd(y) photographs at PhotoFusion

2006-10-21T11:10:00.000Z

Went to see Jason Oddy's latest at PhotoFusion with Matej and Francesca. He looks at the use of space, particularly in socially extreme situations such as Guantanamo, the Pentagon and (here) a small town in New Mexico bought whole by the US counter-intelligence to train agents against Arab suicide bombers [sic]. The beautified decay common in these sorts of photos is amplified and modified by the weird knowledge that that very decay is essential to the town's utility as a training camp.

Three Billy Goats (roughly)

2006-10-01T22:45:00.000Z

I am looking into the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff for a little project concerning bridges. I found this flash, which is kinda entertaining.

EXIF mashup

2006-09-14T01:02:00.000Z

Interesting mashup: using EXIF data from JPEGs on Flickr to determine camera popularity.

The list goes by model and brand. For instance, this week 11th of September, the top ten are as follows:

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT

NIKON D50

Canon EOS 350D DIGITAL

Canon EOS 20D

NIKON D70

NIKON D70s

Canon PowerShot S2 IS

Canon EOS 30D

Sony CYBERSHOT

Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL

Flickr rules.

1001 Excuses

2006-09-14T00:59:00.000Z

Today marked a new high in excuses for Tube delays:

...smouldering on the track...

WTF?! We were stuck in the tunnel for 45 minutes, with emergency-only lighting, sweating like pigs. I jinxed it by trying to get to work early.

A Scanner Darkly

2006-09-12T22:37:00.000Z

I saw A Scanner Darkly with M last week. Kinda confusing, but interesting Rotorscoping and plenty of vitriol for the CIA/FBI/drug industry in the USA. I will read Dick's novels now for sure.

Feeling those Qi lines?

2006-09-12T22:02:00.000Z

Perhaps there is something in this magnetism/Qi/lifeforce thing:

The study shows for the first time that in plants, the work of the cryptochromes is affected by magnetic fields and suggests that the mechanisms of magnetic field perception in plants, and by extension in migratory birds, use the same photosensitive molecules. The researchers also suggest that, as cryptochromes have been strongly conserved throughout evolution, all biological organisms could have the ability to detect magnetic fields, even if they do not use them.

So, in the presence of green (grass, fields, trees) and blue (sky, sea) maybe we can get "in touch with our inner energy" or whatever. Maybe.

WOTW: Pluto (v)

2006-09-12T21:44:00.000Z

pluto: Verb. to pluto someone or something is to downgrade, demote or remove altogether from a prestigious group or list, Like what was done to the planet of the same name.

(Pluto was demoted from planet status the other week. Thankfully, Holst's suite stands intact, as Pluto hadn't been recognised in the 30s.)

Serendipity (again)

2006-09-11T23:12:00.000Z

Another of my photos is headlining at Serendipiccy: an unusual fusebox!

Google AdNonSense - Spam

2006-09-09T01:16:00.000Z

The all-knowing mind of Google is found wanting when browsing my Spam folder in Gmail. Yes, I really want a recipe for Spam Confetti Pasta when deleting my V1a6r4 emails. Well done there!

Bastard Son

2006-08-23T11:04:00.000Z

I went to see Under The Black Flag at The Globe. My first time at this theatre, and it was splendid to be there among the performers, and feel part of the action. The banter between stage and audience was a] authentic but b] actually fun too.

The actual quality of acting may not have been the most polished, but I think that's hardly the point. If Billy S was still writing the plays hours before they were due to be performed, the acting would hardly have been polished then either.

There were some fine songs ("I'm the bastard son of a bastard son of a bastard father's son"), and one about how Long John Silver came to have his name (it wasn't coz he was tall.)

Feeling a part of the performance, and the (at times) slightly pantomime style made this theatre very enjoyable.

Bonne cuisine

2006-08-22T15:57:00.000Z

Excellent chow at Le Mercury last night. Cheap, plentiful, and very tasty.

Hungarian Fireworks

2006-08-18T01:41:00.000Z

I went to see Bartok and Stravinsky at the Proms. Absolutely stunning. Two encores. Masterful conducting, without score, of course. Shame there was no dancing girl, though...

Photo Prize - Time Out

2006-08-08T23:56:00.000Z

I won the City Snapshots photo competition in Time Out London last week (issue 1876), with this picture of Angels at Angel. I won a nice new colour printer by Lexmark. I have already had one order for a signed print: get them while they're hot.

Yahoo Mail is blocking this URL in emails...

2006-08-08T00:51:00.000Z

...so read the article:
http://www.juancole.com/2006/08/ wiping-off-face-of-map-reprint-this.html

Eliiiite

2006-07-30T11:15:00.000Z

#667467 +(562)- [X]
<@kiafaldorius> is it just me or is it cool that 1337 (string) converted to hex becomes 31333337?

From http://www.bash.org/?667467

Chariots, Slaves, and the Souls of Men

2006-07-25T23:41:00.000Z

With Xavi and Angel I went to hear Belshazzar's Feast at the Proms, with young Bryn at the helm. The effect of the brass choirs was stunning: placed at the ends of the second or third galleries by the stage, the antiphony was awesome. A massed choir of about 700 singers was needed to fill the RAH, but Terfel obviously coped alone. Fabulous music.

Xavi commented that much English music (even as far back as Purcell) is characterised by fanfares and brass. He cited Rutter's Magnificat as a random example. Certainly, the effect of Walton's music on film scores is still evident today: little has changed fundamentally since the 1930s in terms of big orchestral scores for film.

WOTD: skiamorph

2006-07-20T23:38:00.000Z

Suitably Greek, skiamorph is a great word: One “dials” a phone that has nothing but buttons, for example.

Pilger on empire and freedom

2006-07-19T23:51:00.000Z

Pilger's new book, Freedom Next Time, is reviewed by Mark Curtis:

John Pilger is a very unusual journalist. He writes about people on the receiving end of grisly western policies - whether bombs or economic "advice" - and then exposes the motivations of those who are responsible.

Profiting from the Occupation

2006-07-19T23:28:00.000Z

The Corporate Interests Fueling Conflict in Palestine

...Israel's current expansion programme around East Jerusalem will render any future Palestinian state "nothing more than a set of non-viable Indian reservations."

Good article by Nick Dearden of War On Want on corporate interests in the Occupied Territories.

An American Hairdresser in Kabul

2006-07-10T21:14:00.000Z

[From my friend in Kabul]

Sandy’s Salon has been in Kabul for a while but I only recently discovered it. Bored with the usual ritual at my usual barbers I asked a friend if she knew of a decent hairdressers expecting the answer no. Instead she gave me Sandy’s mobile number. My usual two-monthly hair cut is at a local barbers where officially UN employees are not allowed to go. I enter the door of the small ‘salon’ beside a roundabout and a middle aged man with patchy unkempt, died hair and red eyes greets me and a boy translates. I say. ‘Hair cut’ and he says, ‘Yes, $5’. I say, ‘No I always pay 100 Afghani ($2)’ and he insists on $5. I go to walk out of the shop and he nods in agreement and to the chair. Then I explain how I want my hair cut. ‘Not too much off the back and proportionately more off the top but not so much that it sticks up and I want it combed back.’ He waits patiently looking as if he is not listening and has no interest. He doesn’t. He then cuts it as he wishes. The same as he cuts all hair. After he attempts to give me a head massage which I resist for two reasons. The first is that it is likely to cost the additional $3 he wants and secondly because he will attempt to click my neck and I am not keen on potential paralysis. When he has finished we smile at each other and I say, ‘good’ and pay the 100 Afghani with 20 Afghani extra as a tip. He complains and wants more tip and I refuse, thank him and walk out. It is the same ritual every time.

The novelty of this ritual had worn off so I was looking for a change. The only sign of Sandy’s salon was, for some reason, a string of camels painted on the wall outside. I forgot to ask her why. I rang the bell and an armed guard after ascertaining I was a foreigner led me up a drive of an ordinary house and pointed at the door. A woman greeted me on entering and nodded when I asked if she was Sandy. She was not but led me into a room where six Afghan girls sat around on chairs bordering the room without head scarves on. I wondered if this was really a salon or a more discreet version of Kabul’s brothels. Sandy greeted me with a big smile. Late thirties with long dyed hair she was definitely an American hairdresser. She did not ask me if I had had a nice holiday recently but chatted about her trip to Northern Cyprus where she planned to send her son for education. An Afghan girl washed my hair and massaged my scalp. The water was cold due to the lack of electricity but the feminine touch and the novelty of being touched by an Afghan women distracted me. I was the only customer and Sandy continued chatting as she cut. I of course paid western prices but the cut and experience was worth it. A sort of strange normality in Kabul.

Occupation

2006-06-30T14:57:00.000Z

I saw The Wind That Shakes The Barley last night with N and R. This is a Must-See. In the UK we get very little history of Ireland: the potato famine is mentioned, plus the Troubles, but that's about it. It was good therefore to have fleshed out some history from the early 20th C. However, this film was not really about Ireland at all.

This was a film about Occupation, and the Occupied. It is completely timely, with viscious and brutal occupations in Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan continuing with very little international criticism. The film shows the frightening brutality of the soldiers (first British, and then - tragically - Free State Irish) against those people who are fighting back.

The cinematography is beautiful, and the violence all the more shocking for its muted character: the "rape" scene in which Siobhan's hair is cut off was very powerful, for it manages to capture much more than the expected sexual violence alone. The destruction of the bond between the resistance fighters is painful to watch, with friend and family turning against each other in a shocking echo of the former actions of the British. Even the same prison cells are used to house the captives.

The "terrorists" of course are completely ordinary people, driven sometimes regretfully towards violence in defence of justice and freedom. The acts of the occupying forces clearly create terror in the occupied people: who are the terrorists?

The wanton destruction, the personal violence, the dehumanisation of the occupied people is a feature of occupation. Recent events in Haditha, Gaza, and Kabul are not one-off acts of mad-dog soldiers, but part and parcel of military strategy in occupied countries. Many of these recent tactics were devised by the British army in Ireland during the occupation, then transferred to US and Israeli forces in the decades since. Israel now exports its urban combat "skills" to oppressive regimes around the world.

To understand life in an occupied land, and the deep difficulties - emotional and physical - which such an existance produces, watch ...Barley.

Israeli Disproportionality

2006-06-28T15:07:00.000Z

Hamas militants capture a soldier, Israel bombs out power stations for 1.3 million people.

How is depriving so many people of power and water a reasonable response to a kidnapping? This is collective punishment on a gross scale.

This is a woefully apt exemplar of the utter disparity in military and civil power between Palestine and Israel.

More here, in this article by Jonathan Cook, on the myth of Israeli "Retaliation". The BBC is still biased in how it reports actions by the IDF, even after extensive reports on the BBC's coverage of the situation in Palestine/Israel.

Update: the Israelis, of course, got their tactics from the British, but one particularly revolting character in particular: Orde Wingate

Update 2: Israeli troops rounded up dozens of ministers and lawmakers from the Palestinians' ruling Hamas party - just the very language used by the Yahoo/AP report is insulting (cattle are 'rounded up'), never mind that a foreign power is, out of its juristiction, arresting elected and high-ranking officals.

Effix

2006-06-26T13:18:00.000Z

I was in Colchester on Friday for the Graduate Conference on Morality, Ethics, and Social Order, co-organised by Effix Girl herself, Becky P.

Although some of the stuff (particluarly Kant, and more advanced Habermas) was beyond me, there was some interesting use of the idea of myth and mythology in relation to the projection of reason and truth. Some rather useful references for the utility of myth in social change, but also its mass-psychological aspects (e.g. that myth perceived as myth can still be strongly effective).

Mud chute

2006-06-26T00:09:00.000Z

Spent some time with lzz in Mudchute Park on the Isle of Dogs; a treasure amidst the humdrum. We will both be immensely sad to leave it behind. I hope we can find something similar in the future.

I understand much more now about motivation, honesty, and plain saying "no".

Dawning

2006-06-21T19:11:00.000Z

I went to Stonehenge yesterday with H and friends. It was a good laugh, and a great tonic to the slow dripfeed poison of continual work over the past few weeks.

I was impressed how organised the whole thing was: English Heritage out in force, plus police-staffed pedestrian crossings, burger joints, keepsafes for glass bottles and valuables, floodlights, free placcy macs (well, bin bags), etc. I guess it's actually cheaper to do it hat way then to hire out the police to try to defnd it from the hordes. There were a few 'real' pagans in evidence, but the majority were crusties and dopeheads, with some randoms like us along for the ride.

The forecast was dry, but obviously them damn Wiccans had done their rituals properly, as it was drizzling when we were dropped off by the special bus service, and then at about 1am it pissed it down. Still, a reet good lark.

Photos of Stonehenge here on Yahoo.

New Job

2006-06-20T15:14:00.000Z

I have just accepted a full-time job with Priocept*, working as a consultant software developer. The firm is small but growing, agile, and well-respected, with clients including LSE, Lloyds and Panasonic.

I am looking fwd to getting into some meaty projects, but in an environment which welcomes forward-thinking and creativity, rather than dogged code-bashing ;o)

*As in proprioceptive

Bleach Rage

2006-06-19T23:17:00.000Z

I am pretty easy-going, most of the time. I can get along with many different people. I like to avoid conflict if possible. Having lived in 10 shared houses in the past nine years, I have a pretty good idea what works in that environment: how to avoid angst and annoyance, and how to have a good time with housemates.

This house is different. I have TEH R4GE. I (perhaps unwisely) gave people time to adjust and settle in, but they are just as rude, bitchy, and patronising as Day 1. So me and H are moving out, after just 6 weeks.

What is so wrong? Pizza-girl upstairs wants every one to bleach the bathtub after every use. Fog-horn-face next to my room will not let me share her FUCKING KITCHEN ROLL for crisake. The only time she says anything to me is to complain about some random thing, like the back door being open for 5 mins while I water the plants.

So basically, it's war. I have started piling up HER dishes, in mirror of her habit with mine. I will pile up all the shite she leaves on the kitchen table: note that she complains about any random thing *I* leave there, of course.

The cunting agency never told us that there would be 8 people living in a 5-bed house, including one small child. I mean, I like children, but I couldn't eat a whole one.

Leaving dead fish in cupboards - and turds in laundry - starts next week.

Picasa goes online, misses target

2006-06-16T23:29:00.000Z

Google Picasa has gone online, with a new Picasa Web Albums feature. Yet, still one is tied to the the concept of static galleries, and which photographer with any aesthetic judgement at all will want the Google branding all around their pictures? Pas moi, bien sur!

The future is still XML-driven metadata, and full sync between desktop, Flickr, and online gallery, with no long-term lock in to any one database or web app framework.

Doorways

2006-06-16T22:46:00.000Z

I had the first public viewing of my photos the other day, as part of a collaboration with my housemate, who put on a performance 'experiment' based on the ideas of Yi-Fu Tuan, Italo Calvino and others.

The performance was very stimulating: rather nerve-wracking, but in a good way; the object was to see how people reacted to the performance space and performers. Hari deliberately blurred the line between 'stage' and 'audience', 'cast' and 'viewers'. When I went out half-way through to take a call, no-one was sure whether I was 'performing', which was half the point.

My pictures of doorways were well-received, even though most were taken with very basic equipment.

Partly as aresult of talking to H about her work, I am now reading Calvino's Invisible Cities: a highly refreshing mediation on space, memory and passion. I'd recommend this book to anyone with imagination.

International etymology

2006-06-11T15:45:00.000Z

A damn fine weekend spent with D + K in Harrogate saw us in a pub, and winning 3rd place in the quiz. Random words:

Maverick - renegade Texas cattle rancher whi refused to brand cattle
Quisling - fascist Norwegian dictator in WW2
urge - related to Greek εργο (work) as in Metallurgy: metal-working

Honor killing on the installment plan

2006-06-01T02:51:00.000Z

Let's hope this is not where the UK is headed, with Tony Bliar's gung-ho religios rhetoric:

"It all comes down to the evils of sex," says Trussell. "That's an ideological position impervious to empirical evidence."

Time for some militant atheism.

Sweeping it under the carpet

2006-05-24T02:38:00.000Z

Banksy is up to (no) good again. More excellent, witty comment. My fave was the one of the two London coppers snogging ;-)

Unique Tag

2006-05-24T02:34:00.000Z

mai lirol poni is the only person who has used "legosex" as a tag.

Safety Boy

2006-05-19T01:18:00.000Z

Safety Boy Flange Spreader
SPREADS ALL TYPES OF FLANGED PIPE
CONNECTIONS TO INSERT BLINDS-GASKETS-ORIFICES

http://www.newmantools.com/hand/safetyboy.htm

Reading about Palestine-Israel

2006-05-19T01:13:00.000Z

A list of books that will give you the past and recent history, and different aspects, of the Palestine-Israel conflict, can be found at: Amazon - "So you'd like to... be an anti-Zionist".

Why has the US been willing to set aside its own security and that of many of its allies in order to advance the interests of another state? This book discusses why the Israeli lobby’s campaign to quash debate about Israel is unhealthy for democracy, and why it is bad for Israel. See: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html

Giant Spam Factory

2006-05-18T00:06:00.000Z

My amusement at Google being (finally) branded "Evil after all" bears out my impressions from the interview process: Google has turned into a giant ad-machine. Even their apparently funky Google Maps applications like Google Taxi are basically just clever adverts for private hire companies.

Their wannabe angelic stance is revealed as just posturing for their shareholders. LOL

Old new expletive

2006-05-06T12:45:00.000Z

Thanks to the literary provenance of the libertine Earl of Rochester, I have a splendid new expletive, to used in place of others such as "my feckin' arse", "screw me", and "christ on a cracker": My Smoking Prick. It's from some particularly ripe stanzas beginning By All Love's Soft, Yet Mighty Powers

Too much time pt.94

2006-04-29T04:09:00.000Z

Have you ever seen a C# application that converts a given image to a text-based ASCII Art image like the ones shown above?

Waaahhh! This guy has just too much time on his hands:

I mean, it's kinda cool, but, dude, go find a real girl to drool over!

I have been looking for lightweight flat-file PHP-based CMS tools. So far I have found these:

It will be much easier to manage multiple small sites if they don't need a DB set up. For a simple 5-page site with a 'latest news' section and maybe some downloads, a full-blown CMS seems overkill.

Don't call us, we'll call you

2006-04-26T23:55:00.000Z

Useful info on DB change notification over at Oracle. A bunch of .NET classes wraps it all up nicely, so that you just implement an event handler and pull the details out of the event args. The DB itself (Oracle Database 10g Release 2) determines when to notify the client based on the SQL statement used at registration time: cunning.

Am not sure their example .NET code is so hot though; it's peppered with

  cmd.Dispose();
  con.Dispose();

calls, which are usually unnecessary if the class is well-implemented. I'd prefer to see explicit calls to resource-releasing methods, and the whole thing wrapped in try..finally. </rant>

In the beginning was sound

2006-04-26T20:46:00.000Z

I'll be checking out the Reith lectures this year. The combined focus of Barenboim on music & politics in the middle east, and the fundamental nature of music is particularly appealing.

The devil is a loser/And he's my bitch

2006-04-25T22:12:00.000Z

Their song Hard Rock Hallelujah is a radical departure from the folk songs usually associated with Eurovision. - naff Finnish 'metal' band rips the piss out of Eurovision.

And why not? I went to the Garage with M on Thursday for some real goblin cock rock, including the cunning linguists Danko Jones and spawn of AC/DC, The Tokyo Dragons. THe music is fun to play, and fun to watch. =Σ

My first calendar

2006-04-20T11:25:00.000Z

Google's new Calendar was launched last week. Seems like they still have a few, uh, elementary problems to solve, LOL:

How come NaN got past testing?

Blair's jihadist rhetoric

2006-04-19T23:52:00.000Z

Slightly alarmist article by Simon Jenkins on the goading of Iran in Guardian. More interesting are the comments there, with some interesting links and analysis, including this link to a story about Orthordox Jews visiting Iran earlier this year [needs IE].

More Steil Geil

2006-04-06T23:30:00.000Z

Just returned from a fab/skill/ace week in .de and .ch - visited V, A and Frau Doktor Klettermeister. I can now lead-climb 5a routes indoors, which is good progress. Esther said I have natural climbing talent: also pleasing. Relatedly, some very funny but sound advice here: www.psychovertical.com This from some crazee guy in Sheffield who has scaled Yosemite's El Capitan over 10 times. Heh.

Cabbage on English head

2006-03-27T17:50:00.000Z

From the brixton_climbers list:

good session today ,5 brixton climbers got tired after 4 hours session at xtall palace climbing wall,We have to try to keep it open, so maybe we could arrange to have it open more often if more used .Good cracking climb done, by james and tim on the "traverse of the god".no one except Brixton Climber done the "riddle", jhonnatan, steve,james and mister tim had few good attempte but could reach the top of the french castle. The french then,victorious,show them a V signe and througth cabbage on they English head.

The Brixton wall is great, but I have been woefully slack recently.

De-speckled

2006-03-23T00:01:00.000Z

Last Saturday night was the culmination of a good day. Damo and Suzy came down for the anti-war march, then we hung out in Soho, met Mistress Pitt, and eroded our collective career roadblocks by beer and yakk. Minus B (work) and Suzy (ill - on birthday - harsh!) we headed to Bar 242 in some wasteland by Blackfirars Bridge, but it was pretty amiable except for the too-cool DJ and his need-for-bleed with the earsplitting music. N + R joined later, and Hari and Damo bonded over Edinburgh Fringe (I presume).

The difference between that night and practially every other in recent memory has been that I actually felt worth talking to - yes, it (my career downer) was that strong. It was damn refreshing to drink that in.

It does all beg the question: how does one spot and deal with minor depression, which is probably more difficult to spot, as it's not as extreme as other forms. Almost by definition, it involves a lack of self-awareness, so some reliance on others is implied.

RSS Progress

2006-03-22T01:34:00.000Z

So, I am (glad to be) not the first to think about RSS as replacing SQL: Ray at ABCEDmindedness writes on RSS-driven sites back in 2004:

...RSS should be the foundation of the design of any web applicatin which assists in the creation of a web site.

Leading on from there, and zipping forward to the present, we have these articles: RSS, and yes, probably Atom too, are the "Unix pipes" of the Web; manifestly simple and easy ways to connect virtually any content from point A to points X, anywhere on the Web. from Balkanizing RSS and the risks to the information ecosystem and I've been taken to task occasionally for my prediction that RSS will be the fundamental Web 2.0 protocol, and with SSE my prediction is reinforced. It's so good, so simple, so right that I think you'll see the Web services of yore become almost completely eclipsed by it. in How Simple Sharing Extensions Will Change the Web

Obviously, it's time to investigate SSE and code me a system. Passing Thought: This seems to cover some of the logic of REST Web Services.

Waah. More here!: Adam Bosworth, writing in ACM Queue, elaborated on the database-of-the-future vision he's been evolving for a couple of years now. We can obviously read RSS and Atom feeds, and query them in simple ways, but how do we update and delete?

P.S. - Microsoft's copyrights in this specification are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License. - wtf?!?

More to come on this, clearly...

O.I.L.

2006-03-22T01:04:00.000Z

Intersting article by Greg Palast on Iraq.

Specifically, the system ordered up by the Bush cabal would keep a lid on Iraq's oil production -- limiting Iraq's oil pumping to the tight quota set by Saudi Arabia and the OPEC cartel.

By the safe metric that blundering incompetance is probably the culprit, rather than planned cunning, Bush has achieved his aim: high oil prices.

Dorks with Swords!

2006-03-22T00:11:00.000Z

Some geeks have their choreography well-rehearsed. Complete with light-saber noises and cheesy kung foo!

Managing Pictures

2006-03-21T01:30:00.000Z

Went to Hampstead Heath with Besim for some finger-freezing photography. In the pitch dark. We looked for the parrots, but in vain; however, we came up with some nice ideas for photo software. Current problems with photo software:

multiple upload with metadata
keeping metadata with photos
retaining ordering of photos in an album
tagging photos + searching

Basically, for all its spangliness, Google Picasa is nearly useless for photographers, as you have to type in the tags/keywords by hand. I want a program on my PC which will auto-classify my images (at least to some extent).

I reckon I can see a way, using Flickr, to bring all of these things together. Originally, I was going to use Google Images, but there is no Image API, so screw them. Flickr has a nice clean XML-based API. I see the full application interactions looking like this:

Use desktop app to sort photos into albums.
Desktop app scans Flickr for photos...
...and uses their metadata to suggest tags...
...by making use of a feature-recognition algorithm.
User then submits batch of photos to Flickr with metadata
Tag-suggestion gets better over time as learning data improves.
User can build external photo site from Flickr RSS feeds.
Synch tags, albums, photos between the desktop app and Flickr.

Basically, you get Flickr (and its users) to do most of the work of 'identifying' images, by using RSS-feed-by-tag data. All the neural network has to do is to generate some kind of similarity metric for the photos, rip the tags from the best matches, and use those for the suggestions.

In the future, you could auto-submit full-size images - with metadata - to stock photo libraries, having tagged them beforehand. In fact, basing tags on existing images could well be a very good thing, as your image will be placed alongside other similar images automagically.

There is quite some milage in this, and I suspect that most of the code is already written. THe magic would be in the glue.

Burning Image

2006-03-15T01:57:00.000Z

My new photo site is up and running: http://www.burning-image.com/

Israeli terrorism - no other word for it

2006-03-14T21:35:00.000Z

An Israeli army raid on a Palestinian jail holding a senior militant has sparked a wave of kidnappings and protest in the West Bank and Gaza.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4804424.stm

This is nothing but terrorism. It's completely outside the rule of law, even by Israel's meagre standards. Polluting one's own judicial system is one thing, but physically destroying the walls of a prison in another territory is another: the prisoners were kidnapped on pain of immediate ~~death~~ execution if they didn't comply.

Utterly reprehensible. As soon as the Brits and US monitors pulled out, the Israeli army went in. So they were after some rather unpleasant character. SO THE FUCK WHAT?

Syriana

2006-03-14T01:19:00.000Z

I went to see Syriana with Gerald and Matej. Pleasantly surprised at the pace and structure of the film. Lots of loose ends, and plenty of time to absorb the deliberate plot spillages. It's got neo-cons rattled, so its politics is on the right track ;-)

Bad Poetry: Ode to a Notebook

2006-03-13T12:13:00.000Z

My second heart beats excited lines of graphite
Into the manifold of my notebook lungs.
Breathe the quick'ning oxygen of sudden-thought,
Transferred by absorbant page
And capillarous scrawl
To words,
And thence returned to brain!

I love my Moleskine!

Bad Poetry: The Beast

2006-03-13T12:01:00.000Z

Glinting claws arrayed scratch 
Aural sparks on the granite air:
Bows appear as rippling fur
While cymbal jaws snap echoes.
The polished underbelly of wood and silver
Glints with every flick of the baton-tongue:
Faces recede into scales.

Bruckner's 7th seems better without
The encumberance of specs!

Henley Symphony Orchestra

New Coordinates

2006-03-11T17:28:00.000Z

In the end, even I myself became tired of my own prevarications over my career. In response to the predicatable-but-dull question "So, what do you do?" I have a new response. From now on I am no longer a Programmerbut (as in "I am a programmer, but..."). Henceforth, I photograph and write; write and photograph. Perhaps I code some software to pay the bills, but my raison d'etre no longer rests on CREATE TRIGGER or public class foo{}. Irrespective of the outcome of the interminable Google application process, I will exist to explore, create and record the beauty, frailty, jollity, horror, and desire of the world. A mere trifling, then (LOL); but far better than trifling with my time, as I was doing until two days ago.

I am grateful to all those many people who have harangued me over the last few years to quit farting about and do What I Should Be Doing: creating.

He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence. - William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.

The Red Cockatoo

2006-03-08T15:31:00.000Z

Sent as a present from Annam -
A red cockatoo.
Coloured like the peach-tree blossom,
Speaking with the speech of men.

And they did to it what is always done
To the learned and eloquent.
They took a cage with stout bars
And shut it up inside.

Flux Flix

2006-02-27T03:46:00.000Z

I went to see Aeon Flux with Matej. The "cute girl + black cat suit + weapons" combo, though Charlize Theron did much better than Kate Beckinsale in Underworld. The plot was substantially less dense and freaky than the animated series, which is a shame, as I was looking forward to some real oddity in this one. It turned into a cheesy love story, with possible christian right overtones (e.g. demanding that women should get pregnant, etc.). Fun though. Nice imagery.

Pre-Google Optimisation

2006-02-27T03:21:00.000Z

I have bought several books prior to my next Google boogle on 6 March, with Google Advertising Tools looking promising. On a related subject (i.e. internet-driven sales and micro-payments), I came across an interesting article on Wired dealing with the "Long Tail" of interest in obscure books, music, and other publishable things, which teh intarwebs is drawing out, given that - with hard disks - it's as economic to stock a "copy" of a best seller as it is to stock some dull tome on Victorian Scrap Pan Bogeys.
Edit: I just found a bunch of stuff on my next interviewer ;-)

Also, as a follow-up to some ideas I had on RSS replacing SQL, some enterprising souls have created a complete web RSS suite, and NewsGator have an enterprise offering which somehow integrates with Exchange etc. There are a couple of DNN modules which aggregate RSS feeds, but few seem to be using RSS internally to build content. I might mock up some Python or maybe Ruby to demo the flexibility of the "RSS, not SQL" idea.

Essentially, I'd see content-driven sites as built from tens or hundreds of micro-feeds, all parsed by super-fast RSS/Atom parsers, and perhaps with special back-links to expand the usefulness of RSS. This would be a step towards a more Semantic Web. More later.

Enhancing Picasa

2006-02-23T16:27:00.000Z

As a photographer, I have myriad photos. I need to be able to find photos quickly, by theme/tag/label, especially if I start submitting to stock photo sites. Crucially, I have to tag the photos in the first place. Every single one. *yawn*

So, what I want is a tool to suggest labels for me. Software which would inspect the images, and suggest labels.

Digression: Google Picasa, whilst sporting a dodgy installer, and over-the-top UI 'enhancements' (everything slides smoothly about, which is really patronising), is half-way to what I'd want. However, labels must be added manually. Boring!

How about using Google Images to pull out keywords from existing photos which could be applied, in reverse, to new photos? The complexity of the algorithms needed to suggest labels is thus reduced to simple image pattern matching, or feature extraction - non-trivial, but already done a thousand times. Then use the wealth of data already present in Google Images to suggest labels for new images, based on exising images and their associated search terms.

Given that Picassa runs on the desktop, we can use the high performance of the PC/Mac to do the image comparison (no huge server farm needed) - all we need is a way to hook into Google Images, pull down similar photos, and "reverse" the Google Image results: outputting text (labels) for a given image).

This might imply some standard means of quantifying elements/aspects of the image: colour, shapes, etc., and sending that data to a central server, in order to get the match. Alternately, Picasa could send a reduced-size image to the server, and try find matches based on that reduced size. I suspect for many images, you'd get helpful suggestions even based on thumbnails, but I have no way of justifying that ;-)

Shame there is no Images API yet.