It was recently announced that to save money, the BBC are thinking of closing 6Music and the Asian network radio strations.
I am a huge fan of 6Music - I have never listened to the Asian network - and would be most upset were it to not be around anymore.
I can't write about how to help save it any better than other people already have elsewhere, so this is just a series of links. If you are interested, please make sure you follow the advice given in the following pages.
The Telegraph reports that Amy Winehouse has updated her Facebook status. Woo.
[Via Telegraph.co.uk]
Nick Abbot, 24th October 2009:
The Prime Minister was confident, his party was certain, the City seemed sure and economists and the press were agreed. Britain had come out of recession and green shoots pushed up through dead brush of the down turn and covered the landscape for as far as the eye could see... And then The Centre For Inconvenient Truths, or The Office Of National Statistics as it's known, let slip that our economy had shrunk again in the last quarter and we were still waist deep in the clag of recession. Which means that the financial wisdom of the PM, his party, the experts in the City, the nation's economists and the press could be written on the back of a wine gum! That is if you could buy one... which, without a photo ID, you cannot.
A 15 year old boy attempted to acquire a packet of the multi-coloured sweets from his friendly local 99p store. This resulted in failure as he was patently too young to consume alcohol and it clearly hints at its presence on the packet. "They contain wine!" said the alert shop keeper. "Look. WINE Gums. It says it right there, on the label." The lad was forced to hand back the forbidden confection and received a full refund of ninety-nine pence, which amounted to three kilograms of loose change, causing a hole in his pocket, and an unrefreshed palette. A full investigation by the store's management put the over-zealousness down to an 'unfortunate glitch'. Which is no way to describe a member of their staff...The same phrase could be appended to an incident in the skies of Minneapolis this week, when a passenger jet overshot the airport by a little bit. Or 150 miles to be exact. Ground staff frantically tried to raise the alarm, Air Force jets were on standby to intercept, hijack procedures were commenced and then stood down, and then, after an hour of silence, the pilots got back in touch. "We weren't sleeping," they said. "We were just arguing." Must have been a fascinating discussion to make them forget to land an air liner with 144 passengers in the back. Perhaps they were disagreeing over the return to economic prosperity? Or maybe they were drunk on Wine Gums, or smashed on Beer Nuts, or tripping on Acid Drops.
Wise words.
[Via Nick Abbot's LBC Podcast. Links via BBC News, The Daily Mail and The Guardian]
An astounding infographic, showing space missions by target, country and whether the missions were successful. The bottom of the chart shows the most distant probes (the Voyagers and the Pioneers) and how far away they are (Voyager I is at ten billion miles). If you have a 4000 pixel monitor, this is what it's for.
To go along with it, all the Mars missions in one infographic.
While we're here, Voyager I had a golden record of images and sounds with it to introduce our planet to other species. This site, has copies of that particular travel brochure.
[Via The Kewl Doodz 'n' Chyx]
I discovered Tom Scott's web site recently and, after writing this entry yesterday, thought one of his videos would fit in perfectly. His other work in the Things I've Made section are also worthy of your time.
Enjoy!
Edit: I've now realised that I haven't just discovered him - I knew I knew the name from somewhere. Tom is behind the UK arm of Talk Like A Pirate Day, which I've mentioned before here, here and here (with a broken image). Also, International Talk Like A Pirate Day is on the 19th September and is a Saturday this year.
Via: Tom Scott
Iron Maiden's guitarist Adrian Smith has caught a massive fish.
He currently holds the honour for bagging the biggest catch this season - the fish clocked in at an impressive 7 pounds and 14 ounces.Smith made this revelation in the latest issue of Angler's Mail, where he also talked his habit for taking worms on tour.
"I get to fish a lot of wild and wonderful places on tour," he explained. "We used to keep worms in containers under the tourbus and in summer they would get a bit savoury. I also remember a maggot scare in a very plush hotel in Amsterdam when I was fishing in the canal there. They're certainly not on the room service menu."
Via: Planet Rock's website (via NME.com, via Angler's Mail - I think this is the first time I've referenced a reference's source's source. Or something.)
I thought this might be handy for some people!
BBC Radio 5 live and sports extra have comprehensive coverage of the 2009 Formula 1 season with live commentary of every race plus coverage of all the practice and qualifying sessions, plus expert analysis before and after each race weekend.The commentary team is led by David Croft alongside new signing Formula 1 driver Anthony Davidson, providing a driver's perspective to events, and pit lane reporter Holly Samos, with all the news and reaction as it happens.
As well as all the action on the track, on the Friday before every race David, Anthony and Holly present 5 live Formula 1 on 5 live sport previewing all the weekend's action. The coverage doesn't stop there; the Chequered Flag podcast will be available for download every Monday after race weekend with expert analysis of the latest race and the big issues from the circuit.
And you can now get F1 on your favourite social network with our F1 widget which can be embedded wherever you want it. It features the Chequered Flag podcast, the latest news from BBC Sport and schedule details for F1 on BBC Radio.
Via: BBC Radio 5 Live
Possibly the best way to learn about circuits and circuit diagrams... through sweets!
Genius.
My last entry discussed how Google's search homepage has been used to celebrate many significant events throughout history - very worthwhile if you ask me.
However, Google Maps is also very useful. Most trips I make to places I don't know are planned out on Google Maps first, either using satellite images, or maps or a combination of both.
Google Maps was recently put to great use by Rachel Young. She spent 15 hours trying to find all 26 letters of the alphabet on the British Isles. Here are her results.
Via: Telegraph.co.uk
I am a huge fan of Google. They are doing an increasing amount of things to improve the internet and using technology to its fullest, something that can only be good. Yes, there are those who think that they are diversifying a little too much, but I disagree. Everything they do, they do to the highest standard.
Anyway, I'm writing primarily about their search engine having constantly been in awe of the things they think of to do.
I'm not talking about it being the most used search engine online (figures from December 2008, the most recent I can find, show that 62.9% of the 8,000,000,000 searches surveyed were done through Google compared to 16.8% done through Yahoo! and 9.8% done using MSN/Windows Live Search [source]), I'm thinking about the creativity put into celebrating significant events through their logo.
If you've never been to Google when there's been a celebration of a world event, or a scientist's birthday or even valentine's day, then you've missed out on a little slice of personalisation. For as long as I can remember, Google have been altering their logo to reflect those sort of things, with a seeming emphasis on the world of science. I've managed to find copies of some of the images via, appropriately enough, a Google search and reproduce them for you here. Not all of these would necessarily have been shown at all the Google home pages - for instance there is one from India and China below.
14th March 2003 - Albert Einstein's birthday
15th January 2004 - Spirit on Mars
3rd February 2004 - Gaston Julia's birthday
8th June 2004 - Venus transit
13th March 2006 - Percival Lowell's birthday
16th May 2008 - First laser
6th June 2008 - Diego Velazquez's birthday
7th July 2008 - Mark Chagall's birthday
21st November 2008 - Rene Magritte's birthday
12th February 2009 - Charles Darwin's 200th birthday
17th May 2009 - Igor Stravinsky's birthday
20th June 2009 - Apollo 11 Lunar landing anniversary
10th July 2009 - Nikola Tesla's birthday
22nd July 2009 - Longest solar eclipse in India and China
23rd July 2009 - Comic-Con 2009
12th August 2009 - Perseid meteor shower
