First, special thanks to Jose Marquez. Everyone needs a friend like him. But not everyone deserves one.
You’ve all heard of American Idol. I apologize for bringing it up and in no way think that show has any redeeming value. However, in the same vein TfL (Transport for London) is now having a competition to allot some busking licenses. This is either insane or brilliant or rubbish. I haven’t decided, though after last year’s trip I can tell you the buskers need improvement. One guy was playing to the accompaniment of a boom box, only the boom box was doing most of the work. Competition URL here.
I am still Canadian and was reminded of Tom Brokaw’s awesome piece on Canada that was shown on NBC during the Olympics. It was well received. Conveniently, it’s now available on YouTube and is an awesome seven minutes of film. Famous people you might not know are Canadian include Tom Brokaw, Neil Young, Doug Henning, Dan Aykroyd, Raymond Burr, Michael Cera, Yvonne De Carlo, Howie Mandel, Monty Hall, Alex Trebek, Shannon Tweed, Keanu Reeves, and my only famous relative, third/fourth cousin William Shatner. I apologise for the last bit.
The London Eye is ten years old and this article talks about how it came to be. It’s amazing that something like this has turned into an iconic structure much like Eiffel Tower. I rode it on it very soon after it opened in addition to visiting the Millennium Dome and while it was much maligned, I loved it. The eye on the other hand has been well received and is insanely popular: deservedly so.
In other news, Pink Floyd has filed suit against EMI. Pink Floyd claims their contract prohibits selling their songs as “singles” and only album sales are allowed. That means their distribution on Apple’s iTunes and other sites that do not honour album purchases is in jeopardy. EMI claim that the contract only applies to albums whilst Pink Floyd claims album means that album in all formats be it tape, CD, digital, and whatnot. The article doesn’t expand much, but this case will have industry changing ramifications because if Pink Floyd wins, and I hope they do, an artist will have creative control over their music. I agree, for example, Dark Side of The Moon is one complete work and shouldn’t be doled out as singles. If that is the artist’s wish, then so be it. Though it does beg the question of radio play. (Apple is famous for refusing to sell albums on iTunes that can’t be separated into individual tracks and only disallows single track purchases for songs longer than 10 minutes.)
Back to Jose: he’s been very instrumental in getting The Quagmire ready for the Big Move. I’ll warn everyone once it happens, but you will have to update your RSS feeds and any other place you may subscribe to this blog. We’re going to be going to WordPress in the very near future. The blog may continue to move, but you will all be given a URL that will always work no matter where the blog goes. That URL will be http://www.darsys.net and it should point your browser to wherever the blog is parked. (The blog will remain on the same server but in a subdomain and subdirectory for the time being until I move from Dreamhost to Photon.net which will happen eventually.) I’d like to tell you how much I helped, but I think the work ratio’s about 10% me and 90% him. If anyone wants to provide educational training to me on WordPress once I’m up and running, that would be great. I’m sure I’ll have questions because my WP experience is pretty limited.
This blog should be relocated before the end of the month and a final post will direct you to where you need to go. All posts will be available in the new blog, though some formatting anomalies may occur. If you point them out, I’ll fix them. With 830+ posts it’s going to take me awhile to do it manually. Old posts will remain here for one year before I remove them to preserve inbound links and Google PageRank. We’re going to do some fancy .htaccess page directs to send you to the new blog once it’s up and running. Just for those of you who care about what will happen.