Tim has fired his parting shot and given up on activism through his blog. It’s a great shame that someone with such genuine commitment and passion for his cause should decide to throw in the towel at such a politically volatile time as this. He’s going to be missed.

The Independent has a useful story about the new EU Constitution.

The thought occurs that I never actually posted part 1 of the Magic Beer Chronicles here. A few people have asked for it, so I’ve reproduced it below. This one was written around the time Microsoft were attempting to generate media hype for their soon-to-be-launched XBox console, and after I had a rather disappointing experience attending a pre-launch event; of course, the story below has nothing to do with that experience, at all, and is simply a work of fiction. Yes.

The Magic Beer Chronicles, part 1

Imagine there’s a brewery who have created an amazing new type of magic beer. They think it’s the best type of magic beer ever made, and they have lots of impressive numbers and statistics to show that it’s at least 1000% more magic and beery than any other magic beer on the market. However, being a clever brewery, they know not everyone in the world believes numbers and therefore decide to put on a special magic beer tasting to show to let people make their own minds up.

They put adverts in the specialist magic beer press advertising the tasting. The adverts tell people to go to the brewery’s website and register for it, and if they do, they will be sent a special golden ticket which will allow them entry to this exclusive tasting. Many people sign up for this, because they’re quite excited to find out what this impressive sounding magic beer is really like.

However, when they turn up to the tasting with their magic golden tickets, they are told the golden tickets are no longer valid, and that in fact anyone can come in, not just people who are really interested and read the specialist magic beer press. However, if they wanted to go in now, they should have told the people on the door three hours ago. If they still want to taste the magic beer, though, they can leave their names on the door and come back in three hours. Some of the public foolishly did so, in the belief that the magic beer would taste so good it would be worth it.

Slightly under three hours later, after buying and reading most of a book in Waterstones, the people with the now worthless golden tickets return at their designated time, to be told that their party’s tasting has already started, but if they hurry up they might catch the end of the tasting.

They rush inside, through a bizarre maze of tunnels all illuminated with lights the same colour as the magic beer’s packaging, and end up in a big dark room with lots of flat screens, onto which is being projected a video telling people how good the magic beer is, and showing people some of the magic the beer is capable of. The problem is, this video has been showing on the TV and internet for the last three months, and doesn’t tell anyone anything new.

Finally, they get shown into a piddly small room with three beer dispensing terminals. The people in the tasting party outnumber the beer dispensers 4 to 1, and so only about 1 in 4 people actually get to try the magic beer. But that’s hardly a problem, because the beer is dispensed in tiny thimbles with really big handles anyway, and there’s nothing like enough there for them to see how magic it is. Once those people have tried the beer, everyone is ushered out, and given a load of crisps and sweets which have nothing to do with the beer except that their packaging is the same colour as the magic beer’s packaging. They then find themselves, 5 minutes after they went in, standing on the street wondering vaguely if there was any fucking point at all in wasting the last three hours of their life in a futile attempt to be marketed at.

And then they get given a hat.

Brian just bought a new domain, and to celebrate, he’s done some research, FOX News style, and found out lots of things that are true.

Castle Technology, who bought the licence for RISC OS off PACE (who acquired it off Element 14, formerly Acorn Computers, when they finally went tits up a few years back) have revoked RISCOS Ltd‘s licence to sell RISC OS (press release here).

In other news, this dead horse I’ve got just won’t get up and go, no matter how much I keep beating it.

I know I shouldn’t find this entertaining, but I do. Sorry.

An exquisite dulcet epithalame of most mollificative suadency for juveniles amatory whom the odoriferous flambeaus of the paranymphs have escorted to the quadrupedal proscenium of connubial communion.

(no, I don’t know what it means either, but apparently it’s filthy)

The BBC have a handy guide for those who have better things to do with their lives than reading near-incomprehensible 100-year-old pornography.

If you’re feeling utterly masochistic, you can get the full text of the book here.

It’s story time!

Imagine you work at a magic brewery, as a product developer. Someone in management comes to your product development group and says that they want to try and sell the Magic Beer your product development group is currently to Armenia as well as the country you’re in. This isn’t unreasonable, as many people in Armenia like to drink Magic Beer, and if you could get the support of a Magic Beer distributor in Armenia, they could provide further funding for the development of your Magic Beer, and you could make it even better and more magical.

So, your management ask you to produce a sample bottle of Magic Beer to send over to Armenia to let the Magic Beer distributors there see, smell, taste and experience the Magic for themselves. They give you quite a tight deadline to work to, and in order to meet it, lots of people on your team will have to work some weekends, bank holidays and evenings in order to finish the bottle in time. The deadline is absolute and immovable, the team is told, because the meetings are already booked with the Armenian Magic Beer distributors, and they can’t be moved. Also, none of you get paid for working this overtime, but because everyone enjoys making Magic Beer so much, and the prospect of getting more money to make the Magic Beer even better is exciting to them all, you put the work in anyway.

The art team spend ages design a stunning logo to make the bottle look pretty; the brewing team work until their fingers bleed refining the recipe; the magicians wave their wands until no more sparks will fly making sure the beer is as absolutely magical as it can be. The hours drag on, and many problems are faced; tempers become frayed, families and social lives are neglected; but, at the end of the last day, you finally finish. The team, relieved that it’s finally finished, all sit and look, exhausted and bleary eyed, at the bottle of Magic Beer you have produced, and you all agree that it is truly a splendid thing indeed, and that even though the work was long and hard, you pulled together and produced something really worthwhile. You entrust the bottle of Magic Beer to a courier, and send it on its way to head office, ready to go to Armenia, and go home to enjoy a blissful, relaxing, work-free weekend.

Imagine how utterly delighted you are on the following Monday, then, when you get into work to discover a message from head office saying that they like the Magic Beer very much, but would like them to spend another week making it even more special and magical. You therefore conclude that you’ve made a Magic Beer so magical that it’s clearly capable of distorting time and moving immovable deadlines, because there can be no other possible explanation for why you’ve suddenly got an extra week, given that all the meeting in Armenia have all been booked and can’t be moved at all.

The above is purely and entirely a work of fiction and any similarities to any real events are entirely coincidental. Yes. *cough*

Happy birthday two days ago to me,
Happy birthday two days ago to me,
Happy birthday two days ago, Chris,
Happy birthday two days ago to me!

What a total shambles; we’re represented in Europe by a bunch of clueless, talentless idiots.

Also, I hear England lost some football match or other.