I notice that everyone’s favourite slow, clunky and nearly unusable photo sharing site has finally left beta. Now, obviously, this is a troubling development for the Web2.0 world, because – as we all know – everything in Web2.0 has to be in a permanent test phase, otherwise they might have to stop producing useless buggy pieces of AJAX uselessness and actually release something. So, their solution? They’re now in gamma! Yep, that’s right – throw away your software engineering textbook, Granddad, here at flickr, we’re rewritin’ the rules! Yeehaw!

I notice that the good people over at wankr have had an update, too.

I proposed. She accepted.

I am happy.

This website shouldn’t be anything like as interesting as it is. Maybe it’s the fact that my dad is a civil engineer or something.

I assume you want to get to Old Trafford. You are, as you may or may not realise, quite some way away from it. At your current rate of progress, I reckon that you’ll probably make it by about the half time, assuming that your stumblings down the centre of the road don’t lead to you getting hit by a bus. Might I politely suggest you get a taxi? And also, that you shut the hell up. Thanks.

Our pastor is on sabbatical at the moment. Apparently, one of the books he’s been studying during this time is that good ol’ heretic Brian McLaren‘s manifesto for the Emergent movement, A Generous Orthodoxy. Given how much this book has upset the TR types (and I’m working on the assumption my pastor isn’t one here, which I hope is a valid assumption) I’m taking this as a very positive sign inded.

I snapped this video with my phone last night at the Fiery Furnaces gig. I’m quite impressed with the quality – you can actually, like, make out the song and everthing. It would be longer, but someone wanted to get to the bar and I was in their way.

It seems The Fiery Furnaces whole purpose in life is to confound expectations. After releasing the critically acclaimed (but widely misunderstood) 2004 avant-schizoid-pop get-it-or-don’t album Blueberry Boat, they went and recorded a sprawling concept album entitled Rehearsing My Choir about their grandmother – with their grandmother on guest vocals – to near complete critical derision (although, it has to be said, I think it’s great and actually far more accessible than Blueberry Boat). At the same time, they recorded Bitter Tea, which is a more logical successor to Blueberry Boat, except more bleepy-synthy-poppy (insofar as the songs have a recognisable structure) and with around 50% of the vocal parts recorded backwards.

So, obviously, when playing live, they tour as a White Stripes-esque garage-psychadelia-prog-blues-rock band, reducing their 11-minute sprawling operettas down to 3-minute blistering aural assaults. That’s not to say the songs aren’t recognisable – all the hooks and riffs from the originals are there, and the lyrics and melodies (insofar as there are any) are still broadly the same – but they’ve sped everything up by a factor of two, changed all the time signatures and stripped all the keyboard and synth parts out.

And – and this is the crazy thing – after all of this, they’re still completely recognisable: if you ‘got’ Blueberry Boat, this all made perfect sense. It would be very nearly impossible to recreate their recorded and produced schizophrenic pop sound on stage – so they don’t even try. Instead, they strip everything back to basics and then go at it all cylinders blazing. And it works brilliantly.

You’ve never heard anything quite like them, but really, you owe it to yourself to give them a go. They’re really quite something.

FAA manages air traffic with Linux

The Federal Aviation Administration has saved $15 million by migrating computers that manage air traffic flow to Linux, according to an announcement issued last week. The upgrade is part of a broader service-oriented architecture initiative that will replace proprietary traffic management systems with applications using Java, Web services, open-source software and Oracle products.

If there’s one class of application that really, really doesn’t need a hideous, bloated, complex, consultant clusterfuck of buzzword-laden bullshit behind it, it’s the software that stops giant lumps of metal in the sky crashing into each other. I mean, sure, this is great for all the Open Source weenies now, but when four hundred people die in a screaming ball of fiery death because some sweaty, greasy fingered thirteen-year old in his parents’ basement missed a bracket at 2am, are they going to just sit there and say:

Well, if you found a bug, submit a patch and maybe it’ll get in the next release.

I say again: We are all going to die.

Having been invited round for tea with Richard and Fiona, I finally met Sven and his lovely girlfriend Bryony tonight. Well, to be completely correct about it, I met Sven for the first time and Bryony, apparently, for the second time, because it seems she actually came round my flat once a couple of years ago for a party we had, but I had no idea who she was then; apparently she knew a friend of my flatmate’s, or something. The world truly is a strange, small place.

Also, I spent nearly all of this evening with my shirt on inside out, but insisted that it wasn’t. It was, of course. I hope I didn’t look foolish.

This is a link to a story that features its title – “This is the title of this story, which is also found several times in the story itself” – several times within the story itself.