On The Jazz II

Our report, visualised with size proportional to frequency for the most common words.
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Austin Powers got his answer this week

Rob Weiss is an addiction specialist. He created the sex addiction programme at LHC.

there's a joke about black holes somewhere here.
article

Why didn't you tell me about this earlier?

Everyone loves parmesan. Well, everyone except Marissa. But she's wrong.
And you know why? Because it turns out it's ~1% umami according to todays' G2. That's right, it has a 1% "deliciousness" factor as wikipedia defines it.
I should be trying seaweed which is apparently a whopping 3% "deliciousness".

... it was already taken by Stephen Hawking.

I can't believe it. I had to write a personal statement for my applications to phd programmes in cosmology. I had the perfect title. Perfect.
But then I did a quick search to see if anyone else had used it. And who else but Stephen Hawking had used the title for this!
Still, if you're going to be beaten by someone it may as well be Hawking I guess.

Today, for the first time in ages, I was in a Sainsbury's supermarket. I used to shop there quite often but these days I don't get there much. There are two main reasons. First off the big branch, i.e. the good one, is miles away from where I live now. There is a smaller Sainsbury's local near me but it's a deathtrap.
You think I'm kidding, but this is what happened about a month ago when I was there:



that's right. The ceiling fell down and almost took out that lady. Nice. I've only been back once since but I left pretty quick. I think even Evel Knievel probably just wanted his groceries when he popped to the supermarket. Thanks Sainsbury's but I can live without the adrenaline rush of cheating imminent death every time I buy food.

Anyway, back to the point. Today I was in the big Sainsbury's. The one which, I assume, actually has a stable ceiling. As I was cruising around with my trolley, checking out the merch (new Tropicana blood orange/normal orange mix? Sounds like it might be worth trying sometime but for now I'll stick to pure Sanguinello - don't see much point in reducing the awesome content), something caught my eye. It appeared that Sainsbury's were actually selling a Spam Filter in the chilled meats section. Obviously I had to back up and find out what the hell was going on.

It turns out that what I had (mis)read as it fleeted through my peripheral vision was 'Spam Fritters'. Which of course isn't particularly exciting but I have to admit it does make a lot more sense.

You should be too.

That old trick?

Nice try Apple.

OK, here's the deal - as you undoubtedly know I'm quite lazy. In the same way that I quite like music. Thus you would think that I would be within Apple's ideal demographic for their iTunes Music Store. The kind of person who really wants music but can't be bothered to physically go and buy it should be the kind of person who could singlehandedly download us all out of this recession.

Having previously been, in a previous life, something of an audiophile I'm actually kind of recovering. My primary source these days is my laptop, though admittedly via a rather nice (but cheap) DAC. And so whilst I would not previously have contemplated buying a nasty compressed music file*, last night I figured that for something like Generation Landslide by Alice Cooper I could live with the compression and I almost spent my first 0.99 Bushbucks there.

So why didn't I? Because of stupid-ass region locking. I clicked 'buy' but I wasn't allowed to buy the track. I first registered for the ITMS when I was in the US (so I could download Guardian podcasts). Now, I'm sure I could re-register in the UK - but you know what? The thing that makes it really good for lazy people, where you get music without having to go and buy it... Amazon also has this feature. And for someone who's bought enough books, CDs, DVDs and who knows what else over the years it's all set up ready to go (both in the US and UK and any other country they have local sites in I believe). And since it comes on a CD, it's uncompressed. Bonus.


*well yes, I can hear the difference but I assume Apple ain't selling 128kbps files.

...of hard dancing.

For those of you who missed this.

Just in case you're not a nerd - there's a new Trek film coming out. Paramount are trying to re-invigorate the franchise that has rather lost its way in recent years with a whole new 're-imagining' (stupid, stupid Hollywood term) packaged up as a sort of prequel/how-it-all-began story (this is apparently still fashionable - damn you Lucas).

Anyway they have J.J.Abrams on board, who apart from sharing a name with a main battle tank and the progenitor of the Israelites, is hot stuff in the movie biz these days. The point is, I think we can expect a fairly large facelift as evinced by this picture:



Why is Joey on the Enterprise?


and this quote from the linked article:

'We weren't making a movie for fans of Star Trek. We were making a movie for fans of movies.'

OK, that's fine. As long as he realises that people who liked Transformers are not fans of movies.

So this is what I'm calling. It's very mundane but I'm so certain of it I'm going to put it out there. When the new film comes out there will be at least one review with the following headline:

It's Star Trek (Jim), but not as we know it

guaranteed. Or your money back.

but one has to admit this is pretty cool.

So this is kind of why it would have been a good idea to not piss off every other country in the World over the last 8 years.
Just saying.

For those with time on their hands:





Also be sure to take a look at ted.org

so tonight I was pretty exhausted from a 3-hour maths-a-thon so I decided to just chill out and make something I've been thinking of for a while. Give it a second and it'll make perfect sense: