Defenestrated

UK government advocates open source

This is truly fantastic. The UK government has decided that, where there is little price difference between open source and commercial products, open source should be selected due to its inherent flexibility. The initiative is also promoting re-use of product evaluations, and has created an open forum where the public can view and contribute to the action plan. Great stuff!

Watch "The Damned United"

Even if you've never heard of Brian Clough or Leeds United, The Damned United promises to be as good as Frost/Nixon. Clough remains one of the most divisive figures in English football, even though he's been dead for years. This tells the story of his 44 days in charge of Leeds United and, written by Peter Morgan (who wrote The Queen and Frost/Nixon) and starring Michael Sheen, Timothy Spall, and Jim Broadbent, it's got the story and cast to be truly special. Just like Cloughie.

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Medals medals medals

Team Great Britain did fantastically well at this year's Summer Olympics, beating all expectations and winning an unprecedented number of medals....even if many were in "The sitting down sports," as our Australian cousins noted.

However, Team GB has also done extraordinarily well in the Paralympics, as this table shows, coming second only to China in the medal count.

I'm not sure what Brits are putting in their tea these days, but it's working.

Can We Have A Referee?

The English Football Association has launched a campaign to improve how referees are treated in football. Part of that campaign is this fantastic video that features some very well-known ex-players and (some not so well-known) celebrities. Genius.

Mozy for Mac - backup does not start [updated]

I've been a Mozy for Mac user for a couple of months now and my backup (which is admittedly very large) still hasn't completed for the first time, despite my machine being left on pretty much 24x7. I am backing up a LOT of data (over 85GB) so I knew it was going to take a while but one problem seems to have been recurring, preventing the backup even starting on many occasions. Here are two typical sections of the Mozy.log file.

BBC's Olympics movie is fantastic

The Beeb has collaborated with Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett (of Gorillaz fame) to produce this fantastic sequence to promote and introduce their Olympics coverage. Only the BBC could possibly have pulled this off with such aplomb. During my childhood, a dubbed-for-English broadcast Chinese series called "Monkey Magic!" was shown on BBC2 regularly. It's something of a cult hit. That show was inspired by the same story as this Olympics sequence, so it's doubly sweet for Brits like me.

Dr. Horrible

This looks fun! A sci-fi, action hero musical, directed by Joss Whedon? Count me in.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Capitalism's evolution?

The image of George Washington on the left, outside the Corcoran Gallery, has the title "American Evolution". That's Mao Tse Tung on the right. Is this suggesting that America will become more like China, or the other way around?

iPhone now up

Seems like I suffered enough like everyone else, and my phone came back up and was restored with the luvverly version 2.0 software earlier this afternoon. It was definitely worth the hassle! If you're having trouble with either of the messages I posted earlier, stick at it; eventually you'll get through it.