An audio recording of what Pink Floyd was up to in the night of the Moon landing, courtesy of the BBC, who as Paul McAuley puts “had bought into the 60s” enough to invite them to play live during that long night. It seems fitting to have such a mystic, psychedelic band as audio commentary on the zenith of the greatest technocratic undertaking of the twentieth century. Today both are minority interests as going concerns, objects of nostalgia to everybody else. Even to me, a longlife science fiction fan and firm believer in space exploration, the Apollo project looks obsolete, irrelevant, the last hurrah of the technocratic age. The Apollo project is an awesome, inspiring story and I’m glad we did it, but we don’t need to repeat it, just like we don’t need to repeat Dark Side of the Moon.
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Ubuntu: not just for computers anymore
Every geek should start drinking this cola, not just for the cachet, but because it’s fair trade.
Music I should not like, but do
Part one in an occasional series.
It means nothing to me.
I blame Vuijlsteke for this one.
I can’t blame anybody but myself for liking that last one, both in the original as in the Gary Jules cover below.
The referee is checking the doors
We may not understand cricket, half our national team may just be amateurs but the Netherlands just thrashed England in the opening game of the World Twenty20:
This wasn’t to be the case as Tom de Grooth steered the Dutch to victory with a game winning 49. Early in his inning de Grooth even managed to hit a marvelous reverse sweep off the bowling of Adil Rashid for 4 into the Tavern Stand much to the delight of the large number of Dutch fans around the ground.
With ten overs gone the prospect of a stunning Dutch victory started to gain momentum. Peter Borren was playing a key roll in the middle order for the Dutch taking quick singles to ensure de Grooth took more of the strike.
De Grooth finally fell in the 13th over but the damage was already done.
No idea what this all means but it was certainly exciting watching it on the BBC replay.
Pirates and emperors
I first saw this sometime in 2002 or 2003 or so, during the runup to the War on Iraq. These days it’s strangely relevant again.