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More Harry Potter news. I’ve heared now from THREE sources that it’s called Goblet of Fire. So that’s that then. Apparently a warehouse worker at the Canadian printer nicked a copy and sold it to a journalist.

Well, wouldn’t you?

By the way, the whole Secret Title thing is a load of bollocks. What more do we know now? Nothing. To be honest I was reminded of when I heard that Star Wars Episode One was called Phantom Menace. What a dull title. Hype ends in disapointment, so any chance to ruin the hype is a good thing.

“And so the young man closed his eyes, stuck his arms on the horizontal and
followed them blindly into the fog.”

Matthew Lawrenson’s Blog

As someone who has been there many times at 3.00am with no local shops open, I pass this on as a public service to all those who have run out of fags and found themselves with a packet of Rizzla and a rather full ashtray. Yes, the two can go together. Here’s how.

The new Harry Potter book is apparently called Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, I hear from my somewhat reliable sources. Whether this is true or not we shall find out on July 8th but in the meanwhile, here’s a handy guide to getting it cheap.

Amazon have it for £8.99 plus postage. However, the winner so far is Waterstone’s online who are busting the profit margins with 50% off at £7.50. Plus, and this is the diamond, you can pick it up from a local shop for free. I’m not merely advertising my employer here. This is CHEAP! Even with my staff discount I couldn’t get close to this. Actually, if you were buying from Bloomsbury at trade you couldn’t get close to this. This loss-leading is going to end soon I’m sure, but in the short term, get Harry for bugger all cash.

Goblet of Fire… Hmm…

No posts for a few days - sorry about that but it was Kate’s birthday on wednesday and I decided to not switch the computer on for a few days. It didn’t stop her from checking her email on her birthday but she didn’t have any. If anyone who knows her wants to email her use kate@bugpowder.com.

I was planning to write some stuff tonight but I got stuck in a pub and now I’m drunk. Sorry!

(not really)

Just a quick one. Darren Powell, who comics people should know as the writer of Sin, is in a band called The Terrapins who also have downloads on Peoplesound. Go listen.

And then while I was checking the mp3.com site for the link below (…) I remembered how when someone told me about the James Kochalka listing there it darn near changed my life somewhat, a little bit.

I’ve been playing around with People Sound to find the Linus link for below and was amused by how they assume that their unsigned bands are not going to be searched for. You can enter “Blur” in the search box and bring up a load of bands who reckon they sound like Blur (nothing wrong with this. MP3.com do it), but if you put in “Linus” it finds nothing, even though Linus have their own home page.

This is another case of me getting on my high horse, but when will site designers realise that all people will not necessarily want to access their site in the same way? It wouldn’t take much to put a general search engine on that searched in both the “sounds like” and the “is called” fields. Make the site usable and people will use it!

Today I had my first band rehearsal in over 12 years, playing drums for Linus, who comix people will know as Andy Robert’s long-running band. To the rest of you this will mean nothing but hey, I played with Linus!

It was very odd playing drums for the first time since I was 16, especially with three people who’ve been playing together for nearly a decade, but it went well and it was good to hit things with sticks for a couple of hours. I even kept time, most of the time…

I’ve been looking for a decent weather site for ages, mainly for the cool looking satellite pictures but also because I can never keep concentration through a radio weather broadcast. God knows why I didn’t find this earlier….

The Met Office

Had a weird tube journey home. Someone I hadn’t seen for over four years, and who I last saw in a different city, got on the Northern Line at Angel and got off at my stop. She was pissed and didn’t recognise me but it was fucking weird and shook me up for some reason. Like a ghost from the past suddenly crashing into your life. She’s not even someone I knew well back then, just someone who was there at the time. Strange.

Had an interview today at 2000AD for the position of Assistant Editor. I won’t hear for a week but I do know there were over 100 applicants and I was one of a shortlist of seven, which is nice!

Brett sent me this but since I don’t know where he got it from (an email probably) I can’t give credit. Worth posting up if only as a warning to budding web enterprenuers. The web is not going to replace the rest of life as we know it, merely compliment it.

They’re calling it shops or “S-Commerce” and it’s being rolled out
in Cities and towns nationwide. “It’s a real revelation,” according to
Malcolm Fosbury, a middleware engineer from Hillingdon. “You just
walk into one of these shops and they have all sorts of things for
sale.” Fosbury was particular impressed by a clothes shop he
discovered while browsing in central London. “Shops seem to be the
ideal medium for transactions of this type. I can actually try out a
jacket and see if it fits me. Then I can visualize the way I would
look if I was wearing the clothing.” This is possible using a high
definition 2D viewing system, or “mirror” as it has become known.

Shops, which are frequently aggregated into shopping portals or "high streets", are becoming increasingly popular with the cash-rich time-poor generation of new consumers. Often located in densely populated areas people can find them extremely convenient.

And Malcolm is not alone in being impressed by shops. “Some days I
just don’t have the time to download huge Flash animations of rotating
trainers and then wait five days for them to be delivered in the hope
that they will actually fit,” says Sandra Bailey, a systems analyst
from Chelsea. “This way I can actually complete the transaction in
real time and walk away with the goods.” Being able see whether or
not shoes and clothing fit has been a real bonus for Bailey, “I used
to spend my evenings boxing up gear to return. Sometimes the clothes
didn’t fit, sometimes they just sent the wrong stuff.”

Shops have a compelling commercial story to tell too, according to
Gartner Group retail analyst Carl Baker. “There are massive
efficiencies in the supply chain. By concentrating distribution to a
series of high volume outlets in urban centres-typically close to

where people live and work-businesses can make dramatic savings in
fulfillment costs. Just compare this with the wasteful practise of
delivering items piecemeal to people’s homes.”

Furthermore, allowing consumers to receive goods when they actually
want them could mean an end to the frustration of returning home to
find a despatch notice telling you that your goods are waiting in a
delivery depot the other side of town.

But it’s not just the convenience and time-saving that appeals to
Fosbury, “Visiting a shop is real relief for me. I mean as it is I
spend all day in front of a f*****g computer.”

Yay!

I was wondering where Mitzy had gotten to and stumbled upon his site. As expected, content LOW but way kewl!

The RIP (Regulation of Invesgatory powers) Bill, which would allow MI5 to demand access to encripted and personal emails and web content (See The Guardian’s summary), looks set to be defeated by the Lords (they do have a use - I always thought an unelected assembly had something going for it), which is a relief. While I don’t think MI5 would be able to sift through the millions of tedious emails that I alone send, let along everyone else, I do have severe misgivings about the nature of Jack Straw’s latest baby, coming hot on the heals of him making me a terrorist by merely by offering support to direct actions types. Interestingly he has invited the wrath of both the radical civil liberties types as well as the conservative business types. Yes, this will surely fail but we have to be careful that he doesn’t try it again.

Who’s worse, Jack Straw or Michael Howard? That used to be a joke.

Tried to get on the Millennium Bridge today but it was still cordoned off letting people on only as people came off and about 200 people were queuing to get on. Reckon it’d take an hour to get to the Tate so I still haven’t been there yet. It’s a mightily impressive structure, all said, and I can’t wait until I’m able to have my lunch in the middle of it (I work five minutes away).

Apparently the bridge has now been closed for a couple of weeks because it was swaying too much (see Guardian). Bleeding safety fascists! Bridges are supposed to move and flex, otherwise the pressure would make them snap. Just because it moves a lot when it’s packed full of more people than it was ever designed for doesn’t make it unsafe! Stupid people! Stupid!

Bah.

slashdot, the forum for techy nerdy programer types like Jez, someone has reviewed Naomi Klein’s
No Logo and discussion has followed. Surprisingly late for such a bunch of anti-Microsoft, pro Open Source people, but interesting to read.

Phillip Greenspun’s web site photo.net has been redesigned with java pull-down menus and a download time 5 times longer than before. Since Phillip preached the virtues of simple web design in his book Philip And Alex’s Guide To Web Publishing (which I highly recommend) this move with the times has worried some users on the photo.net feedback page