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I had to ask him to repeat himself. The representative from Remy Martin had just told me that the bottle of Cognac was one of only 30 in the country, and that the bottle was black crystal; made using an entirely new process for Remy. Such facts are not so unusual, however, in the world of spirits. The statement that had caused my mind to briefly shut down was that it was worth £5000. My bartenders calculator immediately told me that was almost £200 per measure, meaning that it could retail in a bar for about £1000 a snifter (guessing conservatively). This is not a cognac for use in a Sidecar. When the cost of a spirit approaches this sort of telephone number level, one has to wonder if there is some sort of massive practical joke being played, if not on oneself, but on the entire industry.

Sorry I've been quiet on the blog for a while. Expect a more extensive update over the weekend. Meanwhile, enjoy this image!.

Briefly, an article on the openDemocracy blog about organic farming and David Milliband. By me. Obviously.

on machine-envy about links between the Popperian open society and Agile Software Development, a very user-centred method of designing effective software, following a number of very socio-political rules. This dovetails nicely with my feelings on usability and the importance of thinking about the end-user in everything, from making web pages to making democracies.
Go read; it is definitely worth it.
And here's a link to Open society and It's Enemies.

Christmas is almost upon us, so I have been thinking about what this years 'gift' is going to be. Without sounding like a filthy socialist, I've given up on buying dull presents for everyone that I know, barring the 'kids' in the family, my very sweet nephew(soon to be nephews) and niece. So I've been thinking about what I should do with some of my hard-earned cash for this winter, and I've decided to use Kiva to help provide capital for some small businesses in the developing world. Kiva provides microfinance seed and cashflow loans to small businesses in developing nations, and getting involved in it is a great way to provide help and support without doing it through a faceless bureaucratic charity. Each loan that you make has a repyment term, after which point your money is given back; and Kiva boasts of a 100% repayment rate! OF course, I'll be reinvesting my loan repayments in other businesses when they vest.

Great news this morning from the BBC ; it appears that the Gower Report has recommended that copyright term for recorded work remain at the current length of 50 years, not be extended to 95 years. This is despite extensive lobbying behind the scenes from the major record industry players and high-profile artists, such as Cliff Richards.
Interestingly, however, the BBC appear to be the only people reporting this. Is it possible that someone from the Gowers report has leaked this information in order to hold the government to task when the full report comes out (we're expecting it Wednesday 6th December at 12.30)? At least that way, if the Government does turn round and support the lobbying of the large record labels, it will be clear that this is not what Gowers recommended, so there is a clear accountability issue. Certainly the wording of the article suggests that this is a preliminary announcement before the main report arrives, so let's hope that now the results of the inquiry have entered the public domain, there will be enough pressure on the government to act on these recommendations.

The OLPC programme is not only producing the cutest laptop since the clamshell ibook(yes, I still hanker for a pretty green one), but I really think that it is a very important social and political tool.
Now, this isn't really about the amazingly low price, or the revolutionary memory, display, battery and cool touchpad. No, my favourite feature is without a doubt the cute bunny ear wireless mesh antenna, with a 1/2 mile range. Yes. half a mile. For my less technical visitors, a wireless mesh network is very different from your broadband at home. It requires no central 'router' or hub; rather each machine acts as a router, passing information to machines that are closer to the eventual destination of the information. The OLPC can work in networks of up to 1000 machines, eventually. That's a line 500 miles long, of people able to share documents, talk, watch each others video, play collaboratively with music, graphics and other media, and generally interact in ways that are incomprehensible right now. Mesh networks really do not exist in any particularly large scale in countries like Englandl we still have such a large copper and fibre optic backbone running around that there is no need to implement the system, although some remote rural areas use WiMAX mesh networks to provide a whole community with broadband from a single satellite connection.