Outside my normal realm of experience but totally enthralled by the beauty of the dancing in these two clips:   La Peuve Par 4 in the 2010 Juste Debout   Turf Feinz, RIP RichD, DANCING in the RAIN

Musequality helps the most vulnerable of the vulnerable i.e. poor children in poor countries.  For those just starting life's journey but born with the odds stacked against them, it offers the glimmer of an alternative to a short and hard life. Teaching kids to play musical instruments seems, at first, a frivilous way to challenge poverty and suffering but on deeper reflection it is a far better approach than handouts of food, clothing, etc that perpetuate the sense of reliance/impotence/victimhood.  Teaching a skill empowers the child, allows them to gain a control over their destiny that they would not otherwise have, develops their confidence, and provides a livlihood and a passport to a better life for them, their families and their commuinties.  The benefits are individual and social, and musicianship is, of course, a skill that brings pleasure to all. So, why not postpone that steak-dinner, or accessory, and help make a real difference to another human being's life?  Share the wealth, share the love.

Behavioural Analytics is a term used to describe the combination of strategies and tools that allow marketing teams to identify individual consumers and their consumption preferences and behaviours. It is an advance on mere web-analytics which tends only to show general patterns and isolated activities but cannot identify a specific user nor track them across multiple platforms or over time (see detail/caveats below). Behavioural Analytics works best when hooked into as many different data sources as possible i.e. not just web but also databases of subscriptions and the like.   Level One analytics, as exemplified by Google Analytics, is the most basic, and oldest form of analytics, having evolved in number over time as new platforms emerged.  User-reporting ‘channels’ are confined by platform i.e. EMAIL, DISPLAY, SOCIAL, MOBILE, PPC (search), AFFILIATES, WEBSITES.  Each channel requires separate tracking ‘tags’.  Many channels require many tags, which results in such a volume that they require a dedicated management solution (this cost one operator £14,000pa per tag). This linear, one-channel, tracking is fine so long as users do not diverge from a purely linear journey.  If they do hop platforms (the most common/usual user behaviour), reporting becomes problematic as duplications and incomplete transactions introduce anomalies.  These limitations gave rise ...

I am raising money for charity (Musequality) and am close to my £1,000 target so, if you haven’t already, please do take the time to donate.  Many thanks!   The ‘run’ turned into more of a walk.  Every place we stayed offered large breakfasts, which we felt compelled to accept, meaning no running for the morning.  Then you have lunch and the heat of midday...yes, the weather was good and, yes, we took a leisurely approach.  So, our eight days of running turned into eight afternoons – perhaps an hour per day.  Still, we did cover the 120miles over sometimes challenging terrain (alleviated by sometimes decent pubs) and we did touch the two seas (Irish and North).   The countryside was wonderful: Spring blossoms of whites and yellows everywhere; scent of these and wild garlic (in the woods); newborn animals (curious, wary, heedless); clean clean air; birdsong...really uplifting.  This, and the fine company of good friends, made it a thoroughly enjoyable experience from start to end.   Only Andy escaped injury – his patent, much discussed, ‘two-sock’ technique clearly proving its worth.  Simon’s Achilles Heel was his Achilles Heel and I managed to develop a blister in the first ten-minutes of day one but, properly dressed, ...

Ingredients: Rump steak Butter Salt & Pepper Honey (optional) Garlic (optional) Red wine Notes/Aim: The crappier the steak, the more need for additional flavours (e.g. honey and garlic) to compensate. Quality ingredients are always key but especially when there’s only one!  There are various cuts you can use but I get rump, if possible.  In my opinion, you can tell a good steak by eating a raw morsel – it should taste buttery and sweet and melt in the mouth (even raw) – it’s very very rare. Ideally, I’d look for an ‘aged’ nicely ‘marbled’ (fine network of fat) piece of meat.  I’d get the butcher to cut it about 2-inches thick.  However, I almost always end up getting a supermarket pack... Pre-packaged steaks are rather thin to achieve my aim, which is to end up with a steak that is ‘blue’ or ‘rare’ in the centre but medium on the outside.  I want to preserve the natural ‘raw’ texture and taste but add the extra complexity gained through cooking. Being so thin it doesn’t take long for the inner steak to get cooked so if, like me, you want a deep ruby interior you have to cook very briefly.  However, if you also want to get lovely caramelisation/browning you need to ...

Sweden has the most progressive and protective publishing laws in the world.  Thus, Assange and WikiLeaks were hoping to base themselves in Sweden.  The criminal charges brought against Assange, by Swedish authorities, conveniently torpedoes this possibility.  Is this bad luck, or just one move designed to close one of their escape routes?  Conspiracy theories abound but my feeling is that the events are coincidental.  However, that does not mean that opportunistic enemies of Assange have not used them to his detriment. Assange has no fixed abode.  His paranoia and evangelical zeal drive him to lead an itinerant life – reliant on the generosity of supporters for lodgings.  This helps contextualise the following story of his Swedish trip: Miss A (Anna Ardin), having invited Assange to speak to a campaign group in the town of Enkoping, suggested he stay in her flat.  Both Miss A and Assange concur that they had sex the night before the event, and that the condom split. The following day, Miss A attended the event with Assange and helped facilitate.  The second accuser, Miss W (Sofia Wilén), was also present and subsequently accompanied Assange to lunch.  Afterwards the pair went to the cinema, where she told police she performed ...

The furore around the US Diplomatic Cables leaks is incredibly revealing of the real state of democracy in the world today.  Ignore the leaks themselves, of far greater interest and insight is the behaviour of the world’s governments toward this threat.  The mask is off and what is revealed is ugly. The ‘facts’ come to me only through the filter of the media and even where these facts are reliable they are still open to much interpretation.  However, the timeline below is as accurate as I can make it and the events it describes are very suggestive.  I give my own analysis and interpretation after. Julian Assange is Editor in Chief of WikiLeaks.org (DNS: 213.251.145.96) TIMELINE (I will be updating this timeline on an ad hoc basis) 28 Nov 2010, first instalment of US diplomatic cables released on WikiLeaks.org. 28 Nov 2010, DDOS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack starts against WikiLeaks website servers. 29 Nov 2010, the US and Australian governments launch criminal investigations into Assange’s role in the leaks. 30 Nov 2010, the Swedish authorities issue a European Arrest Warrant accusing Assange of ‘sex crimes’ during his trip there in Aug 2010. 30 Nov 2010, an Interpol 'Red Notice' is issued at the request of the Swedish ...

'The world is my country, science is my religion.' - Christiaan Huygens, Dutch Physicist (1629-1695) Wonderful perspective: liberating, bold, passionate. Suggesting that science can be cognate with religion might seem dangerous but, I think, is only an admission/understanding that even the most rational humans are only human and therefore prone to the emotional influences that can lead to the irrational excesses of religion.  At the same time, the passions that lead to excess are also what drive us to excel - intellect without emotion is impotent.  Tension of opposites, contradictions and the need for balance...

At thirteen I fell in love with Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings'.  I devoured as much of his work as I could find and then set about reading his sources and anything else that could broaden and deepen my experience of Middle Earth.  Not long after, I was exposed to a comic-strip in 2000AD called 'Slaine' - written by Pat Mills and illustrated by Simon Bisley - masters of their art.  This comic-strip added a brutality and strangeness that Tolkien's more theologically Christian work limits.  Complimentary and yet very different, the combination of Tolkien and Slaine drew me inexorably to the well-spring of their inspiration: the Ulster-cycle, the Icelandic sagas, and Beowulf. In pursuit of Cu Chulainn, I made him the subject of my dissertation and visits to Ireland.  I made it to Iceland a couple of years later, and this year I sought the Denmark of Beowulf.  This I found not far from Roskilde. In the mid-eighties, Roskilde Museum excavated a site near the village of Gammel Lejre.  This revealed a mighty 'Hall of Kings' - the biggest of its type and time.  If Heorot has a home, this is surely it. The model pictured is a reconstruction of the 11m x ...

Poor Moot was soaked through. His big ears became very heavy and hung down, stretching his head to either side making his neck ache with the effort of trying to hold them up. Moot became more and more miserable and just thought on how silly he’d been to leave his nice, warm and, especially, dry bed to go wandering, who knows where? The rain kept falling and by now Moot was very tired. He could barely move because of how heavy he had become. Each step was a ponderous effort and, at last, his soggy woollen legs buckled under him and he fell flat on his front, making a sloppy wet sound as he did. Moot lay there not moving, actually relieved to be free from the strain of carrying his own weight. Without the effort of moving to keep him warm, Moot soon began to feel chilly and as he got colder he began to feel very sorry for himself. Moot felt like crying. But before the first tear could leave his eyes Moot stopped himself, thinking: ‘Is this the kind of behaviour one would expect of a fully-grown Moot? What would people think if every time things got difficult I ...