Two charity songs have recently appeared on YouTube. First we have the youngsters and a collaborative project called ChartJackers with a song called I’ve Got Nothing for Children in Need.

Roomba Pacman video embedded below from YouTube. There is serious science and software behind this. Roomba Roomba stick it up your jumper.

An amazing historic clip has appeared on YouTube (embedded below). It shows London in colour from 1927. Things I noticed: the sky is blue, everyone wears hats and England beat Australia at the Oval. The film, The Open Road, was made be Claude Friese-Greene, who together with his father is one of the early pioneers of colour film. Sounds like a fascinating chap.

One of the things that irks me about China is the service (or lack of it) at some restaurants. The New York Times has just posted a two parter called 100 Things Restaurant Staffers Should Never Do Part 1 and Part 2. They hit the nail right on the head with some of my favourite China dining experiences. For example:

Have you noticed your new CDs are louder than your old CDs (or even albums)? That’s because the volume has been turned up in the mastering process. This results in a loss of dynamics (less difference between quiet and loud) and hence a worse sounding record. Now there’s an industry organisation called Turn Me Up campaigning for a return to dynamics. They’ve made a demo video (embedded below from YouTube) which demonstrates the effects. Music Machinery has an excellent entry (complete with graphs) on this subject and here’s the Wikipedia article. Quiet is the new…

The BBC is reporting that Disney, after more than a decade of negotiations, has finally got the go ahead from the Beijing government to buy land in Shanghai for a Disneyland. Wonder if they’ll cave on smoking like they did in Hong Kong.

So, my Dad and Mum came over for a visit recently and we got talking about Wikipedia. They’d never looked at it before so I pulled it up at the page for Cleethorpes (where they live) and I was scrolling through it showing them the page when my Dad’s name leapt out at me. Wow. Fame at last. He’s web famous for helping Cleethorpes win a gold award in the RHS’s Britain in Bloom competition. Proud son.

The below with apologies to Paul Simon…