Really nice little program to download rss/xml headlines onto your ipod- if you have an ipod which, of course, everyone should. Also grabs weather reports and even lyrics for any songs (though I haven’t checked this yet). Only downside is that it jams the headlines and weather reports (and I guess the lyrics as well) into the contacts subdirectory. I might have messed up the installation but it seems a shame that they haven’t got their own section in the extras directory. Maybe this will be ironed out in the finished version, though its possible that this is a case of difficulties with coding the ipod itself. It can be a bit of a bore wading through long files with the scroll wheel, but there’s not much that can be done about that- the ipod remains a half decent PDA attached to a brilliant MP3 player. I just wish I had a 10 or 20GB model.

Huzzah!! Crack open the truffles and quaff a fine Margaux Arts and Letters Daily is back! Now run under the auspices of the Chronicle of Higher Education. Check out their Press Release.

After an upstanding, decent weekend I cracked yesterday and went out drinking in Camden. Went to Dublin Castle to see a friend's, sister's, friend's, friend's band (Spectrum- not great/not too bad), Nine Dogs Deep likewise not great/not terrible and 'headliners' Alfalpha. A really infuriating set that had some cracking tunes but then pissed it away with a really bad 'laid back' song they played towards the end. Not entirely surprising they're about to be dropped by their label.

After hearing from Virgin that there might be the possibility of putting an Oliver Stone book together, I figured that I ought to do a little research, hence all these links. Mostly for my reference they represent a quick google skim on the subject. Stone/Aaronofsky interview ; fan site; list of films; intriguing DVD- check out boxset; review of that boxset; an American hero?; biography; profile; radical films; Oliver Stone as agent of the devil!

Back during the Clinton presidency, a friend of mine showed me an adjunct to the White House website featuring an entertaining profile of all (at that point) forty two presidents complete with their official portraits. I was trying to track it down today, to illustrate my last post, but instead came across this. I'm not sure what's most amusing, the continuing, derogatory references to 'Liberals', the description of Nixon as "ever the paragon of honesty and fairplay", the colourful phrases such as "Many of our nation's greatest men have resided at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where they have steered our country away from Godless anarchy, and into the rainbow-hued horizon of steadfast social morality", the dubious historical assertions such as "Dwight Eisenhower, who single-handedly defeated Nazism", the description of the whole thing as "non partisan" or the fact that, as I just realised, the whole things an elaborate spoof. Once again I find myself the last person on the internet to get the joke. Nonetheless, it is very funny, and almost believable. Oh, and the (very good) presidents' website can be found here.

Staved off the ennui of unemployment with a day of culture yesterday. A magnificent walk from Camden to Pimlico, stopping off at Gosh for some fine comics (cornerstone of any cultural outing), then on to the National Portrait Gallery to see an exhibition of American portraits, on loan from the Smithsonian. Interesting, but I do find large collections of painted portraits rather numbing- the photographs were much more intriguing. A surprising lack of presidents, but while at the time we believed that this was due to their portraits being in the White House it turns out that the Smithsonian maintains a gallery of Presidents- maybe they just didn't want to loan any, though they seemed quite happy to let a rare painting of Washington and photograph of Lincoln out of the country. Finally we went to the Gainsborough exhibition at Tate Britain. Very good, very engrossing and I knew nothing about the painter before I went! Definitely worth going, but I feel it's going to get very busy at the weekends.

Been kind of a busy week, preparing for the Civil Service Fast Stream exam that utterly defeated me yesterday. Anyway, onwards and upwards and another application form posted off this morning. Consolingly, the book seems to be selling pretty well, and there has even been a journalist looking for quotes from us! I missed the call sadly, but free advertising is all good- I guess I'll have to put my ambitions to become a Maconie-esque pundit on the back burner.

Watching Sky News and the new Virgin advert popped up, where a young woman gives birth on one of their new trains. Just wondering if it's a subtle hint that entire generations will live and die while waiting for the 17.15 from Euston to reach Birmingham.

Went to the press day at the new Bond exhibition in the Science Museum for Shiny Shelf today. Pretty good stuff; a huge range of original props and design sketches and a rather clever, almost narrative way of leading visitors through the exhibit. I'll have a full review on the Shiny Shelf website fairly soon (well, I'll be writing one at least) but there is one detail so petty that I know I'll have to cut it out. On a production sketch for Goldfinger's Aston Martin is a full explanation for how the homing device's map display would *work*. A micro-fiche projector behind the dashboard would project maps of Europe onto the display. The particular map shown and the location of the 'homer' being tracked would be calculated through reference to the radio beacons dotted around Europe to aid aircraft navigation. That's sorted out a problem that's been bothering me since I was about ten.

The ghastly news coming out of Bali has taken a while to really sink in. I thought I saw something about it on Saturday but it's only today that the full horror of it is being reported. It's impossible to see any point to violence like this. There is no discernible goal; if the people responsible want to weaken Western resolve they've achieved the opposite, if they want to remove all foreign tourists from the country they're likely to be more successful but all that does is guarantee Indonesia's further decline. I find myself deeply upset that people can walk the earth with their personal and political goals measured in terms of the body count they can accumulate. Sydney Morning Herald has the latest news.

Cracking article on European identity in the NY Times. This is exactly what I was thinking about in my post a few days ago. Really makes three good points; in as much as a European identity exists at present it is largely the product of zealous French involvement in the Union (ie an extension of French identity), by and large a unified European international attitude is presently defined by opposition to American foreign policy and that any national or individual concept of European identity depends greatly on a careful examination and analysis of history- both personal and on a wider scale.
This last point is by far the most pertinent. The attitude towards America is simply a reaction to Bush's arrogance. It is a rift of American manufacture and would in all probability be reversed as soon as America regains her senses. The issue of European identity is a political 'trick of the light'. The EU is not a French or Belgian hegemony, nor is it a German economic empire. Both of these perceptions are the result of an indecisive approach to the union, to how far it should go and to a misguided attempt to forge a union out of an artificially manufactured European culture. To go against what I said a few days ago European identity is an individual matter of consideration and personal decision. Having said this it is vital to establish the geographical boundaries in which we are to anchor our decision.

Well, though the bfi haven't got round to it yet, the Guardian has a full transcript of the Le Carre interview from last Saturday. You can really get the flavour of the anecdotes from the text, though it's a shame there are no audio extracts- Le Carre's Guinness impression was uncanny.

I think London is by far at its best in the winter. At the very least it makes me feel better stuck inside poring over my 'How to Pass...' books. It is also much more pleasant stalking around the grey streets peering over a scarf in a blustery wind than fuming and sweating in an overheated tube carriage or under a sunless, muggy sky. Or maybe I'm just odd.

And the enlargement of the EU rumbles on. Ultimately there is little to say against the majority of the proposals- all are 'European' countries. What is alarming is the lack of conviction as to where 'Europe' ends. The proposed admission of Turkey is taking the union on thin ice (and not just because of that country's appalling human rights record). To make a flippant analogy it's like Israel's bizarre participation in the Eurovision song contest. Perhaps part of the problem with widespread anti Euro and European feeling in this country is this lack of a cohesive philosophy, not just on the aims and methods of the Union but what Europe is and where it begins and ends. Of course this idea would swiftly hit several geopolitical realities; definition of Russia as 'in Europe' could look like a threat but nonetheless it is difficult to get excited about an institution as nebulous and deliberately elusive as the EU. Perhaps I'm just being naive but what would be so wrong about an organisation with an open agenda and defined ideals. Better than one swayed by the cynical imperatives of commerce and Western strategic interests. We ought to hold a more fundamental debate on the meaning of both words in the term 'European Union' before we squabble over British (or for that matter any nation's) involvement in it.

Woo-hoo! Only a day to go until my wonderful book is released, but I heard that it's already out in some shops- it's all very exciting. To be a little less solipsistic for a moment an update to the ongoing antics of lovable incompetent George Bush, making claims that even the not-normally-war-wary CIA treat with some scepticism. That guy cracks me up.

On Saturday evening went to see this great spy novelist give a (rare) interview at the NFT. A good evening but at 10GBP a ticket I can understand why there were quite a few empty seats. With the avowed point of the interview a celebration of the career of Sir Alec Guinness Le Carre started with a serious effort to clarify Guinness' acting style and personality. Made some serious points about 'stealing' tics and mannerisms from dinner guests and friends to flesh out performances and about the 'guilt of the actor' but soon realised that the audience really wanted to hear juicy stories about W H Auden (who propositioned Le Carre on a university staircase- when these advances were rebuffed Auden responded, 'Still, it's nice to be fancied'), Wim Wenders (who wanted Le Carre to appear in an adaptation of The Riddle of the Sands; spending four months in the Baltic with no women and having to fall 40 feet into a night sea for the part) and Sir Maurice Oldfield former head of the British Secret Service, who was an influence on Guinness' portrayal of Le Carre's greatest creation- George Smiley. I got the chance to ask a question, and tried to get a measure of the influence of James Bond (both Fleming's literary creation and the cinematic version) as an antithesis in the creation of Smiley- both in Le Carre's books and Guinness' performance. I think the interviewer rather muffled the interpretation of the question and it came out as a standard Bond obsessive irrelevancy but got a direct answer (no, if anyone's interested) so did pretty well (anyone who's had the good sense to buy my fine book will understand the reasons behind this question). The transcript isn't up here yet but soon will be- well worth checking when it does appear.

Newsnight coverage of the Conservative Party conference verges on the comedic. Paxman glassy eyed while the great 'get in touch' qualities of the video board are revealed (another, more candid shot, shows conference staff asking a mysterious commentator to 'cut out' the last part of his comment because Newsnight is still filming), Duncan Smith's abject terror at Theresa May's opening speech, Tim Collins displaying his flaming eyes of doom and hair that looks as though it is about to fall off the side of his head and finally the glorious moment when a conference activist is utterly stumped as to who the Agriculture spokesman is. I checked but immediately forgot -check here if you're interested. I have the feeling that this conference is, to an extent, going to come across as little more than comic relief.

Well, keeping this thing running is certainly an education, both in the dark arts of html and my own capacity for incompetence.

oops. Screwed up the whole site a while ago and trying to reboot it. Hope this works...