Jamendo is a site offering free music legally.

It is following the self-publishing mentality, only possible through the Internet, where anyone can be a producer of himself. I recommend to all my musician friends looking for ways to connect to audiences, and even make some money, to join such sites.

The music on the site is uploaded by the artists, and you can donate whatever you want when you download the album. The site also acts as an Internet radio station, so you can listen to music before downloading.

Here is an album I would easily buy. It has some amazing combinations of sounds

The Butcher's Ballroom - Jamendo.

Original text on a building.

1) Do one thing at a time

2) Know the problem

3) Learn to listen

4) Learn to ask questions

5) Distinguish sense from nonsense

6) Accept change as inevitable

7) Admit mistakes

8) Say it simple

9) Be calm

10) Smile

Ken Rockwell is an interesting guy. I check his site at least once a week since I discovered it. If not necessarily likeable, you must admit his style is quite unique and you read things on it that you don't usually read on most photo sites.

He does have the annoying attribute to disagree with himself: different entries may even support the opposite. It is not a disadvantage per se to change opinion, in fact it usually is a sign of progress. But it happens too often on his site to be considered progress.

In any case it is a bit based on the American reality. Here is what happens in the UK, on a matter he keeps changing opinion: film vs digital.

He always held that large format film is the best, especially for landscapes. However there have been articles claiming even 35mm film is so much better than digital on a) resolution (scanning in a shop which is 1 dollar where he does it) and b) price (assuming you buy a new digital camera body every year). The colour rendition and behaviour in extreme light have largely been dealt with by new Nikon and Canon cameras with tricks for high dynamic range, or by working with RAW files.

Shooting film has some benefits I have experienced first hand. You think about the photograph more because each photograph costs and the number of shots is limited. Also the film camera is lighter making it more pleasant and comfortable. Film bodies are much cheaper than digital, do not need replacing, and batteries last longer.

But UK film development sucks. It is expensive, slow, mistakes are made, and scans are terrible. Buying a scanner to do it yourself is extremely time wasting, and partly beats the price argument for film. Film is ridiculously expensive too. £5 to buy a basic one and > £5 to develop?

I concluded that the film camera is only good as a second body to take a shot of something that worked already with digital. Maybe the printing in large size is still worth it...

Then I read Bruce Barnbaum's amazing [book](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Art- Photography-Approach-Expression- Photographic/dp/1933952687/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1) on photography. It seems that if you take film photography seriously, you should go for black and white and develop yourself, so you can dodge and burn. You end up doing manipulations with physical media that are much easier and cheaper to do with digital technology.

Even if film photos looked significantly better than digital, the extra trouble is really not worth it. And sharing, geotagging and other social features, that make modern photography interesting, are more difficult to implement with film photos.

I would have expected a mature technology to stand its ground better. I did experiment with a used Nikon film body I got off ebay for £40, but ended up selling it after being repeatedly disappointed. I am sure film works well for some people, but after trying it I have realised that digital allows me to do what I want and gets out of the way of making pictures. Maybe it is that I started with digital, but I don't see any point, other than the different feeling while shooting, in doing film photography.

From the author of 'Predictably irrational'. Lots of captivating examples, humour and an inspiring message. 20 minutes well spent.

The human perception lab of St Andrews made the news.

Their results make a good story: your skin colour affects your attractiveness. Not the colour based on race, but the colour based on slight variations caused by diet and exercise.

No evidence was presented for diet or exercise making you more red or yellow. Instead, the BBC chose to show the reporter eating a cake - audiences are not trusted to pay attention to 1.5 min video otherwise.

I still wonder how much of the preference they found is innate and how much of it is learned. What about other countries, or other races within a country? I thought paleness was valued highly in China, for example.

This is an email I was sent, which is funny because it could be based on the truth (well multiple true stories, a single story as extreme is not very likely).

Dear Cretins,

I have been an NTL customer since 9th July 2001, when I signed up for your 3 -in-one deal for cable TV, cable modem, and telephone.

During this three-month period I have encountered inadequacy of service which I had not previously considered possible, as well as ignorance and stupidity of monolithic proportions. Please allow me to provide specific details, so that you can either pursue your professional prerogative, and seek to rectify these difficulties - or more likely (I suspect) so that you can have some entertaining reading material as you while away the working day smoking B&H; and drinking vendor-coffee on the bog in your office.

My initial installation was cancelled without warning or notice, resulting in my spending an entire Saturday sitting on my fat arse waiting for your technician to arrive. When he did not arrive at all, I spent a further 57 minutes listening to your infuriating hold music, and the even more annoying Scottish robot woman telling me to look at your helpful website.... how? I alleviated the boredom to some small degree by playing with my testi*les for a few minutes - an activity at which you are no-doubt both familiar and highly adept.

The rescheduled installation then took place some two weeks later, although the technician did forget to bring a number of vital tools - such as a drill- bit, and his cerebrum.

Two weeks later, my cable modem had still not arrived. After several further telephone calls (actually 15 telephone calls over 4 weeks) my modem arrived ... a total of six weeks after I had requested it, and begun to pay for it. I estimate that the downtime of your internet servers is roughly 35%... these are usually the hours between about 6pm and midnight, Monday to Friday, and most of the useful periods over the weekend.

I am still waiting for my telephone connection. I have made 9 telephone calls on my mobile to your no-help line this week, and have been unhelpfully transferred to a variety of disinterested individuals, who are it seems also highly skilled bollock jugglers.

I have been informed that a telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that no telephone line is available (and someone will call me back), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been cut off), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to an answer machine informing me that your office is closed), that I will be transferred to someone who knows whether or not a telephone line is available (and then been redirected to the irritating Scottish robot woman.... and several other variations on this theme.

Doubtless you are no-longer reading this letter, as you have at least a thousand other dissatisfied customers to ignore, and also another one of those crucially important testicle-moments to attend to. Frankly I don't care, it's far more satisfying as a customer to voice my frustrations in print than to shout them at your unending hold music. Forgive me, therefore, if I continue.

I thought BT were sh*t, that they had attained the holy piss-pot of god-awful customer relations, that no-one, anywhere, ever, could be more disinterested, less helpful or more obstructive to delivering service to their customers. That's why I chose NTL, and because, well, there isn't anyone else is there?

How surprised I therefore was, when I discovered to my considerable dissatisfaction and disappointment what a useless shower of bastards you truly are. You are sputum-filled pieces of distended rectum - incompetents of the highest order. British Telecom - wankers though they are - shine like brilliant beacons of success, in the filthy puss-filled mire of your seemingly limitless inadequacy.

Suffice to say that I have now given up on my futile and foolhardy quest to receive any kind of service from you. I suggest that you do likewise, and cease any potential future attempts to extort payment from me for the services which you have so pointedly and catastrophically failed to deliver - any such activity will be greeted initially with hilarity and disbelief - although these feelings will quickly be replaced by derision, and even perhaps a small measure of bemused rage.

I enclose two small deposits, selected with great care from my cats litter tray, as an expression of my utter and complete contempt for both you, and your pointless company. I sincerely hope that they have not become desiccated during transit - they were satisfyingly moist at the time of posting, and I would feel considerable disappointment if you did not experience both their rich aroma and delicate texture. Consider them the very embodiment of my feelings towards NTL, and it's worthless employees.

Have a nice day - may it be the last in you miserable short life, you irritatingly incompetent and infuriatingly unhelpful bunch of tw*ts,

Yours psychotically