It’s worth comparing the careers of near contemporary bands Daft Punk and Air. Both French, both innovators in electronic music and both having critically acclaimed first albums in Homework and Moon Safari.

But where Air seemed to have disappeared into their own vagueness, Daft Punk last hit the studio in 2005, to produce a third album that returns to their roots, an experimental fusion of electro, disco and house.

Recorded in Paris in six weeks, Human After All is a short, idiosyncratic album unlikely to win them new fans.

Experimental means it doesn’t always work. Some tracks on here are practically unlistenable, consisting of short loops repeated ad nauseum. For example, it’s hard to see the audience for Robot Rock. Seemingly a homage to 80’s video game soundtracks, it would need a radical remix to make it in a club, isn’t radio friendly and grates to listen to at home.

Most artists seem to struggle to go from breakbeat to house. It may be that having created intricate beat structures, they tend to overcomplicate the simplicity of the 4/4. The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim both sound unconvincing in house mode – and so do two tracks on this album. Television Rules the Nation ends up sounding less than the sum of it’s parts, while The Brainwasher does what it says on the tin.

All of which sounds so negative! In fact there are some real standout tracks here. Closing track Emotions, (reminiscent of Quo Veredis on “Discovery”) is a great tone track, quite chilled but could be part of a DJ Set.

Technologic is just brilliant, the stand out track from the album. It takes something to make a track that could both have been on the soundtrack to a madcap sci-fi adventure, or is a dark technoir version of Men at Work. You can see why this is such a hit live.

Meanwhile, Make Love seems tailor made for Ibiza, with its minor key and wah-wah guitars.

So an album which is likely to divide listeners – if you liked the shiny fun of Music Sounds Better With You, or virtually the whole of Discovery, you may have until the next one – probably due soon given Daft Punk’s usual work rate.

If a challenging analogue style is your thing – get ready to rock!

Standout tracks:  Technologic, Make Love

Stop sniggering at the back though: NATO has it’s HQ there and – stay awake- the EU spends part of it’s time in the country.

It’s not just jobs for the boys. Like lace? Chocolate?! Diamonds!! Head on over.

So far, so…respectable. What about the music? Back in ’91 there was that rave techno thing – Energyflash, Joey Beltram. R&S Records. Hoovers.

As if hosting a delayed hangover, Belgium has a quite fabulous radio station which went straight onto the Now Playing favourites list. It’s called CroozeFM – and it’s the best thing to happen to Antwerp since de Koninck.

Describing itself as Lifestyle radio, it simply names it’s shows “fast tempo” or “slow medium tempo” – and really who needs to know more? I particularly liked the stern “No translations available” signs all over.

If you like jazz, chill-out with beats, dubby sort of thing, you need to tune in during the day. And if you like it a bit more lively, try it during the evening. And, I promise – no airhorns!!

Listen here: in a popup (windows media) or get the stream here

A sizable minority of Londoners are broadly anti-congestion charge, sceptical about climate change and rehabilitating criminals and wary about immigration and multiculturalism. They have plenty of candidates and parties to choose from in these elections, but all of these have been denied a platform. The right itself must accept its share of the blame; in particular, Ukip and One London’s failure to resolve their differences has been particularly self destructive. But sadly, I suspect that denying these parties a voice can only help the BNP and their unpleasant brand of rightwing populism.

(http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/peter_facey/2008/04/londons_forgotten_elections.html)

Yes, it seems that:

• there are a considerable number of people unsure about the progressive agenda. This is not news, but should be borne in mind by the number of people who celebrate London being so successful as a modern, multicultural city.
• the efforts of the Conservatives and others to reach out to this means that the Right succeeds almost despite itself.

If the right is so badly split that many voters are looking to the (left authoritarian-leaning) BNP to support it, whilst traditional, old-left voters are deserting the Labour Party because it just doesn’t represent them…

I think we’re in for a serious, prolonged shakeout, and it’s going to happen just as the economic good times start to dry up. Expect polaristion, and some pretty intense horse-trading.

If you want to see if your candidate is who you think s/he is… check out VoteMatch, Unlock Democracies outstanding and eye-opening thought provoker.

Remember, politics is only as exciting as you make it interactive: spread the word!!

I don’t trust him. It’s either the bandana, or having the Blairs round. And you say he’ll last a full term?

I kinda get the “delegating your ID somewhere else” thing, but using it as the main registration thing…. I’m having a ‘mare.

No, really.

Anyone got any ideas about a straightforward OpenID server/simplereg/login arrangement?

Sooo… what I could really use is either a basic walkthrough, or even (ahem) a worked example I could alter. Useful replies get a marriage proposal.

Donate some frikkin’ money…it really makes sense!!

Catherine Meyer is the brains behind PACT and the AMBER ALERT system that Gerry McCann and several MEPS have been lobbying support for over the last 12 months. The IT infrastructure that supports the AMBER System is supplied by Oracle. The McCanns and MEPS like Gary Titley have been campaigning on the system’s behalf since Madeleine went missing.

They want to see AMBER system in place across the 27 EU member States before 2012 – and its likely that Oracle will secure the lucrative contracts to supply the extensive IT infrastructure. It’s only natural to assume that Sir Chrsitopher has been able to arbitrate successfully on their behalf. Questions should be raised about just WHO is making money out of this AMBER ALERT and whether or not people like Sir Christopher and his wife Catherine are really as it independent as they seem.

The pro-Europe lobby were banging on about this system PRIOR to Madeleine going missing and they’ll keep banging on about it until these lucrative contracts are secured.

The next stage will be the even more lucrative contracts to systems manage the IT infrastructure supporting the Biometric Technology in Visas and Passports, something that was broached with the controversial Prum Treaty Britain signed in June 2007.

You are so gullible Roy. Or at least I hope you are gullible.

They knew people like you were looking for just this opportunity to stick the boot into the tabloids.

Just who put people like you together, Roy? Gepeto?

Who needs Mitchel when they have you?

The index page is more or less ready, and can be seen by going directly to the site. Sections on housing, travel and news feeds are on the way, and you can be seen just by heading for the appropriate theme, such as www.wkho.me.uk/travel. If you get lost don’t worry, 404 gets you to the front page.

What I really like is the directory. There’s loads of agencies in Rotherham, but it’s kinda difficult to see them all in one place. Users can add their knowledge to the site, and what they know should make this the most up to date directory around.

We were looking to use Ordnance Survey’s OpenSpace API for the travel, but in the end we went for Google. This may seem counterintuitive given theor relative age, but Google is just a more mature application – and less restrictive than OpenSpace. Keep checking it out though – as more gets added we will look to migrate. (BTW – keep up with Free our Data, part of the Guardian Technology website, which has some interesting posts on this today: http://www.freeourdata.org.uk/blog/?p=180).

And finally, still on the Open Source tip, we’ve gone for OpenID for registration. I’ve heard that between 120 and 350 million OpenID’s are in existence, and by adding a few more we can leverage the experience and familiarity of the format to encourage peple to register.