Me and my fan club in the sunny land of Wiltshire, Berkshire and, erm... Bristolshire.

One warm day recently, I walked up to the top of our field to catch the evening breeze, to sit and look out over the valley. By my feet I noticed a large lump of flint, and out of habit went to pick it up, intending to heave it to the edge of the field. A split second after I prised it out of the earth, I dropped it back again. I realised it was on top of an ant's nest. No eggs or larvae or whatever, just loads of small blank ants - panicking...

Amenhotep IV better known as Akhenaten ruled in Egypt over 3,000 years ago, his reign which lasted 18 years was probably the most controversial of any pharaoh. At a time in Egyptian history when polytheism was the religion du jour Akhenaten tried to bring about a religious revolution by trying to establish a form of monotheism with the God Aten, as depicted by the sun’s disc, as the central deity. There is speculation that he may have introduced his new religion in an attempt to lessen the political power of the many priests. This meant that the Pharaoh, not the priesthood, was the sole link between the population and the Godhead which effectively ended the power of the various temples...

The British Broadcasting Corporation has decided to use Digital Rights Management (DRM) in its new iPlayer software to control how it's 'on-demand' material is viewed.

This decision could have devastating consequences: The proposed BBC iPlayer download manager element requires Windows Media Player 10 and Windows XP. So for those using Linux or Mac OS for example, the BBC's 'on-demand' material will probably not be accessible.

For more detailed articles on this matter please read: iPlayer - wikipedia entry and Save the BBC from Windows DRM!

There is a petition collecting signatures at the Number 10 Downing Street website aimed at preventing this from happening.

Update: There is a news item in the May 11th issue of UK magazine MacUser that states the BBC has softened on this issue and intends to support other operating systems with iPlayer. Perhaps this is due to the BBC Trust's recent public consultation, which seems to have ended (links to the online survey are now dead).

"Sunny Afternoon" re-written for our friend Tony Blair...