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Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd -
The little dogs under their feet.

Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.

They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.

Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.

The PRS-600 Touch

Wandering around Waterstones waiting for my daughter to finally settle on her choices, the four books I was clutching already feeling like a generous slice of Canadian redwood, I found myself browsing the digital reader display.

They ranged in scale from the humble glorified calculator whose primary function appeared to be aiding and abetting the Scrabble cheat, through a selection of plasticky slivers untroubled by such luxuries as robustness, up to the sleek aluminium allure of the Sony range.

By the time you get to the top models, you’re already looking at considerably more than a year’s spend on paperbacks, even for an avid reader like myself (and, of course, you still have to actually buy the paperless books to put on them).

Still, being a helpless gadget hound, I opted for the Sony PRS-600 – the ‘Touch’ edition. Despite managing to get this far in life without the need to scribble in any book I’ve ever read, suddenly note-taking was a must-have feature.

At home, with my device carefully slotted into its exorbitantly-priced leather enclosure, I set about feeding it its first meal of prose.

Unlike MP3 players, there’s no immediate way to ‘rip’ a book you already own into an ebook but I already have a collection of text and PDF files procured from travels around the internet so they would do as snacks.

The included and dreadfully unstable Sony Reader Library software was replaced by the brilliant Calibre from calibre-book.com and I effortlessly copied and converted content to the device.

Reading on the PRS-600 feels perfectly comfortable and I’ve already devoured a couple of real button pushers on it.
The only dark moment came when I actually purchased a book from WH Smith online.

Stephen Baxter’s latest cost more in digital form than its physical counterpart on Amazon and getting it onto the device required signing up for accounts, OKing agreements and generally way too much more difficulty than simply copying a PDF.

Will I ever need up to 50,000 books in my bag? No. Have I found a need to make any notes? Not yet. Are my wood pulp days behind me?

I have a feeling they probably are.

In light of the recent failed terrorist attack on a US aeroplane, if you have a trip to America planned for the new year, ready yourself for some unpredictable rules being applied at airport check-ins.
According to reports at the time of writing – right between Christmas and New Year – some flights are actually banning the use of electronic gadgetry for the entire duration of the journey.
Apparently the bans are intended to be random but if you’re flight is unlucky enough to be selected, that’s a heck of a long time to go without music, movies or gaming.
It could be time to catch up on some reading so be sure to back plenty of books – those of the old style, mulched tree variety, of course.

By now Rupert Murdoch’s campaign to put an end to free online news content has become well-known, having been given countless broadcasting minutes and newspaper inches (not least in this particular column) since the media giant said he intended to start charging to read his websites.

His paid subscription model has yet to begin but almost everybody with a moment’s experience in the web industry is unanimous; this particular genie will not be coaxed or forced back into its bottle. Online brand loyalty is slim and if one site suddenly wants your money to read it, the vast majority of your once regular readership will simply go elsewhere

I think it’s fair to say that most media watchers are expecting Murdoch’s plan – if, indeed, he ever actually goes through with it – to fall flat on it face.

That The Times and Sun newspaper owner is smarting from the current failure of the web advertising revenue business model is hardly surprising, but his recent stance against search engines is a different story and suggests an almost utter ignorance of the internet that is frankly embarrassing.

At the recent World Media Summit in Beijing, Murdoch’s speech attacked Google and its like, calling them ‘kleptomaniacs’ and ‘plagiarists’ for apparently stealing his content.

He was talking, one can only presume, about service such as Google News which display very small snippets of news websites and then – and here’s the crucial bit – link readers to the full article.

The way he complains, it seems that Murdoch is under an impression that search engines simply take all his content and pass it off as their own rather than act as a free signpost to it.

What makes his whining even less credible is that telling Google, Microsoft, Yahoo etc. not to crawl through and index your website is so utterly trivial it is one of the first things any novice website creator learns how to do, let alone the professional developers behind major international newspaper websites. A couple of lines of code added to a special file and you can distance yourself from every search engine on the web.

Let’s be very clear; Murdoch needs search engines a lot more than search engines need Murdoch, a fact he will learn if and when he makes his content subscription only and those services he so derides choose to simply ignore it.

Comments or questions? Read my blog at davidmcmanus.com

How many comebacks is that now, Mandy?

Of course I know that, like me and every fair-minded person in the country, you would be appalled and assume it couldn’t happen in a democratic society.

However, a new law set out by Labour’s Secretary of State for Business and ‘Comeback Kid’ himself, Peter Mandelson, would see just such an eventually.

It was only a few weeks ago at the beginning of the summer that the government rejected lobbying by various figures in the film and music industries who wanted anyone found guilty of illegal filesharing to have their internet connections terminated as punishment.
Listening to arguments from top Internet Service Providers (ISPs) against the proposal, the government correctly surmised that it would be potentially unjust and largely impossible to enforce such a plan.

But while most of us have been watching the bank balance and enjoying a ’staycation’ holiday as guests of the UK’s non-existent summer season, the more privileged in society, like, for example, the aforementioned Lord Mandelson, have been holidaying in sunnier climes with the rich and famous.

One such figure sharing the Corfu Mediterranean sun with ‘Mandy’ was American record producer and Hollywood mega-investor, David Geffen, a man who once tried to ban MP3 players and is, as a record label and movie studio owner, a vigorous campaigner against internet piracy.

Some time after Lord M enjoyed dinner with Mr. Geffen at the Rothschild family villa on Corfu, the government announced a U-turn in its policy.

Despite Gordon Brown declaring only weeks before that domestic internet access is ‘an essential service’ that is as ‘indispensible as electricity, gas and water’, the plan to cut people off was back on the statute books.

Entire households now face losing their internet access if their kids download the number one single.

If your wi-fi is unsecured and used without your knowledge, you and your family will be held responsible.

What’s more, anyone with any decent technical know-how can easily overcome the likelihood of detection.

This is a law made by a government which doesn’t understand basic concepts of technology and seems all too willing to favour the wishes of big business over the rights of its own electorate.

It’s also a law that needs to be overturned.

How would you feel if someone suddenly asked you to start paying money for something you have always had free?

It’s an interesting question and one that, if you’re a regular reader of The Times or The Sun websites, you may soon find yourself answering.

Rupert Murdoch, head of News Corps that owns these and other media giants, has said that his company plans to start charging for all its editorial content within the next 12 months, citing another of his newspapers, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and its profitable subscription model as an example of how asking people to pay for journalism online can be success.

Announcing his plans last week he said, “The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free”.

Murdoch isn’t a man who is known for the generous things he’s previously had to say about journalism and he’s not exactly up there with the top web entrepreneurs, having purchased MySpace in 2005 for $580 million, just as the social networking site’s popularity started to wane dramatically in favour of Facebook.

So what has brought about this decision and is anyone really likely to start coughing up to read articles that will be in a million other places for free?

It wasn’t very long ago when the buzz in the newspaper industry was all about getting your content online to capture as big an audience as possible. Eyeballs are good for advertising and a potentially global marketplace just a click away equals a lot of eyeballs.

Murdoch may be right that quality journalism comes at a cost but the business model of giving away content in favour of advertising dollars is now well entrenched. Just because we may be going through a phase where those dollars are more like cents, it doesn’t mean that at established model can be turned around.

The WSJ enjoys a decent income from subscriptions because it has never been free and its content caters to a niche market who can directly make money themselves from its reporting.

Paying to read stories about Big Brother or standard commodity news that is plastered freely over the net doesn’t seem quite as attractive or, frankly, likely to happen.

Next week I’ll delve deeper into this fascination subject. In the meantime, let me have your thoughts on the issue.

Van Gogh’s Starry Night is the most amazing painting I have ever seen.

I have spent hours of my life just looking at this picture, studying every clearly defined pallet knife stroke. It is, in both part, beautiful and spellbinding.

If this is the vision (and by that I mean his feeling, concept and comprehension) of the cosmos that made its way into Van Gogh’s mind when he painted this extraordinary masterpiece, then the man was both blessed and cursed in equal measure.

I would love to see the world around me like this. What would appear to us as a normal ’starry night’ – sure, a dark sky with bright stars against the local village, appeared to Van Gogh as this scene. Not literally, of course, but this is how his mind was able to interpret it.
The wonders of the cosmos laid bare.

Imagine seeing the world with such beauty. No surprise that it would eventually drive you mad.

That it was painted while Van Gogh was resident in an asylum at Saint-Remy says a lot about the definition of madness.

Starry, starry night.
Paint your palette blue and grey,
Look out on a summer’s day,
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul.
Shadows on the hills,
Sketch the trees and the daffodils,
Catch the breeze and the winter chills,
In colors on the snowy linen land.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll listen now.

Starry, starry night.
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze,
Swirling clouds in violet haze,
Reflect in Vincent’s eyes of china blue.
Colors changing hue, morning field of amber grain,
Weathered faces lined in pain,
Are soothed beneath the artist’s loving hand.

Now I understand what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they did not know how.
Perhaps they’ll listen now.

For they could not love you,
But still your love was true.
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night,
You took your life, as lovers often do.
But I could have told you, Vincent,
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you.

Starry, starry night.
Portraits hung in empty halls,
Frameless head on nameless walls,
With eyes that watch the world and can’t forget.
Like the strangers that you’ve met,
The ragged men in the ragged clothes,
The silver thorn of bloody rose,
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow.

Now I think I know what you tried to say to me,
How you suffered for your sanity,
How you tried to set them free.
They would not listen, they’re not listening still.
Perhaps they never will…

I watched the Apple announcement of the new iPhone 3GS at the Dev Conference and decided that I’d be getting one.

I like my iPhone more than any other on the market so it makes sense that I would upgrade to the newest model when it came along.

The 3GS is more evolution than revolution but the improved camera and processor on a device I use numerous times throughout the day was the deal maker for me.

Unlike last year when the 3G phone first appeared, this time around it seems like O2 won’t be letting me upgrade for nothing. Last summer all I had to do was walk into a Carphone Warehouse, tell them I wanted to upgrade my iPhone that was still under a contract and they handed me a shiny new model, no questions asked and no money changing hands – all I had to do was sign a new 18 month contract.
This time around, they won’t do that. If I want a new phone I must buy out of my contract which still has another six months to go.

While this makes me mad and initially seems unfair, it isn’t and here’s why.

When I bought the first iPhone, it was unsubsidised – I paid full whack for it. By the time the 3G came around, Apple realised that not everyone would stump up the large outlay so they reached a deal with O2 and other carriers that they would subsidise the phone in exchange for 18 months of a contract plan.
So O2 were more than happy to let me break my first contract because there was no subsidy involved.

It’s different this time around.

I don’t like O2. Their iPhone tariff price is bloated, their coverage can be weak and they’re stiffing us with new stuff like tethering options (bandwidth on the iPhone is free as part of the contract but pass that bandwidth off to a tethered laptop and you’ll pay handsomely), but I do have to say that in the case of this contract, they are right, despite all the protests.

What does seem unfair (if not technically unfair then certainly not rewarding loyalty) is that I will have to pay the same price for a new iPhone 3GS as entirely new customers to O2. Sure, there’s no legal reason for O2 to offer me a discount but you’d just imagine that as I’ve stuck with their frankly poor service for the past couple of years, they might offer me a small carrot for my loyalty.

They won’t – and that sticks in my throat.

So what choices am I left with? A few, as it turns out…

• Pony up the money for a new phone. That’ll be around £300 to get out of contract and then almost another ton for the new 16GB phone
• Stick with current iPhone until my contract runs out in six months and then buy a new iPhone
• Stick with current iPhone and then stick it to Apple and O2 when my contract runs out and buy a different phone on a better network

And therein lies the dilemma. To revisit the first paragraph of this comment, I love my iPhone and I WANT A NEW ONE. Call me shallow, call me an Apple fanboi, call me foolish (actually, don’t call me that) but I don’t want a Palm Pre, a Blackberry or a Nokia.

So I’ve decided. Unless O2 make some goodwill gesture (which they might – there are a lot of pissed off people out there, however unreasonable that might be), I’ll wait.

Come December when my contract runs out, I’ll be in the O2 shop ordering myself a nice new Christmas present.

Of course, I run the very likely risk of another new version of the iPhone showing up next summer and then I’ll be really stuffed as I’ll have not six months but a full year of contract to run.
I think that for once I need to be content with being some way off the bleeding edge that I normally live on.

It’ll be tough but I… can… do… it…

I think I first saw the Manic Street Preachers around 1991. I think it was at Oxford’s Jericho Tavern. I also think I was working there at the time. My memory isn’t so bad that I don’t actually remember if I ever actually worked at the JT – I certainly did – but I also attended a lot of gigs there. For Primal Scream I certainly wasn’t working because I remember the utter chaos of being in the audience. For Cornershop (way back before Brim Full Of Asha) I was definitely not working because I remember standing in a heightened state of stupor, watching some Asian guy picking at a sitar while the planet seemed to explode in distorted guitars.

It was utterly ace.

For Birdland (look ‘em up, pop pickers) I’m also sure I was in the audience because one of the blonde haired toss-bags tried to perform crude brain surgery on sound man Macca’s head with his Telecaster and you don’t forget riots so easily.

The thing about the MSP (I hate the term ‘Manics’) is that I’ve seen them three or four times, each of those times being in the early days and I really don’t remember where I was or if I was behind a bar at the time. Go figure.

Anyway, I’ve always loved MSP – sometimes more than others. The Holy Bible is an absolutely amazing album but it’s so bleak and dark that I have to be really upbeat to listen to it.

I continued briefly to listen to MSP albums after Richey’s disappearance in 1995 and actually enjoyed their stuff as a three piece.

Then they ran out of material and entered their decidedly dodgy phase.

Know Your Enemy was OKish but I’ve not even listened to what came after. Even Send Away The Tigers from a couple of years ago was BitTorrented and remains largely ignore.

Out this week is Journal For Plague Lovers and, my God Almighty, it’s a return to the old days – not least of all because the lyrics are taken from a notebook that Richey handed to Nicky before his disappearance.

Nicky has sat on this content for so long. These are lyrics written in a world not troubled by the war on terrorism but are troubled nonetheless. Putting non-rhyming poetry to song wasn’t easy but the outcome is astonishing. It’s like a missing limb on a world famous sportsman suddenly growing back. I’m not saying that MSP can forget any further future with Richey but, my God, you realise how much the man’s lyrics contributed to the chill that goes up your spine with a good MSP song.

I’ve been listening to this album all day now and I have to profess that I have a side of my that can’t resist sentimentality. As such ‘William’s Last Words’ is absolutely fucking awesome. I can honestly say it’s one of the best songs I’ve heard for a very long time.

“I’m just gonna close my eyes
Think about my family
Shed a little tear

Goodnight sleep tight
Goodnight, God bless
Goodnight North Star
I’ll try my best

Isn’t it lovely when the dawn brings the dew? I’ll be watching over you.
Isn’t it lovely when the dawn brings the dew? I’ll be watching over you.

I even love the devil
But yes he did me harm
Don’t keep me any longer
Cuz I’m really tired
I’d love to go to sleep
And wake up happy

The musicianship and direction of that song in particular is straight off ‘This Is My Truth…’ but the rest of the album is a clear nod back to The Holy Bible, particularly with the movie samples and vocal filters.

Already I love this album and I’ve only owned it a couple of days. It’s all parts rocking, lyrical, soaring, nostalgic and huge points to Nicky for breaking into song. He did it for a reason. I still wish that reason might be out there somewhere and listening to it.