God Save the Queen

Or something like that - in possibly the most shocking news in a long time, The Queen now has her own YouTube channel. Old Christmas speeches and random clips from the archives abound - I haven't found the shot of her launching crying about Britney or launching Pepsi bottles with a couple of Mentos in there yet, but I'm sure they're there if you keep digging.

Just coz I'm feeling kinda nostalgic and patriotic, here's the link to the 1957 broadcast - the first ever TV broadcasted one (for the non-UK readers, we get a 10 minute address from the Queen every year on Christmas Day - it used to be compulsory watching when I was younger, but mainly coz it was followed by the latest James Bond film on BBC ;-)

What I want to know now is why The Queen has disabled embedding of the videos? Are they that desperate for the ad share revenue from Google? I thought she was loaded as it is?

Back Home

So we survived the flight home with no drama (for a change), and now merrily making my way through the usual list of food (Gregg's pasties today, steak pie yesterday, curry when we got off the plane). Of course, it's raining outside, and despite the weather being about 20 degrees colder in Denver, it feels much worse here, so I've been wrapped up warm since I got off the plane.

It turns out the UK actually has a freedom of information act these days (although I'm sure they've got some pretty good exemptions in there), and so The Times has compiled this list of 59 things we wouldn't know if it wasn't in place. I particularly like the fact that Thatcher was planning to send dolphins to look for the Loch Ness monster....

New UK Apple Ads Released

Well, maybe not quite new now, but they're here anyway.