Paul Daniels – yes, the Paul Daniels, is keeping a blog. It’s rather good; he writes in a friendly, personal manner – just as you’d expect him to, really – and he combines interesting chat about magic with fairly traditional (for blogs) personal anecdotes. It’s quite fun; I may well subscribe.

“… relinquishing control doesn’t just mean letting go, losing control, it actually means controlling just how you let go.“

An excellent essay over at Abstract Dynamics on Web 2.0, what it’s really changed (underneath all the hype) and just how to control that letting go carefully.

Tonight’s late Prom: Messiaen, Stravinksy and Boulez. I’m going, if only to see my first real live Ondes Martenot. Really looking forward to this – it’s so long since I’ve been to a classical concert, and doubly so for a concert of modern-era classical.

Design in Flight relaunches, publishing all its old content online – and publishing its new content online. The subscription model has been replaced by a donation model, except for back issues. It’s probably the way it should have been all along, and I’m certainly likely to pay the $10 for the back issues having read more of them.

Bob Moog died. A real pioneer, who made not only revolutionary instruments, but beautiful instruments. Still, what a legacy.

HG Wells on the ‘World Brain’: “We want… a universal organization and clarification of knowledge and ideas… what I have here called a World Brain, operating by an enhanced educational system through the whole body of mankind… a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself…“. Wells is a real hero of mine; ahead of his time, and yet so perfectly of it. This long quotation, on a global store of knowledge that requires permanent curation, is an interesting find. [via oreilly radar]

last.fm redesigns. It’s lovely – clear, sans-serif, white goodness, with a pleasant deep red as highlight and a beautiful, curvaceous logotype. Plus, the rounded bar-charts on the user home pages kick ass. Love it!

Going away for a few days, to Scotland, for a wedding. And a great deal of rest, I hope, starting with the train journey; god knows I need it. On the way: reading, listening, scrawling furiously on graph paper. Lots of ideas that need translating into hard copy. As for what they are… wait and see!

Flash game of the day is Suburban Brawl, straight outta Carnegie Mellon‘s Entertainment Technology Centre. Build houses by drawing them – very Pac-Pix. I wasn’t that good at it, and, as a quick project, it obviously have rough edges – but it’s got great visual charm and it’s lots of fun. Top stuff.

Talk about big and bold. I think the sign up page for Flock (which appears to be some kind of social browsing service, however they’ll implement that) is one of my favourite web pages at the moment. Really. It’s calming, informative, and really simple. Big-font-textfields are going to become way more common soon, trust me.