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DJ Rupture defends OiNK. Interesting to see it from an artist's point of view, albeit an enlightened one.

Techcrunch excels itself (which isn't that difficult) with the best article I've seen on the recent peer-to-peer crack-down, where OiNK and TVlinks recently got pwned. Some OiNK facts from those in the know here.

Checkitout: Me and Si review Stars at Londonist.com

So it occurs to me that despite several false starts I haven't blogged for a month. ZOMG. There's plenty of drafts floating around but that doesn't really help If i can't be bothered to finish them. So here's a rundown of stuff I've been up to in the past month.

• 7th: DConstruct. Bloody good. Astoundingly good. Almost every presentation was extremely enjoyable and almost every presentation had useful and relevant take-homes. Very glad I was able to go to that. It's the kind of thing that reinvigorates your professional outlook. Crap freebees though!
• 8th: Mary's housewarming. Their house is great, and the party was too. Got chatting to some genuinely lovely friends of theirs as well as catching up with people. Felt a bit bad running off to get the last tube though; I'm getting old.
• 9th: AiH at Koko. Not the Scala.
• 13th: Met up with a bunch of old school blogger-types, most of whom no longer blog and a couple of whom gave talks at the conference I saw in the previous week. Very entertaining people, but a strange experience nonetheless. Much gadget swapping and meta-photo-taking.
• 14th: Dinner at the Canteen at the Southbank Center followed by a presentation of interesting new music videos there given by Adam Buxton, followed by a very empty Popstarz for Will's birthday.
• 15th: CHRISTIAN wedding. Where the word "wedding" is always prefaced by "Christian" and "secular parodies" are derided. Hmm, k. Both wedding and reception in the church, lots of tea, no alcohol, all over by five. Very pleasant but deeply alien at the same time.
• 25th: Reopening of Trash Palace, free drinks and such, woot! They've redecorated the place a bit, and put Simon on the wall. Hmm, k.
• 29th: Trip to Edinburgh with Si to see the parents. Went to Edinburgh Castle (which is more a citadel), The Royal Museum of Scotland (who have taken a leaf from the London Science Museum's book, hurrah) and ate at Biblos again, which is still one of my favourite bistros anywhere.

In the gaps I've been watching every episode of Dexter I can get my hands on. Really excellent; an unexpected combination of compelling aspects… That'd make sense if you saw it. Anyways it comes a close second to Heroes in my opinion. Go see! Also been playing a lot of

• Europa Universalis III, an historical strategy game (with the Magna Mundi mod, of course!), so I know all about European history from 1450 to about 1800 now. Go Italian unification 200 years early!
• Warhammer 40k: Dawn of war. Sweet futuristic RTS based on the Table-top Games Workshop game. You can get it and both expansions for £20 or less now, which adds a lot to the scope of the game. Go Tau!
• Neverwinter Nights 2: Hopefully I'll have the patience and commitment to get past the first chapter now, particularly as I've shelled out for the expansion now. Go questionable purchases!

What is a blog? I was going to go through possible definitions from various sources but it turned out to be achingly dull so I'm skipping them. Suffice to say that a blog used to be easily defined as a personal website with frequent entries about personal thoughts, links or other minutiae often published in reverse chronological order.
Nowadays the most popular blogs are essentially online magazines; multi-authored and impersonal - corporate blogs even more so. Many others eschew reverse-chronological format. Minutiae have been banished to twitter and links are covered in linklogs, delicious-based or otherwise. Tumblelogs cover just about everything else, which leaves only articles and how you organise them.
I'm a big fan of "Robert X. Cringely"s weekly column speculating on the tech/online industry. Had it been launched recently it would certainly have been called a blog, though I don't think it qualifies.
Ever brilliant Stephen Fry recently started a "blog", but with the last entry racking nearing 9,000 words is that still a blog? He takes the middle ground, calling them "blessays". Nice.

So before I ramble further: serial content does not a blog make. Not that it matters, Facebook etc will soon subsume most of the blogosphere ;-) Also the above sites are brilliant; check them out. Apropos of nothing: check it out, I'm a music critic!