home of the euPHoric llama

Translation: "It would be nice if you could ask us how we could be improved instead of coming up with a harebrained scheme and running with it for politics' sake, you bastards."

Outstanding schools in England will no longer face routine Ofsted inspections, the new education secretary has said.

Michael Gove said the move would allow education inspectors to focus their efforts on failing schools instead.

Under the plan, the 2,000 primary, 600 secondary and 300 special schools rated as outstanding by Ofsted would only be inspected if there were warning signs such as bad exam performance.

…

An Ofsted spokeswoman said: "Ofsted already focuses inspection on where it will have the greatest impact for children and learners. We will work with the government on what this means in practice."

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Must remember to get mum to Sky+ this shizzle. As soon as my dissertation's over, I'm going home and giving my eyes a feast.

badgerless:

5 Days! :D

Excited!

£120 million in lost productivity, apparently. And totally worth it, too. Thank you Google for this fine, fine gift.

Also, it's still playable: http://www.google.com/pacman/

The Pac-Man game Google put on its home page gobbled up almost five million hours of work time, suggests a study.

The playable version of the classic video game was put on Google's front page on 21 May to celebrate 30 years since the launch of Pac-Man in Japan.

The search giant reworked the game so the layout was arranged around letters forming its name.

The Pac-Man game proved so popular that Google has now made it permanently available on its own page.

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Regarding the British translation of "Trash" in GNOME. I don't think I need to comment.

Clearly the correct UK translation is to remove the bin and put a notice about terrorism in its place.

People can take their rubbish home with them.

Alex.

The people on Twitter had told me how excellent Caitlin Moran's piece on Lady Gaga was to read, but they haven't done it nearly enough justice. It is, in a word, astonishing.

There’s nothing quite like watching a plane take off without you to really focus your mind on how much you want to be on it. As flight BA987 knifes off the runway, and begins its journey to Berlin, I’m watching it through a window in the departures lounge – still holding the ticket for seat 12A in my hand.

Due to a frankly unlikely series of events, I had got to Heathrow three minutes after the flight was closed. Although no missed flight ever comes as a joy, this one is a particular mellow-harsher because, in five hours, I’m supposed to be interviewing arguably the most famous woman in the world – Lady Gaga – in an exclusive that has taken months of phone calls, jockeying and wrangling to set up.

It’s not so much that I am now almost certainly going to be fired. Since I found out how much the model Sophie Anderton used to earn as a high-class call girl, my commitment to continuing as a writer at The Times has been touch and go anyway, to be honest.

It’s more that I am genuinely devastated to have blown it so spectacularly. Since I saw Gaga play Poker Face at Glastonbury Festival last year, I have been a properly, hawkishly devoted admirer.

Halfway through a 45-minute set that had five costumes changes, Gaga came on stage in a dress made entirely of see-through plastic bubbles, accompanied by her matching, see-through plastic bubble piano. You have to respect a woman who can match her outfit to her instrument. Although the single Poker Face is a punching, spasmodic, Euro-house stormer, Gaga took to her piano and started to play it as cathouse blues – all inverted chords and rolling fifths, with falling, heartbroken semitones on the left hand; wailing out like Bessie Smith sitting on the doorstep at 4am.

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See guys, this is why I adore Metal Gear Solid far too much. Kojima's mind is insane, and I like insane.

This really cute ad for Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker features a little boy in a cardboard box.

Lies! It was sunny in London this afternoon. And in Cardiff yesterday. 'Course, it lasted a couple of hours each time, but that's OK, right?

Hello, British summer!

"Who is your daddy, and what does he do?" Spectacular.

via youtube.com

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I can't say I'm surprised that police and the CPS overreacted to this, but it's still a sad, sad state of affairs. Should I hunt through Twitter and find anything where I might possibly have said something slightly "menacing?" It's my goddamn shoutbox—since when have we lost the right to make a freakin' joke?

Paul Chambers wrote an admittedly ill-conceived joke on Twitter in his frustration over Robin Hood airport being closed. What happened as a result of that is just shocking:

Chambers was arrested, questioned for seven hours (where he had to explain Twitter to the people doing the questioning), suspended from his job and banned for life from Robin Hood airport. Yesterday, almost five months after what he thought was an innocuous – albeit hyperbolic - joke tweet, Paul Chambers was found guilty of sending a menacing message over a public telecommunications network.

Short URL: http://farukat.es/p450

Whut? There's already a band called "Pancake Breakfast?" I was gonna call my band that… aw, man…

You know my wife @antichrista from the Internet, right? And you know how she’s in an awesome band called Pancake Breakfast? They’re funding their new album on Kickstarter, where you can pre-order it and get a bunch of other goodies. There’s a cool video, too.

I don’t even usually like folksy bands, but PB are seriously great. They’re like the funnest, rockiest parts of the weirdest, strangest parts of Tom Waits. You can hear them here…

…then click here to get the album!