Michael G. Hagerty – why isn’t this guy in more stuff? He’s a great comic actor.

Say no to ATI and Nvidia. Don’t compromise my freedom for a spiny cube

CNUK was born in late 1997, long before Creative Commons or the ideas of free culture were born. It was the personal website of Matt Lee, titled unsurprisingly enough ‘Matt’s website’ and it lived somewhere on Tripod, and then a week later on Geocities – neither of the URLs work now, because I’ve forgotten them. The content, much like the HTML sucked – what little content there was comprised almost exclusively of short little silly pages I created because there didn’t seem to be anyone around with a site like mine, there didn’t seem to be anyone talking about the things I was talking about:- Amstrad CPC computers, Lee and Herring (the British Comedy Duo), The A-Team and Slow Worms. Of course, nowadays, we have Wikipedia for such content, but back then there was none of it, really.

Introducing Nick

In 1997, I met Nick Hancock – he had more hair back then, a pony tail in fact, as his mothballed website from back then reveals. Nick and I eventually collaborated to produce Matt and Nick’s Comedy Net – a website with big asparations and little in the way of design or concept, it was all made in a demo version of Front Page 98 and the graphics were made with a freebie of Corel Xara found on a coverdisk. It moved to its new home at comedynet.inuk.com and eventually went ‘legit’ with it’s own domain name – comedy-net.co.uk (we’ve still got these domains by the way, we’re just getting back to using them) – the website became Comedy Net UK and we even found ourselves getting voted 3rd Best Comedy Site by Internet Monthly magazine. We celebrated, albeit a month early, with our friend Ruaidhri (who we call Clive) and notions of film began to come to mind.

Of Chloe and Clive and Kate, of course

In mid 1999, I began writing scripts for my film, Clive Pigeon Spotting – it was to be a romantic comedy, written by a boy (I was only just 18) who knew very little of comedy and nothing about romance. It didn’t do that well, but Clive and Chloe (and later Kate) blessed me with their presence each and every Saturday afternoon for a while, in the local cinema bar as I presented another hastily-printed-at-8am-at-work script in a fat Manilla envelope over a Smirnoff Mule or 20. Time passed. Kate vanished. Clive began concentrating on university and Chloe has aspirations of her own – a series of spoof pornos, with titles like Dawson’s Crotch. Eventually, I moved out of my family home, into my own flat and began a grassroots comedy site for the local area. Nick was in Australia, and the whole film thing eventually vanished from my mind. Comedy Net UK disappeared and up came comedynetuk.com which survived about 4 years in various incarnations whilst never truly managing to have any content. Some of the people I’d worked with on various comedynetuk.com projects are now doing things behind the scenes at CNUK, but overall it wasn’t ever really what it could have been. CNUK Media Foundation was born out of a sense of needing to do something right for culture, after reading Free Culture and taking an interest in EFF, FSF, Downhill Battle, Adbusters and Creative Commons.

The mission is community

The mission of CNUK, I believe, is one of community. Creating a community around the ideals of several likeminded projects and giving people a platform to contribute.
I hope you like it as much as I’m liking it
matt

The longer he sat by himself, the harder he tried to recall the events of the evening previous – it did little good and as Nick slipped in and out of his manic operatic, he began to recall basic, if disjointed events. He had come to the following conclusion:-

• Some girl was involved.
• He had asked his sort-of-girlfriend to marry him, albeit in a drunken stupor, proceeding an argument and after having asked her what the fuck she was on about, several times.
• He had managed all this on £4.86, given the amount he went out with and the 14 solitary pence in his pocket.
• None of this had seen especially out of the ordinary of the people who had been buying him drinks.
• Neither Matt nor Ben had bought him a drink, or even seen him, since storming out of the party.

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Sugar @ Laptop.org

It was 3:07pm. Sunday afternoon. Nick woke up with a startle. His head hurt. While most Saturday nights were similar for Nick, this time had been different, this time things with Rachel had gone particularly bad. After all, that’s why he had hit the town with quite such gusto. No, this was a drunken binge to end all binges, and the ultimate irony? He didn’t have a fucking clue what had happened to him, but he’d find out, eventually. Maybe.

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I'm still quite dumbstruck by your immediate beauty. Doesn't that sound odd?
I mean, it was seven years ago. Seven.
Fuck. That seems scary.
I remember how great you looked.
I remember how bad I looked.
Doesn't feel really like it happened. It did though. Guess that's the important part.
Focus on that. Doesn't make it all seem so bitterly desperate and hopeless then, does it?
Nothing so hopeless. Nothing so empty.

Some of Canada’s best known musicians, including Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlin, Sum 41, and Barenaked Ladies, have formed a new copyright coalition.
The artists say that they oppose file sharing lawsuits, the use of Digital Restrictions Management, and DMCA-style legislation and that they want record labels to stop claiming that they represent their views.
From their website:-

We are a growing coalition of Canadian music creators who share the common goal of having our voices heard about the laws and policies that affect our livelihoods. We are the people who actually create Canadian music. Without us, there would be no music for copyright laws to protect.
Until now, a group of multinational record labels has done most of the talking about what Canadian artists need out of copyright. Record companies and music publishers are not our enemies, but let’s be clear: lobbyists for major labels are looking out for their shareholders, and seldom speak for Canadian artists. Legislative proposals that would facilitate lawsuits against our fans or increase the labels’ control over the enjoyment of music are made not in our names, but on behalf of the labels’ foreign parent companies.

This is interesting news, especially coming from artists on major labels.

WikiRadio is a radio that anyone can contribute to, or broadcast to, all they need to do is book a slot and they are good to go.