Large numbers of casualties have been reported after at least six explosions on the Underground network and a double-decker bus in London.

Scotland Yard confirmed one of several reports of explosions on buses in the city - in Tavistock Place - but said the cause was not yet known.

Multiple blasts paralyse London

Keep everyone in London in your prayers.

Live updates from Cambridge News

I’ve been working on and off over the last few weeks on doing an update for the Verse of the Day Wordpress plugin (and the TTLB Ecosystem plugin, but more on that later). This was initiated by my hosting company shutting off access to remote file access using the PHP fopen() and file() commands for security reasons. This made me realise that I was relying on an assumption for the plugins to work, that being that remote file access was on. Bad assumption considering how paranoid a lot of hosting companies are becoming (and not without reason). So after digging around a bit I re-discovered the Snoopy net library for PHP which doesn’t rely on any PHP remote functions, but actually acts as its own user agent (read: web browser).

Can I just take a moment to cheer the developers of the Snoopy PHP class. This is a great piece of code, that has made my life so much easier.

As well as this problem, the previous versions of the VotD plugin suffered from some rather ugly error-reporting problems, including a couple of errors that would actually display PHP warnings on the site. Also in some cases, if the plugin failed to run properly it would simply display nothing, with no hint as to what went wrong. Really not very helpful.

(more…)

Did I mention that I love jazz music? And James Morrison has to be one of the great jazz players of all time. Sydney Anglican has an interview with him about his music and his faith: What I know about all that jazz

It’s interesting. I will be playing at a secular concert that’s supposed to have nothing to do with Christian music or gospel music, then I will play a gospel number or two and people will be moved. Even people who profess to have no Christian faith and say ‘That stuff is not for me’.

I find that guys in my band - great musicians with no professed faith - would turn to me and instead of saying ‘I am not comfortable playing Christian stuff,’ the reverse has been true. They say, ‘That’s amazing. I really started to feel something amazing, but I don’t know what.’ Music - carrying the message that it does - can really move the people that are playing it.

The guy has talent in spades and he’s also into developing new music technology. He’s helped to develop a new electric trumpet. The Morrison Digital Trumpet, designed and built by Marshall MIDI. It has valves that use a light sensor to change the notes and an breath sensor to allow the player to change the sound like a normal trumpet, but the really interesting thing is the keypad on the side:

Controlling the octaves on the MDT is achieved using a series of tactile buttons on the left side of the trumpet. This technique gives the player the ability to jump between 4 octaves of range instantly and by pressing another button a total of 10 can octaves is achieved. This “keypad” can also be assigned to various MIDI functions e.g. pitch change, volume control etc.

Very nice.

The Deep Impact probe has impacted with the Tempel 1 comet at about 2:15 EDT. There’s an image viewer on the page with a bunch of great shots on approach. Webcast of the coverage

There’s a full story on MSNBC with a bunch of images too.. Now we can find out if they are just dirty snowballs, or rocks. Kudos to the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory for providing what will surely be the best 4^th of July fireworks!

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory from the sky. (Google Maps)