It was not the end of Ainsley, sadly. Sinead remained due to the public vote, so maybe Ainsley is beginning to realise he's not going to win the public over or win the competition. My bet is on Lemar, although either he or David would do for a worthy winner as far as I'm concerned. Having watched Sinead rehearse next week's song however, she'll be difficult to beat and Lemar may just have chosen the wrong song. We'll see. Normality may now return for the next five days, until the next "Showdown" on Friday evening.

At risk of boring my American readers, who will have no idea what all this is about, we've got this Reality TV thing going on in the UK at the moment. Now, if you read my posts on the 12th and 20th November, you'll remember I asked why the teachers in the BBC's Fame Academy and Voice Tutor, Carrie, in particular, can't see for themselves just how bad Ainsley really is. Maybe they've cottonned on now, because for the second week running, Ainsley's on probation! Now then UK, let's get our act together tonight and vote to keep Sinead in! Hopefully the students will then vote for Malachi and tone deaf Ainsley will be out of the door! :)

"Jim and James" as they're generally known, invented Hot or Not? (If you don't know what Hot or Not is, I'm surprised.) I July, they thought of applying the same idea to Blogs, so you can now rate this Blog (and thousands of others) at Blog.HotOrNot.Com. If you like, you can start off by rating this one! (Be gentle with me, Mildred!) James writes a Blog himself. You can find it by Clicking Here.

Apparently true Factoid from the Smithsonian: 10% of all Americans live in Trailer Parks. 'Mazin' !

As if anyone were interested, I'll just let you know my Fantasy Film in the fantasyfilmleague.com October - December season is bombing nicely! I chose Dan Ackroyd, Samuel L Jackson, Eddie Murphy, Nick Nolte, Meg Ryan and Patrick Stewart, directed by Ridley Scott! It cost me $70m to make, yet "Men in White Behaving Well" has taken a miserable $12,825,000 in the US and European box office. This puts me at number 707 out of 1,923 in the league. My only consolation is that there are 1,216 other people's Fantsay Films doing worse than mine! :-)

Colin says "OK".

The Human Computer was held on 20 November 2002 and was Co-presented by Professor Igor Aleksander and Professor Kevin Warwick with students participating from schools in the UK and South Africa.

The host is Michael Rodd who many UK residents of my age will remember from the BBC's "Tomorrow's World" programmes of the 70s. Once known as "Raymond Baxter's nice young man", he's very well versed in the scientific world himself. Colin and I have both worked with him before.

If you're serious about your science, settle down with a cup of tea and watch. You'll need Broadband I'm afraid as well as Windows Media Player, of course. Do drop me an email if you enjoy it. Click the picture to launch the presentation.

Colin Grimshaw's been busy recently, organising all the technical work for a multi-university global Video Conference. The topic was "The Human Computer". I've seen some of it and want to watch the whole thing. This is the sort of content one does not see enough of on TV, real cutting edge science, being taught by the Professors who are doing the research. The stream was captured and is on the Web right now. I've asked Colin if I can quote the URL here for anyone interested. He's getting back to me. If he says OK, I'll post a precis and the URL here. This is the sort of thing you'd never find by "surfing" because it's just a streaming file on a server at Imperial College.

Well, guess what? Ainslie's in and Katie's out! Amazingly, Ainsley was saved by all four of the remaining voting students voting to keep him in. Ainsley sang off key (something he admitted and everyone else enoticed) yet Katie sang superbly. Which Science Fiction author was it who invented the expression, "Tanj!"? It stands for "There Ain't No Justice".

OK, so we're all hooked on the BBC's "Fame Academy" but then so are several millions of other people in the UK. The ideal result tonight would be: Katie saved by the public vote, David saved by the students, Ainslie shown the door! We'll see what happens at 8:30pm. I'll let you know! :-)

I promised a couple of days ago to look out the video reference for Dean Kamen's IBOT wheelchair. I found it. Nine years ago, Kamen wanted to improve the life of a young man he happened to see struggling to get his wheelchair up a curb. “I just fixated on how unreasonable that condition really is,” he says. “And it just seemed to me that the fundamental issue was the world has not been architected for people that are sitting down at 39 inches.” Kamen thought about this old problem in a revolutionary new way. What if instead of getting a chair that could go upstairs, you could make a machine that could stand up and balance the way humans do?

If you love technology as I do, but like to see it used in ways that change people's lives, you really should watch this video. Go to This Page and select the fastest speed your PC and connection will allow. If you don't find this NBC report heart warming and inspirational I'll be very surprised.

If you read my post on the 12th November, you'll remember I asked why the teachers in the BBC's Fame Academy can't see for themselves just how bad Ainsley really is. They must have been reading this Website. (As if!) Anyhow, Ainsley's on probation - which is extremely satisfying for all us viewers. With any luck, he'll get voted out on Saturday. Vote for Katie! :-)

Along with doubtless hundreds of thousands of others, I received two emails yesterday. One from Segway and one from Amazon.com announcing the first publicly available models of the Segway HT. This must be the ultimate gadget surely. The much touted "Ginger" project of Dean Kamen, the Segway evolved from the technology developed for the IBOT, a sophisticated electronic wheelchair for the disabled, designed to climb stairs and traverse uneven terrain. Like Segway HT, the IBOT uses self-balancing technology. There's a truly amazing TV news report about the IBOT, quite inspiring. I'll dig out the reference for tomorrow's Blog entry - assuming it's still available on the Web.

The Segway Human Transporter is a truly 21st-century idea, a two-wheeled electric vehicle that's practical, efficient, slightly miraculous, and an undeniably fun way of getting around. It's as different from a bicycle or motorcycle as the original personal computers were from their giant, mainframe predecessors. That's what Amazon say about it and they're right. If I had an odd $5k lying around, AND if they were on sale in the UK (which they aren't) I'd buy one in a flash. One thing I found notable is that you're not allowed to actually take delivery of one, until you have attended the Segway training course. Now that's interesting. However, if you're in the USA and if you fancy putting down your $499 unrefundable deposit right away, you can enter the draw for one of thirty of the machines to be delivered in time for Christmas!. Click the picture above to visit Amazon.com and read down the page to see just what an amazing piece of technology this is.

As regular readers will know, I used to work at University College London, and old friend Colin Grimshaw still works at Imperial College. Colin sent me the news this morning that the proposed merger between Imperial College and University College London has been called off after running into intense opposition from academic staff. Today's news, killing off the idea of a London super-university to eclipse Oxford and Cambridge, is a bitter blow for the two principals who launched the plan last month.

Sir Derek Roberts, acting provost of UCL, spoke about the "hypocrisy" and "lies" of opponents among academic staff, who have campaigned vigorously against the plan he put forward with Sir Richard Sykes, rector of Imperial College. Merger between the two institutions would, the two vice-chancellors argued, have created potentially the greatest university in the country, attracting more research funding than Oxbridge and competing with global giants like Harvard. But opponents argued the merger was a takeover by Imperial and raised fears of redundancies.

Sir Derek said opponents had used deliberate scare tactics, such as suggesting all the physical sciences would be moved from UCL's Bloomsbury site to Imperial. "That's an absolute lie - there has been no such decision and the whole idea is ludicrous," he said. "This fantastic opportunity to create not only an outstanding institution in London and the UK, but something that has a chance of operating in the world league of teaching and research has a fair chance of being thrown away because of the bias and ill-informed views that have influenced people without wanting to explore the facts. My view? Shame - another victory for the Luddites!

Shame really, but Nigel got the push from the Fame Academy in tonight's live show. I think however overall, he'll have done OK from his five weeks exposure to a huge television audience. June and I reckon he was one of the better performers and he'll have no trouble making his living from his music now. Beats being a truck salesman anyway. Good luck to him. Click here for the details.

Seen the Trailer for the new Matrix Movie Yet? Looks good!

Well, I thought I was clued up on Marketing, but I totally failed to spot this one. Remember that film that was being trailed on TV recently? Called "Lucky Star", The "plot" in the TV and cinema trailer featured a young man, played by Benicio Del Toro who was "born lucky" due to the way the planets were perfectly aligned at the moment of his birth. Remember him driving a young lady through the city and as he pulls onto the main road, all the overhead traffic lights turn green - far into the distance? The line is, "Just lucky I guess!" The final shot is of all the planets moving into line. (NOW you remember!) There was TV, Cinema, Magazine, Newspaper, Poster and Web advertising but have you wondered why you've haven't seen the movie review by Jonathan Ross, or met anyone who's seen it yet?

Answer; the whole thing was a very effective (and very expensive) spoof - try going to luckyluckystar.com now, and see where you end up! Thinking back, it's all so obvious now. Clever one guys!

Colin's Girlfriend, Becky, bought June a CD at the weekend. June had heard one track on the radio, and because it was different from any previous versions of the song, liked it a lot. It's really good. Track 5 of ''Halos and Horns'' is ''If'' and say what you like about Dolly Parton, she's got a lovely voice. Click Here to listen or click the pic to find out more.

I can't say I was terribly upset that Marli was not saved by either the public vote or her fellow stdents on Friday night. Katie was the public's favourite and certainly to our ears gave the evenings best performance. This week, everything is different because of the BBC's annual Children in Need appeal so we have to wait until Sunday to find out who's going next. Why oh why don't the teachers spot the fact that Ainsley is an idiot who can't sing in tune? :-)

I know I shouldn't like it really, because it's voyeuristic, but isn't there something fascinating about watching fairly ordinary people go through extraordinary times? As I mentioned below, June and I went to the Weekly Live Fame Academy show a week ago and saw Pippa get voted out - shame. Maybe it's because we've now seen these people close up that it seems more real, but we're wondering which of the three to the left, Malachi. Marli or Katie will leave. They will be "Singing For Survival" on tomorrow night's live show and we get to help decide which student wins the public vote. Perhaps it has the same attraction as a 'tear jerker' film - it's enjoyable in a funny sort of way because it's sad - but whatever it is, once you get involved, it just gets to you! :-) Click the picture for all the details.

"There are 58,789,194 people in the UK and that's official" reports the British 2001 census. This and other results have recently been revealed. For example, David and Victoria Beckham appear to have had an effect on parents' choices of names for their babies, with 129 children being given the name 'Brooklyn'. But curiously, 36 - more than a quarter of these - were girls! If you really want to learn about the British, click here.

When the guy who invented the drawing board got it wrong, what did he go back to?

We could have done without the standing. :-)

Despite June having managed to upgrade us to VIP status for Friday Night's live Fame Academy show (with wristbands to prove it), we still had to stand and wait for entrance to the studio for around an hour. We were finally let in at ten to eight for an 8:30pm live show. The Floor Manager briefed us on how to applaud, when to applaud, when to shout, what to shout and so on. Actually it was quite hard work, and unbelieveably hot, yet despite also watching one of our favourites, Pippa, being voted out, (on the left in the picture) we both enjoyed it.

The highlight was undoubtedly being just 30 feet from Lionel Richie as he sang "Easy", live, with Lemar, one of the "students". The studio was actually smaller than it looks on TV and we reckon the audience numbered no more than about 300 people, so it was probably as close as any member of the public gets to seeing this Oscar-winning, 70 million album selling, living legend sing live. Here's a reminder of the song. Click the picture if you'd like to know more about the music. (Another one for Steve's Shop without a doubt!).