Or... a guide on how to expand your music collection into the realms of electronic music without running the risk of encountering a wailing diva backed up by plinky-plonky piano riffs. 1) Leftfield - Leftism World beat awareness gives this albums sweeping scope with ragga and dub rythyms forming the foundation for one of the best albums ever. Add in guest vocals from John Lydon and Toni Halliday and you've got an album that keeps everyone happy and keeps you guessing. 2) Hybrid - Wide Angle Not only did Hybrid help reinvent breakbeat, but they managed to do it while recording alongside the Moscow symphony orchestra on the epic 'Finished Symphony'. Julee Cruise also steps up to provide vocals on a couple of other standout tracks. 3) BT - Movement In Still Life Released when Trance was the sound that everyone was making this album delivered a few perfect trance numbers before sidestepping into immaculately produced breakbeats. BT collaborates with Paul Van Dyk, Kirsty Hawkshaw, Tsunami One and... Hybrid in adding miniscule details to a broad musical canvas. 4) Massive Attack - Protection Not quite as good as 'Blue Lines' this album is probably more accessible to the uninformed music fan. Massive attack were of course key players in the moulding of Bristol's Trip Hop scene, and the initial excitement about Trip-Hop had been dulled by the wave of 'me-too' artists, the press were prepared to deliver harsh words to any new Trip-Hop prouctions. But, this album grew on me, until it supplanted 'Blue Lines', a large part of this is because the vocallist is Tracy Thorn, recorded when Everything But The Girl were tranforrming themselves from folk cover band into an essential ingredient of the UK's dance music scene. 5) LTJ Bukem - Logical Progression Probably the defining atmospheric Drum n Bass album, the beats are fast but the music remains relaxed and never demands any participation other than listening. The music press loved to try pushing this as the 'new jazz', which really skirted around the fact that good drum n' bass is supposed to be something different. 6) The Chemical Brothers - Exit Planet Dust Their first album, recorded in the days before some clueless music journalist created a bin for it labelled 'Big Beat'. For electronic music it sounds depply organic and lo-fi, but there's not a live instrument in sight, well except for maybe the bits that Beth Orton helped on. Which leads me to... 7) Beth Orton - Trailer Park For fans of Joni Mitchell and any singer-songwriter who subscribes to her tradition, Beth provided guest vocals for a variety of producers before delivering an album of her own. Actually this is probably the least danceable album on this list, however the production betrays its roots in rave culture and provides a foundation below her vocals and guitar. 8) Soulwax - As Heard On Radio Soulwax Vol II Most big records in dance music don't come from albums, in fact most producers only release one killer single before fading back into obscurity, or changing production partners and names. Instead of single artist albums dance musc has the DJ Mix album, many of these are nothing more than compilations endorsed by some big name. But Soulwax put a lot of effort into chopping up everything into one massive sound collage with a monster of a groove running through it. This means we get to hear Destiny's Child mixed into Dolly Parton, mixed into Royksopp - brilliant. 9) Fatboy Slim - Halfway Between The Gutter And The Stars OK everyone knows this, I can hardly produce this chart without mentioning Norman Cook, while 'You've Come A Long Way Baby' has most of his best known tracks, this album has his Best tracks, even Christopher Walken got his groove on to this. The guests came out in force for this album, Macy Gray, Bootsy Collins, Jim Morrison (by the magic of Sampling) and Roland Clarke - who delivers an uplifting ode to house music on 'Song For Shelter'. 10) The KLF - Chill Out Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty invented ambient dance, it's not about grooves, it's about background music that keeps your brain working. It's also important in this list because it was recorded live, without edits, in one take, with Bill and Jimmy mixing sound effect records and playing the synth parts. It took 2 days to get the final version after restarting many failed takes.

We Scots like to celebrate the life of the great Scottish bard every year on the 25th. So, here's the essential poem which is used to introduce the star of the feast - the haggis. Address to a Haggis by Rabbie Burns (1786) Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain of the pudding-race! Aboon them a' ye tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o' a grace As lang's my arm. The groaning trencher there ye fill, Your hurdies like a distant hill, Your pin wad help to mend a mill In time o'need, While through your pores the dews distil Like amber bead. His knife see rustic labour dight, And cut you up wi' ready slight, Trenching your gushing entrails bright. Like ony ditch; And then, O what a glorious sight, Warm-reekin', rich! Then, horn for horn, they stretch an' strive: Deil tak the hindmost! On they drive, Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve Are bent like drums; Then auld guid man, maist like to rive, "Bethankit!" hums. Is there that o'er his French ragout Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad make her spew Wi' perfect scunner, Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view On sic a dinner? Poor devil! See him owre his trash, As feckless as wither'd rash, His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash; His nieve a nit; Thro' bloody flood or field to dash, O how unfit! But mark the rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread. Clap in his walie nieve a blade, He'll mak' it whistle, And legs, and arms, and head will sned, Like taps o' thrissle. Ye powers, wah mak mankind your care, And dish them out with their bill o' fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies; But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer Gie her a haggis!

My imeem business card says 'Security Architect', which means that I'm responsible for making sure that the imeem application you're running on your desktop is secure against would be attackers. By saying this, I have now opened myself up as a prime target of those kind of people who like to break into systems, take over your computer, replace your desktop wallpaper with something incriminating and host my warez on your interweb link. I know this because that's the type of person I am, except I'm the good guy here.... Anyway, with a view to reassuring some of the justifiably paranoid users out there I'm going to go over a number of the security techniques we're using. Encryption is integrated into every factet of the data management in the application, from initial login we perform a secure key exchange using public key cryptography and use AES for all the network traffic after this exchange. * Nobody can sniff your network traffic since it's encrypted * Nobody can get your login credentials unless they have imeem's private key * Evildoers cannot pose as an imeem server since the client can verify their identity with imeem's public key The local database is a core component of imeem, caching all the important parts of your friend network and accelerating the application, this is encrypted on the disk using an AES key delivered from the server. The only way to get this key is to login with your username and password, so your local data is protected even if an attacker has access to your machine. Data is transferred and shared between clients on the network, again we employ our crypto-fu to make sure that the origin of data is verifiable, checksums and signatures are a core part of data verification, whether we're talking about journal postings, galleries, images or files. It's going to be hard for malicious users to spoof content in your name, or your friends. Trust is built into the data distribution model. The client will attempt to automagically update itself when new releases are available, we try to make this as painless as possible, and moreover, we make sure it's totally secure, updates are signed using the imeem credentials so there's no scope for Evil Inc. posing as an imeem update server and delivering zombified applications to your machine. imeem can verify the origin of any updates that are released and won't accept anything but 100% pure imeem certified code. Similarly, when imeem goes looking for a server to connect to it can verify the address that it's getting is legitemate using the same piece of mathematical magic. Making network connections with your friends requires the agreement of both clients and the server, even though the client is listening on ports 1729 and 2465 it will ignore any connections which do not have the correct credentials. The client will not even respond to invalid connections making it impossible for a network scanner to infer the nature of the application, if you're extra paranoid you can change the port settings. Since the application runs in the .Net environment the potential for classic buffer overflows and other attacks related to flawed memory management is largely eliminated, however .Net does use a number of Windows libraries which have exhibited security flaws in the past. For example the GDI+ buffer overflows affected hundreds of windows applications, including imeem, there has been a fix for this issue available from Microsoft for some time. We keep our eyes and ears open for similar bugs in Windows and other Third Party libraries which imeem uses so that we may assess the impact and take any preventative action. So far, so good, but keep up with those windows updates. Early versions of imeem used HTML controls for a number of test features, we were well aware of the potential for Cross Site Scripting attacks and ensured that any data that the application renders as HTML will be filtered for potentially malicious code. This is of course a fine balance between maintaining the versatility of HTML and disabling some of the more dangerous features (e.g. ActiveX). There are vulnerabilities we can't protect users from, social engineering is always a threat in any communications medium, but because imeem has the social network as a core component we believe that users are far better equipped to assess the trustworthyness of other users on the system. If somebody enters a web link into chat there's no mechanism for us to verify what's at the other end of such a link, follow links at your own risk, once you click on a link we pass control to your web browser and we all know that web browsers have a long history of security holes that can be exploited by visiting malicious web pages. If you download files from friends you should understand that files can be dangerous, be sure you know the risks before running that .EXE you've just downloaded or viewing that movie, viruses can hide in all sorts of places. There is nothing imeem can do to verify that a file is kosher, the server doesn't even know what you're sharing, at most you know that the person sharing it is your friend, which should count for some degree of confidence in the validity of an object. But then again, if you knew my friends you might have second thoughts Of course you guys all knew this anyway. If you have any concerns about the security of the application, or you know about specific problems that have escaped our quality control feel free to contact me regarding them.

Skye had another doctor's appointment yesterday and impressed everyone by weighing in at 10lbs 9 ounces and gaining an extra inch in 'height'. She's also started to lifte herself up and drag herself around in an approximation of a crawl.

Today, after its seven-year journey through the Solar System on board the Cassini spacecraft, ESA's Huygens probe has successfully descended through the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn¿s largest moon, and safely landed on its surface. The first scientific data arrived at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany, this afternoon at 17:19 CET. Huygens is mankind's first successful attempt to land a probe on another a world in the outer Solar System. "This is a great achievement for Europe and its US partners in this ambitious international endeavour to explore the Saturnian system," said Jean-Jacques Dordain, ESA's Director General. Following its release from the Cassini mothership on 25 December, Huygens reached Titan's outer atmosphere after 20 days and a 4 million km cruise. The probe started its descent through Titan's hazy cloud layers from an altitude of about 1270 km at 11:13 CET. During the following three minutes Huygens had to decelerate from 18 000 to 1400 km per hour. A sequence of parachutes then slowed it down to less than 300 km per hour. At a height of about 160 km the probe's scientific instruments were exposed to Titan's atmosphere. At about 120 km, the main parachute was replaced by a smaller one to complete the descent, with an expected touchdown at 13:34 CET. Preliminary data indicate that the probe landed safely, likely on a solid surface. The probe began transmitting data to Cassini four minutes into its descent and continued to transmit data after landing at least as long as Cassini was above Titan's horizon. The certainty that Huygens was alive came already at 11:25 CET today, when the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia, USA, picked up a faint but unmistakable radio signal from the probe. Radio telescopes on Earth continued to receive this signal well past the expected lifetime of Huygens. Huygens data, relayed by Cassini, were picked up by NASA's Deep Space Network and delivered immediately to ESA's European Space Operation Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where the scientific analysis is currently taking place. "Titan was always the target in the Saturn system where the need for 'ground truth' from a probe was critical. It is a fascinating world and we are now eagerly awaiting the scientific results," says Professor David Southwood, Director of ESA's scientific programmme. "The Huygens scientists are all delighted. This was worth the long wait," says Dr Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA Huygens Mission Manager. Huygens is expected to provide the first direct and detailed sampling of Titan's atmospheric chemistry and the first photographs of its hidden surface, and will supply a detailed 'weather report'. One of the main reasons for sending Huygens to Titan is that its nitrogen atmosphere, rich in methane, and its surface may contain many chemicals of the kind that existed on the young Earth. Combined with the Cassini observations, Huygens will afford an unprecedented view of Saturn's mysterious moon. "Descending through Titan was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and today's achievement proves that our partnership with ESA was an excellent one," says Alphonso Diaz, NASA Associate Administrator of Science. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperation between NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian space agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, is managing the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. "The teamwork in Europe and the USA, between scientists, industry and agencies has been extraordinary and has set the foundation for today's enormous success," concludes Jean-Jacques Dordain.

A man purportedly from Kazakhstan launched into a diatribe instead of "The Star-Spangled Banner." No one knows for sure who he was, that Middle Eastern man in an American flag shirt and a cowboy hat who was supposed to sing the national anthem at a rodeo Friday night in the Salem Civic Center. But he sure shook up this town before leaving in a hurry. Introduced as Boraq Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan, he was said to be an immigrant touring America. A film crew was with him, doing some sort of documentary. And he wanted to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" to show his appreciation, the announcer told the crowd. Speaking in broken English, the mysterious man first told the decidedly pro-American crowd - it was a rodeo, of all things, in Salem, of all places - that he supported the war on terrorism. "I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards," he said, according to Brett Sharp of Star Country WSLC, who was also on stage that night as a media sponsor of the rodeo. An uneasy murmur ran through the crowd. "And may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq," he continued, according to Robynn Jaymes, who co-hosts a morning radio show with Sharp and was also among the stunned observers. The crowd's reaction was loud enough for John Saunders, the civic center's assistant director, to hear from the front office. "It was a restless kind of booing," Saunders said. Then the man took off his hat and sang what he said was his native national anthem. He then told the crowd to be seated, put his hat back on, and launched into a butchered version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" that ended with the words "your home in the grave," Sharp said. By then, a restless crowd had turned downright nasty. "If he had been out there a minute longer, I think somebody would have shot him," Jaymes said. "People were booing him, flipping him off." Rodeo producer Bobby Rowe, who by then had figured out that he was the victim of some kind of hoax, had the man escorted out of the civic center. Rowe told him that he and his film friends had best leave right then. "Had we not gotten them out of there, there would have been a riot," said Rowe, who has been bringing his Imperial Rodeo Productions to Salem for years. As his wife, Lenore, put it: "It's a wonder one of these cowboys didn't go out there and rope him up." Saunders agreed. "I was concerned for his personal safety," he said. Once the film crew members and their star realized the severity of the situation, Bobby Rowe said, "they loaded up the van and they screeched out of there." After apologizing to the crowd for being duped, Rowe was left to wonder who pulled such a hoax, and why. Months ago, he was approached by someone from One America, a California-based film company that was reportedly doing a documentary on a Russian immigrant, Rowe said. The outfit asked if Sagdiyev could sing the national anthem at the rodeo in Salem. After listening to a tape, Rowe said sure. By Saturday afternoon, Jaymes had observed that Sagdiyev looked a lot like the title character of "Da Ali G Show," a Home Box Office production that often catches its guests and audiences unaware and then records their reaction to "shock value" material such as Friday night's performance. The show has a character named Borat from Kazakhstan, according to the HBO Web site. Jaymes said she recalls that one of the five cameras was turned on her and others on stage, as if to catch their reactions. "I looked at Brett and said, 'Why do I feel like I'm in the middle of a bad "Saturday Night Live" episode?'" Jaymes said. As Rowe prepared Saturday for a second night of the rodeo, he was playing it safe on who would sing the national anthem. "It'll be a tape," he said.

One of the few things to come out of Belguim that isn't boring, Soulwax are a pair of DJ's who play eclectic and kicking sets full of hard techno, acid, destiny's child and Dolly Parton. I'm playing their essential mix from January 2005 while we're testing the new release "Mr Release".