Emulators bring old computers to life: "While the phones have physical limitations like a small key interface and screen, the modern devices are actually far more powerful than the archaic machines they are now imitating."

In a fit of New Years lets-do-something-new-ness, Ju and I have signed up for an introductory Capoeira course with these guys - and it was the first evening tonight.

It was really good fun - that seemed to be the defining principle. As other people have noted, Capoeira seems to avoid the po-faced seriousness of many oriental martial arts (oh yes - you can practice with a feeling of "joyful exhilaration" all you like once you've spent half an hour in agony on your knees ;)).

We arrived early and watched a few minutes of the previous class - which was finishing with a big happy sing-song. Then after lining up and paying for the 5-week course, the instructor, Boneco, got us doing a warm-up: lots of jumping up and down and sweeping movements, then leg lifts and some spinny sort of kicks (not being a punchy kicky guy I don't really know the proper names for these things). Lots of partner practice followed - which I found really nice, coming from aiki-land where this sort of thing dominates - and then we worked up the hall attempting to do semi-cartwheel things with various degrees of success.

...and suddenly an hour and a half had passed, and the class finished with everyone standing round clapping and singing whilst some of Bonecos students played a tamborine and a Berimbau. Everyone seemed to be having a really good time - I'm looking forward to next week already :)

Something Jay said at zazen on Friday resonated with me and I couldn't work out why: "we sit with the universe".

At the risk of sounding like a tired old hippy (and we all know that the hippies must die), our industry seems pleased as punch with itself that suddenly everyone is getting networked - that we communicate with and influence not just those around us, or those in the next town or country, but everyone everywhere.

And then you look back at these old Buddhist guys... and they've been saying exactly the same thing for thousands of years. The hi-tech industry is playing catchup with monks who died 2 millenia ago - doh.

It's been a weird week for it all btw. Jay and Heather, who run the zazen group, turned up to Aikido on Thursday to have a look at what we do... and then Tom Helsby came along with me to zazen on Friday.

I can only liken the sensation to how I imagine it feels when you and your partners parents first meet: on best behaviour and praying fervently that everyone gets on.

The Register on BitTorrent: "Either way, you know what will happen next. Court cases. Media coverage. And then new file-sharing technology that's a little less easy to attack."

Phone biz agrees on $1 DRM levy: "The mobile phone industry has already agreed on a DRM standard for locking down media - and it'll cost $1 per handset, plus a percentage of each piece of media downloaded."