The world awoke this morning to the extremely sad news about David Bowie's passing. He had been ill for some time but lived to see the release of his final album, a farewell known as Blackstar.

His contribution to the arts, and in particular, music since the late 1960s, was immeasurable, and he will be sorely missed. Nick Mason paid his own tributes to Bowie on the UK's Channel 4 news this evening, noting his personal favourite song as Space Oddity.

With a career running in parallel to Pink Floyd, there were some influences in both directions, and of course Bowie covered See Emily Play on his 1973 album Pin Ups. More recently, in 2006, he made a surprise return to the stage in a guest appearance during one of David Gilmour's Royal Albert Hall concerts, performing Arnold Layne and Comfortably Numb - as the picture here (kindly sent in by Nick Spekkels) shows.

The iconic nature of Bowie was typified by the Royal Albert Hall staff pouring into the arena as Bowie hit the stage that night, all seemingly in awe of him, and determined not to miss such a rare appearance. Bowie's performance that night was rightly included in the DVD release of Remember That Night.

Next Saturday, January 16th, our friends in France and Germany will have an interesting alternative to the normal drab television offerings. ARTE are airing John Edginton's excellent documentary 'Pink Floyd - The Story of Wish You Were Here' at 9:50pm. This is an adaptation of the commercial release that came out back in 2012, and our review of the Blu-ray/DVD of The Story of Wish You Were Here can be read here.

If you've yet to see the documentary (and the Blu-ray/DVD offers extra material if your appetite is whetted by the screening) it is a good opportunity to check out this fascinating look at the creation of the album. If you've seen it before, it might prove an ideal bit of Saturday night viewing anyway!

UPDATE: the show is repeated on ARTE Broadcast on Saturday, January 23rd at 01:10 - 02:10 (GMT +01:00).

Our thanks to Michael Nickel for the info...and here's a taster from ARTE for you:

Many apologies for our enforced outage on Thursday/Friday - this was due to some nasty piece of work who hacked this website, for no apparent reason other than to cause additional work and stress.

As you now know, the site is back, and is safe to visit. It has been safe to visit throughout, and as a precaution a special deep scan has been done on the many thousands of pages and items across the website.

Thank you to all of you for your patience during this trying time, and for those of you who offered to help either logistically, or even financially! Special thanks go to our friends 3B Digital who have gone above and beyond yet again!

We can now proceed with some of the updates we've wanted to do - not least, there's a competition on its way shortly!

Today (January 6th) would have seen Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett's 70th birthday, having been born in 1946, and we've been marking this notable day by having a wander through Syd's back catalogue of music.

We're sure that like us, many will have paid their own personal tributes to him, in remembrance of the impact he had on our lives - playing his music, enjoying some of his art work, and so on. We'd love to know how you are marking his huge contribution to our lives - email us, or join in the conversation over at our Facebook page.

On the official front, there's been quite a bit of work going on behind the scenes, as today saw the launch of a newly designed, official website for Syd [click the thumbnail to the left], replacing the one we've been enjoying over the last few years. The new one has a slick new look, with a wealth of never before seen material, including a large number of family photographs, and is well worth a visit - www.SydBarrett.com is the URL. The site did struggle when it went live earlier today, but seems to be speeding up now. If you find it still struggling when you visit (and Pink Floyd's official Facebook recently posted about it, which could send a lot of traffic to it) then give it a try tomorrow...