Apple v Taylor Swift ÷ Me = Opinion

I went on CNN a few weeks back to talk about the whole Apple Music v Taylor Swift argle bargle (or is that fooforaw?)

You can watch my considered, on-the-spot live TV responses in the video via this link, hosted on their site. Sadly no embed option available.

Radio punning

I went on BBC FiveLive this week to discuss more woes at BlackBerry. I went into a remote studio in the BBC for this and stared into a big, fluffy red mic as I chatted to the invisible Nicky Campbell and his colleague, whose name I can't remember, via the big, official looking headphones placed upon my head.

This was a particularly fun interview, I thought, because we break down in the middle for a brief bit of punning, which I definitely regard as a bit of a career highlight.

More radio words

I was on Radio 2 last night talking about Twitter's move to float on the stock market. You can listen to my insights below.

Face for radio

I was on BBC Radio 2 last night talking about the phone maker BlackBerry. As usual pre-call nerves disappeared the moment my name was said, leading to a jolly pleasant discussion about the firm and its troubles and what could happen next.

Listen below - nicely bookended by carvan chat and the theme tune to Grange Hill.

Throw away your CDs, but keep your tapes

I helped a friend move house the other day. One of the last boxes we heaved into the back of a Zipvan (great service, very Grand Theft Auto) was a heavy lot and I asked him what was in it: “Oh just CDs,” he replied. I let go there and then, letting the whole box come crashing down:

“What the hell did you do that for?” he shouted.

“CDs?! Are you mad?” I yelled back.

Ok this bit didn’t happen, but it did in my mind, for who in their right mind keeps CDs nowadays?

With music now all digital, why would you keep plastic cases and linear notes you’ll never, ever read, when you have all your music stored in invisible digital files on your iPod, iPhone, laptop and accessible on services like Spotify? Stick it all on an external hard drive and you’re sorted.

If you must keep the discs, buy a single travel case for keeping the discs as back up, just in case.

My friend disagreed, but it got me thinking: why do people care for CDs? They have none of the aesthetic appeal of vinyl, or that lovely timbre and hiss, and none of the nostalgic appeal either. To my mind, the more beguiling, fading format is tapes.

At home we still have a car that only takes tapes and I love driving around with old random mixes (sorry record industry) that have no way of being controlled beyond a blind fast-forward/reward. Of course, I enjoy this partly because it’s a novelty and I much prefer the digital control in the modern world, but there’s much more fun to be had with tapes than CDs.

As for vinyl, lovely as they are, why anyone would buy them now is beyond me. Inheriting a collection from parents, for example, is one thing, but to actively seek out old albums in massive formats that will often scratch and be unplayable and require heavy, expensive kit to play them, makes no sense to me.

And that’s the thing about music – it should be based on cold, hard, rigid logic.

TV debut talking tablets on the BBC

Yesterday I was very kindly invited to appear on the BBC News Channel to talk about Google’s new Nexus tablet that it unveiled at an event in the US.

It was obviously a combination of fun and fear sitting in the studio waiting for the transmission to start as the interview was going out live and then would be replayed during the evening, and was also edited to run on the website too, as you can see embedded below.

It was my first time on TV, and I enjoyed it, especially how painless the whole process was: turn up, have a cup of tea, sit in video room, talk, leave, done. No faffing with forms or screen tests or make up or anything. Not what I had expected, really.

The funny thing was they told me to make sure I stared directly into the lens and not look up, as there's a monitor relaying what's being broadcast directly above that, which the women who wired me for sound said can often cause people to glance up and looks odd.

As such I stared intently at the lens in front of me, which I think you can sort of tell as my eyes barely move during the entire time (although thankfully most of the transmission feature footage of the device itself, rather than my manic eyes). (Also, yes, I know I need a haircut.)

Onwards and upwards.

A short review of all the books I read in 2011

Another year, another collection of books read. I must be getting slower as I read fewer than in 2010 which was in turn fewer than 2009. Or perhaps I'm reading longer books.

Anyway, a short few lines on each one, with links to previous and longer reviews I wrote during the year where relevant.


1. Do Not Pass Go – Tim Moore

An enjoyable and mostly entertaining jaunt around London looking at the history of the creation of the Monopoly board and an insight into how each major square has evolved since that time.

2. Why England Lose - Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski

An engrossing read on that perennial question of why the England football team are no good, and it was refreshing to see that we're not just useless in our inability to "get stuck in" but also due to our utter lack of technical capabilities.

3. Nocturns – Kazuo Ishiguro

An underwhelming series of short stories from an author I normally enjoy. Each one seemed too flippant and throw-away to capture the interest and all lacked a plot strong enough to remain in the memory.

4. The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet – David Mitchell

A fantastic novel, set in isolated Japan during the 1700s when its sole contact with the outside world was an artificial island used by the Dutch as a trading outpost. Probably the best Mitchell of the lot.

5. Notes from a Big Country – Bill Bryson

A slightly tiresome serious of columns collated into a book that sees Bryson riffing on the craziness of the US of A.

6. The Hours – Micheal Cunningham

Seen the film so read the book: very clever and engaging.

7. In Europe – Geert Mak

Some 900-pages of Europe's history told by a journalist travelling around the continent at the turn of the millenium. A long-slog but great insights and anecdotes throughout.

8. Chemistry for Beginners – Anthony Strong

A clever idea of a novel told through science papers (and diary extracts), that started strongly but the plot was slightly woolly and was about 100 pages too long to really sustain the interest.

9. Why We Run – Robin Harvie

A nice, philosophical take on the notion of running, by a chap who regularly runs 40-miles each weekend. That's a lot. It felt strained at times, though, as if the quotations from the great philosophers that he uses were found beforehand and then each chapter moulded to fit around them.

10. The Terrible Privacy of Maxwell Sim – Jonathan Coe

Coe always tells a good tale and this one was no different but it just wasn't quite strong enough in any direction, either the characters, the plot or the attempts to show the madness of the world modern (See: What a Carve Up!), as his others, but nonetheless it was enjoyable.

11. The Picture of Dorian Gray  - Oscar Wilde

On purchasing a Kindle I went on a free-classic-book buying spree, with this the first work I downloaded. As witty as you'd expect and surprisingly gothic too.

12. Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe

Man trapped on island and the subsequent adventure he has. Good fun.

13. Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson

I just kept hearing the voices of the muppets in all the relevant characters having seen the Muppet's version so often during my childhood but the original work still contains plenty of excitement.

14. The Jungle Book – Ruyard Kipling

A collection of stories, rather than a single tale, which contains some elements that went on to form the bulk of the famous film, but is different in many ways. For instance, Sher Khan is killed by a stampede of wildebeest organised by Mowgli - inspiration for The Lion King?

15. Inverting the Pryamid – Jonathan Wilson

A detailed look at the evolution of football tactics of which I still find amazing that the first formations were 2-3-5. Madness.

16. Reading like a Writer – Francine Prose

Reminded me of being back at university but it was interesting to look at some of the reasons why the best writers are just that.

17. The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen

Finally got around to some Franzen. Engrossing and moving in places but the story of Chip going to Lithuania just didn't work for me at all.

18. Trouble on the Heath – Terry Jones

A load of rubbish. Read in a day, found it lying around, waste of time.

19. To the River – Oliver Laing

Another semi-philosophical book akin to Why We Run in essence, using the writer's affinity with Virginia Woolf and the river Ouse to contemplate her relationship with rivers, the writings it inspired, its role in history and beyond. Quite beguiling in places.

20. I’m Feeling Lucky – Douglas Edwards

Man joins small internet start up called Google, the rest is history. A bit dry in places as Edwards worked in the marketing area but nonetheless still a great insight into the madness of a company that grows from nothing to world's biggest in a few years.

21. The Good Man Jesus and the Scroundrel Christ – Philip Pullman

Pullman proves he's quite a good writer once again, with a clever take on how Christ became the cult figure he is today by stealing the thunder of his more humble brother Jesus.

22. The Atlantic – Simon Winchester

A nice read on some of the history of the Atlantic, the people around it and it's role in human history. Some chapters were a touch week but most offered some interesting insights and anecdotes on the cold, wide ocean separating half the world.

23. Freedom – Jonathan Franzen

After one Franzen, another. This one was, for me, not quite as good as The Corrections but an interesting, clever, damaged novel with a motley collection of characters going about screwing up their lives in unique and odd ways.

24. Player One – Douglas Coupland

A nice antidote to Franzen's endless words, with this short, fast-paced thriller taking an interesting idea that the world reaches its peak oil production and subsequent mayhem ensues. The idea only five people would be an airport cocktail lounge in a major US airport seemed a tad odd but there we go.

25. The Valley of Fear – Arthur Conan Doyle

A classic bit of Holmes, with Doyle using his two stories in one trick. First he sets up and the solves  the mystery while the second half gives the back story of how the amazing turn of events came about in a sleepy English resort. A lack of Holmes in the second half is a let down but the story was interesting enough.

26. How to be Good – Nick Hornby

Another quick easy read, which took a cleverish idea and ran with it as far as it could before becoming too ridiculous. I liked the character of Katie and thought the ideas of charity and the lack of relationships with neighbours in the streets in which live for years on end were well played out, but it's hardly a Great Novel.

27. A Film by Spencer Ludwig – David Flusfeder

Not sure what I really thought about this one: on one level a simple, fun road-story about a father and son: the father dying, the son a sort of successful film director but also a bit of a failure at life. But, while it flowed nicely, I couldn't shake the feeling the author was trying a tad too hard all the time. I appreciate that's a bit woolly but that's the only way I can describe it.

28. The Sisters’ Brothers – Patrick DeWitt

One of my favourite books of the year: a beguiling, lyrical and engrossing story of two murderous brothers heading to San Fran in 1851, the height of the gold rush, to commit, well, a murder. The historical setting let DeWitt paint some great scenes (one brother discovering toothpaste for the first time, shooting a bear that was killing his horse, meeting a mad prospector by a river), while the story is suitably engaging and strange to keep you hooked throughout. Recommended.

29. The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes

The Booker Prize winner and a very clever novel. Short but concise and at times reading more like Barnes musing on life than a novel, but the plot is nevertheless well structured and keeps you guessing until the end and beyond.

30. The Steve Jobs biography – Walter Issacsson

Read for work but I enjoyed this on a personal level too as there's no doubting the impact Jobs made on the world, whether you liked him or not. Jobs comes across as a huge tyrant but one who knew what he was trying to achieve and more often than not he succeeded, with almost those on the end of his tongue-lashings also revealing that their time working with him was some of their best working days.

31. Perfect Rigour – Masha Gessen

A study of a reclusive mathematician who proved the Poincare Conjecture was not a book I thought I would enjoy but Gessen tells the story as a writer first, rather than as a great maths genius (as she is too). This helps make the tale of a genius from Russian surviving the random machinations of Soviet Russia to become a great mathematician working in the US, going on to solve one of the world's most complex maths problems then reject the $1m prize a fascinating read.

32. And God Created Cricket - Simon Hughes

A slightly tiresome read, as Hughes adds a lame joke to the end of every other paragraph charting the history of cricket from Ye Olden Days to The Present Day. There's some nice colour and interesting anecdotes throughout, but the Ho-Ho sarcastic tone is too wearisome to be enjoyable.

33. Guns, Germs and Steel - Jared Diamond

Probably one of the first academic (or semi-academic) works I've read since university, this is an interesting and thought-provoking work examining the reasons why Europe and to a lesser extend Asia became the world super powers (of the last 500 years), rather than the Africas, Americas and Australia.

Diamond's argument is, roughly, that a combination of temperature, the abundance of animals and plants fit for domestication and the availability of certain materials, and a resistance, or lack there of, to disease spread by these animals, helped these areas of the world develop at a faster, more technologically advanced rate, than those without, which lead to an unfair balance when they first came into contact.

What you can achieve in a twenty-one hour day

OnWednesday I had the pleasure of enduring a twenty-one hour day for work – this involved rising at 4:45am and getting to bed at 1am. In this time I flew to Berlin, drank several beers, wrote a lot of words, and even managed to compare car insurance while sat at the airport.

The day started early, as mentioned, and involved a quick taxi ride to the airport, followed by a zippy trip over the Atlantic and into Berlin, in which time I read 120 page of How to be Good by Nick Hornby. It has been good so far.

Then we arrived and were taken on a whistle stop tour of Berlin, mostly by coincidence, as the coach taking us from the airport to the event happened to go by the Brandenburg Gate and several pieces of the Berlin Wall.

I then did plenty of work – including two videos, a review and a news story, phew – before eating some currywurst mit kartoffelen which was sehr tasty, although my fumbling attempts at GCSE conversational German were thwarted by instant replies in perfect English from the chefs serving the food. Curses.

From there it was back to the airport with the company of four other journalists for our 9pm EasyJet flight home. Except this being life, the plane was delayed by one hour and forty minutes, meaning we had some five hours to kill at Schönefeld airport – one of those small, shed-like airports which only servers the cheap airlines.

Still, we made the best of it and imbibed on German beers and some surprisingly good burger and chips from "Cindys", the airport's own knock-off McDonalds, where the nice manageress took pity and kept the kitchen open just long enough to feed us.

We chatted about many topics: our envy of the world presented to baby boomers, the best mobile phone and some of the recent films we'd seen, and I also managed to message several friends, read all the day's news and consider the best car-protection deals.

Sometimes I get these flashbacks to another point in my life and wonder how I would react if I was shown a snapshot of where I have ended up at certain points in the future.

I sat there, in the bright, harsh lighting of the airport departure lounge, sleep-deprived, drunk, and fed up with EasyJet, longing to be back in my new house in Wimbledon, and wondered what the 21-year-old me would have made of the scene, when he stepped off the train in Paddington in 2007 to start his London life.

Eventually, the plane left, we had the Obligatory Crying Baby the entire way, I fell asleep for ten minutes, awoke startled and confused by the light below me that I realised was London and soon enough we landed.

A 45 minute taxi journey home later and I was wearily climbing the stairs into my flat, and thinking that perhaps I don't need a car after all – I find all this traveling far too tiring.

Castaway with Robinson Crusoe

I read Robinson Crusoe recently, thanks to my shiny Kindle, and a very enjoyable story it was too, even if it is written in ye olde English language.

He sets off, is shipwrecked near Hull, then goes to sea again and is captured by a Moor king in Africa where he is a slave for two years. Then he escapes, goes to Brazil, makes a fortune, is shipwrecked on a slave gathering mission (that'll learn him), lives for some 20 plus years on an island, rescues Friday from cannibals, rescues a Spanish man and Friday's father (first ever novel and it's got a mental plot twist, cha!) helps overturn a mutinous English ships and then uses the ship to return to England. Then he escapes wolves in the Pyrenees.

Book two, the sequel, (it's very Lost-esque) sees him return, meet the Spanish men who've inhabited the island, battle with more cannibals then go on to the Far East and then in to China and Russia to escape Dutchmen who believe he has stolen a ship and is a pirate – he's not, he was tricked in to buying it.

Thus you have the plot of Robinson Crusoe and I would say you don't really need to read it yourself now.

Driving to Bruce Springstreen

Can it really be almost a month since the Royal Wedding? I'm back at work and Wills 'n' Kate are back in Anglesey where she's shopping in Waitrose and no doubt having to sort out heating bills and comparing car insurance to get the best deals for her and hubby...possibly.

I was fortunate enough to be driving myself for the first time since Christmas and I had a lovely moment driving in to Falmouth for a night out with my friends while listening to Bruce Springsteen, on tape(!), as I did so (I got a taxi back, before you begin to wonder).

There was Bruce singing about Glory Days and about, "Friday night I'd drive you all around" in I'm Going Down, and there I was driving along the glorious Cornish coast to my old home town to see friends I've been drinking with since I was 18-years-old-and-not-a-day-younger.

Something about The Boss's music is just so well suited to driving, the hint of reckless it offers, the surging rhythm, the lyrics of so many of his songs about the drama of escape or trying to be cool: See Born to Run, or the wonderful Racing in the Street.

I don't have a car in London, thankfully, as I imagine London must be one of the worst places in the world to drive – the traffic, the confusing signals, the mad pedestrians just trying to get run over, it must be a nightmare.

Conversely, driving in Cornwall is about as far removed from London as you could possibly get – on some corners you're better off trying to hear if there's anything come around the tight, narrow, tree-encroached bends than looking left and right.

On other occasions cars pull in to the only suitable passing place on a tiny roads and wait as cars come down from across the other side of a small river valley –,a level of courtesy you'd never imagine or expect in London.

Of course all these windy lanes can make for some hairy moments as the locals buses come whooshing past, or you clip errant stones, branches and sheep (okay, not really sheep) as you drive along.

Still, at least I'm insured, so I don't have to worry too much, much like Kate as she pops to Waitrose. We're not that different after all I suppose.

The sun, sunworshippers and holidays to Spain

It's on a day like today when the sky was a perfect blue and the sun is shining brightly for the first time since who knows when that the idea of getting a westbound Piccadilly line to Heathrow and getting flights to Lanzarote or numerous other sunny climates really starts to appeal.

The first glimpse of spring sunshine at university was always met with a plethora of barbeques, sunglasses and flipflops, which being Wales usually meant a sudden shower drenching all and sundry.

The history of humanity has be governed by the sun – from the sunworshippers who welcomed each day the great sun god returned with glee to us modern 21^st century dwellers who, while spending the entire winter in warm caves lit by electric bulbs and surrounded by gadgets galore, dream of the sun, beaches and gently lapping waves to pass the darkness.

Even in such an advanced age nothing lifts the human spirit more than the sight of pure, undistorted sunlight entering windows, reflecting on glass and other nice descriptions of things the sun does to the Earth.

I’ve always liked the idea that the sun is 93 million miles away, so it takes seven minutes for its light to reach us. This means the sun we see is actually the sun of seven minutes ago and if the sun exploded we wouldn’t know about it until seven minutes after the event (unless this event spewed cosmic sun vomit at us in fewer than seven minutes, which it may well might).

In fact the sun is about to get a whole lot more interesting for us humans as two satellites we fired into space way back in 2006 to view both sides of the sun in its entirety have reached their positions and are now sending back full images of the sun for the first time in humanities history. Not bad for a bunch of six foot bipeds.

Something to think about next time you jet off, anyway.

Disposing of old fashioned photography

I was at a Turkish wedding reception on Friday night – it was a lot of fun – but something interesting happened while we where there that I thought was just a nice snapshot of how technologies we (my generation and above) know never used to exist are already engrained in the minds of youngsters who can imagine nothing else.

My girlfriend took a photo of her sister and a little girl, maybe aged seven, with a disposable camera and immediately after the flash went off the little girl grabbed it (nicely) and peered at the back, clearly expecting their to be a digital image of the photo. Her face when she saw there was nothing to look at was one of complete bewilderment.

"Yes, in the old days you took photos, had no idea what they would look like, then took them to a shop where a stranger developed them, sometimes as quickly as an hour, but often longer - several days maybe - before giving them back to you, and it cost you about a fiver, and you could only get about 24 or 26 photos on each camera. And each camera cost about a tenner, and they were pretty shit. It wasn't good no, digital is so much better. How did we cope? I've no idea. Right kids, on your hoverboards, we're off to the moon !"

Heathcliff, it's me, Cathy, I've come home now, woah oh woah oh

I reviewed an e-reader device for work the other day, and as such started reading Wuthering Heights to test out the functionality of the device and see what it's really like using an electronic book for reading novels and the like.

I actually quite liked the device, as the review gives testament, as I found it quite convenient to have something so small and lightweight on my person that contained an entire novel, and could have held 1,000s more. It wouldn't replace books for me at all, but I can see the value and benefit of having one.

During my intensive testing I actually got quite into Wuthering Heights, at least to the point where I was determined to see it out so I could say I've read it -and what a strange tale it is. I've always known the main thrust of the story, but the ins and out, (see what I did there), are highly peculiar, all fall of cousins marrying one another, inheritance scams and strange walks across moors, essentially telling two stories joined by one complete life span of the central character, Heathcliff (It's me,Cathy, I've come home now, oh woah oh woah...).

Yet, as I was reading I was also struck by how useless the house keeper who retells the story to Mr Lockwood is throughout. She frequently fails in her duties, is passive to the point of being complicit in some of the key scenes, almost aiding and abetting Heathcliff, and fails to work out what is plainly about to occur when agreeing to some fairly daft requests. She also has an amazing ability to miss the bleedin' obvious. Apparently, I read afterwards, critics have commented upon this, and I am pleased to see that they have! Rightly so, this woman should be locked up! Oh yes, she's fictional.

The name in question is Nellie Dean, which will mean something to you if you've worked, or more likely drunk, in and around the streets of Soho.

Overall I think Ms Bush, by writing a truly epic and unique piece of, erm, baroque pop (can I coin that?), has actually made a " good but hardly worlds-best tale" something that is now ingrained in the majority of the popular consciousness through her warblings, which is fantastic. I also very much like the guitar solo on the song, which is often overlooked I think.

Microsoft and chocolate

I went to see Steve Ballmer talk this morning at the LSE. He's a funny chap. Quite interesting and not in anyway a wallflower, which made for an on-your-toes kind of talk as his random way of accentuating certain words meant you couldn’t switch off.

This was a Good Thing as it started at 8.30am and all the free food promised before the event had been taken when I got there – only students would ransack free food quicker than journalists.

Ballmer reminds me a touch of the character Rawls from excellent TV show The Wire – of which I am not half way through season two and enjoying very much. I am about five years behind the curve on this show, as noted, but if you're like me I would still reinforce everything you've read about the show and tell you to watch it.

Also, massively off topic, I have really got in to Double Decker chocolate bars now, what's all that about?

Apparently the man who invented it was sacked for breaching company rules by creating it - pah (click on the above link to get this definitely true story from Wikipedia).

Catch up

Hello, been too long since something was entered here.

Tennis. 70-68! Where to begin; tennis is sometimes unfairly maligned by people, believing it not to be a hard sport, not tiring, not exhausting, but any sportsman that can play a game, hurling their body around for almost ten hours is clearly some sort of athlete. What's more you have to do it while battling moments of calm, reflection in between points, and then pull of incredible shots, often under immense pressure of 'one mistake and I'm out'.

I've been reading Wolf Hall (still -it's very long...) but it is also very good, in places, which is hard to fully explain, but it's just that in some places the story really picks up and rattles along, and with a little historical knowledge, some of the asides, or hints at the future are very well handled ("You know she's a witch," says one character of Anne Boleyn before she marries Henry, and we all know how that turned out...).

While I am enjoying it I am looking forward to finishing it too, before I go away on holiday next week, as it's a massive book, even in paperback, and quite a tough read, requiring full concentrate; not that I can't concentrate mind you.

I finally got a smartphone too, after months of writing about the things, and it is very nice having a such a sleek piece of tech, that enables me to bring up maps, email and the internet as and when required. That's all really.

The World Cup is coming to life too, although I've not been disappointed with it at all. It always starts a little slow as teams try not to lose, but come the end of the group stages, you often see enthralling end to end games as teams suddenly have to win, as evidenced today with Italy's somewhat surprising loss to Slovakia.

Er...the weather's nice isn't it?

What goes up...

I can remember, when I were a lad, helping my Dad navigate endless pages of Teletext share prices at the end of the day, trying to understand what the endless rows of capitalized digits and letters actually meant. My Dad had, and still does have I believe, a canny knack (a jazz musician from the 40s, Canny Knack), of being able to spot a company whose shares were about to soar, but then he would always forget to buy them and watch forlornly as they rose in value, daily, on that digitized Teletext display page, leaving him and his fistful of pounds behind. Ah well...

I am now endevouring to follow in his footsteps (somewhat) but entering the world of stocks and shares. Buy low, sell high, greed is good, money money money, all that. Might as well yes? It's been two days. I have lost money. I am excited, it is quite fun. I suddenly feel immense loyalty to the two companies I have invested in. I hope they do more 'good' business to help their shares go 'up', rather than performing 'badly' and therefore going 'down'. Apologies if the financial language there confused you.

Teletext was a funny old service, it would always revolve around to the page you wanted after endless refreshes 8/13, 9/13, 10/13 until you were about to reach the one you wanted, before it would randomly jump to 12/13 leading to huge levels of exasperation as you had to wait for it to work its way around again. I used to leave Teletext on when big football matches were taking place, just to hope the little pixilated name would flash up Giggs, 34, or Kanchelskis, 74. A different world that.

I am a Google Street View driver*

What do I do all day? Drive around all the roads of the UK, or Australia, or Chile. I get up and drive, I drive up and down streets. I see the people stare, I see the children run after me, the privacy people swear, the technology lovers wave.

I stop in bizarre hotels in side streets of villages and towns I'll never see again, I stare out of windows over desolate roads or thriving markets, before climbing in my little white car, mounted with its all seeing eye, and trundle off again, collecting endless images of life. A snapshot of things.

It's a strange way to live, a kind of job, a half life. But hey, you can see your house on the internet now, so I hope that makes you happy.

*(N.B. I am not a Google Street View driver, obviously).

3D thoughts

Finally got around to seeing Avatar last night. Have to say I was utterly blown away. The visuals, as you've no doubt read, are truly stunning. Like nothing I've ever seen before. At one point I flinched as a gas canister was shot 'past' me while one several other occassions I had to stop myself from trying to swat away a bug that was on screen. And by swatting it away rather than becoming at one with it you can see what would have happened to me in that movie.

The most levelled criticism at the film has been that the story is obvious and, less said, that the acting is leaden. I didn't see much evidence of either. While I would admit the plot is perfectly predictable in the majority of the storyline I fail to see how else you could film something so epic and spectacular and not need to resort to a simplistic plot line in order to make the most of the compelling visuals at your disposal. Make it too complicated and you just risk confusing people.

I'm certainly glad I saw it though, as I think it is likely to be regarded for some years as film that brought on a new (golden?) age of cinema by finally making 3D a technology that works. And even the glasses are alright too. Expect them to become this year's quirky festival fashion accessory.

L is for...

Lists...

I love a good list me. Franz Listz is my favourite, Listerine is a close second. Dave Lister from Red Dwarf a distant third.

The Telegraph has published a list of 'things Britons are confused by'. The list is utterly bizarre and includes items such as Poker, Donnie Darko, The clocks changing, Why Cheryl Cole is still with Ashley and, personal favourite, Stephen Hawking's theories.

Who are these people? Who is wandering the streets of Briton thinking, "does a straight beat a flush, and why does Donnie Darko have to be killed to save the world? I am so confused by these things."

Are people, sitting around at home on sofas on a Saturday night ready to watch X-Factor, saying, 'Oh that Cheryl, I don't know why she stays with Ashley, she's too good for him...and what does Dr Hawking mean when he says, "Quantum Gravity is based on a process of rapid expansion of neighbouring regions, with similar cosmic properties, to explain this growth spurt which they call inflation". Any ideas Shell? Dave?"

"Don't ask me, I'm wondering about the changing of the clocks, despite it not happening for another few weeks, and then it only involving putting a watch back, or forward, one hour, it's just so mind-bogglingly confusing."

OMG LOLS!

T-Mobile have recently been vox-popping complete morons on the streets of Britain.

They have been doing this to ask them what they would do with free texts for life. The answers I have heard / seen are 'I'd text all my mates about my DJ night', and, 'I'd throw a huge party and invite all my mates'. My favourite is the person who just says, 'I don't know, it's mind-boggling'.

No it isn't. As my brother said to me, 'nothing of importance has ever been sent by text message. It's always stuff like "see you in 5" or "put it on bbc2".'

Spot on. Furthermore, those answers make no sense. If you've got a DJ night on surely you'd tell your mates anyway? What sort of a friend only texts mates about something as important as that (to him presumably) if he can do so via unlimited free texts for life. Similarly, if you have a party you would never decide on who to invite on the basis of the fact you can text everyone for free. It's a party! Send an email, make a phone call, or just take the 10p text hit.