If you chip away long enough...

I don't watch ITV news but apparently last night's lead story was about Lily Allen (you know that quite popular singer) writing a tweet (a message on Twitter) in which she said that she thought that Susan Boyle (you know that semi-famous non professional singer, who looks a bit different) was 'overrated'. This off the top of her head comment, on a website, was the lead story.

Why? It's just opinion. It's not news. Today she said she was 'looking forward to the football tonight'. Is that worth a news story too? One could suggest that because ITV broadcast Britain's Got Talent they want to generate as much discussion = money as possible, so decided to use their flagship news service to do so.

"Well done everyone, we've made it through! Oh look, the barrel was standing on a paving stone all along."

Scuse me while I diss the Sky

Sorry, lame pun.

Seriously though. Sky. Their adverts have been playing for a while now extolling the merits of High Definition TV. They say, "Sport...now even more thrilling..." and "Documentaries...now even more mesmerising..." and I can't stay silent any longer.

Because it's not true. Sport isn't any more or less thrilling when it's in high definition or low definition. It's just a better picture on which to watch the thrilling-ness, or lack there of. Indeed, a dull 0-0 between Portsmouth and Hull isn't made any more thrilling by Peter Crouch's face being more sharply defined.

Documentaries are as mesmerising as the content they provide. If it's fascinating subject matter then the quality of the image - which let's be honest, is hardly that poor at the moment on regular TV anyway; any underwater shots from a BBC nature show will prove that - is irrelevant to the content. The fact that you can show it in HD shouldn't somehow add 'mesmerising-ness' to the programme.

But I get it. They're just trying to flaunt the damn thing.

Living the dream

Today I attended an event hosted by Research in Motion, best known for their BlackBerry smartphone gizmos that high powered business execs use. It was very enjoyable and interesting. The PR company involved were also very nice about it all, and even arranged for a car to pick me up from home to deliver me to the event. That's how you know you've made it.

Saying that, it did mean about 30 minutes silence / small talk with the driver. He was perfectly pleasant, and we did the usual 'dash awful weather isn't it,' which passed about a minute of the journey, and he asked, 'so where you off to then this morning?' to which I duly answered, taking up another two or three minutes. But that was it.

I didn't ask him what time he knocked off though as it was 8.30am. Seemed pointless.

Some ukulele goodness

An awesome interpretation of While My Guitar Gently Weeps

A clever cover of Creep by Radiohead; link here.

And how could I forget, the gorgeous 'Somewhere over the Rainbow / Wonderful World' medley by Israel Kamakawiow 'Ole (including some live footage from his funeral in the pacific ocean).

Earth has not anything to show more fair

The workers are on strike. The Victoria Line is down and the Piccadilly Line is full of refugees from this silent passage under the city. With another day done it was, therefore, a sojourn to Westminster to make the migration home from there. The sun shone, the air was fresh and my legs were moving almost of their own free will, unaware of the very concept of tiredness.

I walked past the Houses of Parliament and spied the lovely Joanna Lumley looking radiant, talking to passerbys who had gone up to her, while on the square the remaining Sri Lankian protesters continued to shout slogans and wave their placards. The towers of the house stood stark against the blue blur that occurs between afternoon and evening while Cromwell stood majestic and silent, a very different ideal to the fiasco that has been unravelling, warts and all, in those corridors of misused power.

To nice to enter the tube just yet.

So on past Downing Street and into Trafalgar Square, weaving through the spaces left by the evening drinkers, the speeding cyclists, the wandering tourists; cutting down side streets and moving towards Covent Garden with some vague notion of direction; ducking into an HMV (okay too corporate too sound romantic, but it is 2009), and peruse some DVDs. Then back to the Garden, watch a juggler entertain the crowds, before strolling on up to Holborn, past the Mason's building and all the mystery that holds.

And all this, all this mighty heart beating so loudly, is so easy to ignore each and everyday as we shuttle back and forth in tubes.

The workers are on strike. I'm outside soaking up the energy of one of the world's greatest cities.

Biscuit Fail

From the ever brilliant failblog.org. Click on the story to enlarge.

Pop up

In case you miss this story it's worth linking too.

Wild talk

So, as I am now 24 and far too mature for my own good, I attended a lecture last night (in my own free time!) at UCL by two members of the BBC Natural History Unit, Paul Williams and Chris Howard, on 'How to make a wildlife documentary' - which focused mainly on the history of wildlife filming, as well as interesting divergences about their experiences on location.

They started by looking at some of the first filmed wildlife shots - primarily these involved people shooting animals and then standing over the carcasses. There was some fairly graphic examples, including a tribe spearing a lion to death, and a female rifle hunter squaring off against a rhino and, as it charged at her, she shot it, point blank.

There was also a fascinating piece of film in which one of the early pioneers of wildlife filming - Cherry Kearton (pictured above) - was shown visiting an island inhabited with penguins, or "little Charlie Chaplins" as he called them with a wonderful turn of phrase. He also filmed the 1911 movie 'Roosevelt in Africa' (nearly an unintentional pun on veldt there...) in which President Roosevelt, yes you've guessed it, shot and stood over various wildlife.

From here we moved forward through the advancement of camera techniques and technology, including examples of the use of cameras attached to animals - such as golden eagles or tortoises - and the stunning footage that can now be captured with super-slow motion cameras - most famously the recent footage of a great white shark catching a seal and leaping clean out of the water in doing so. We also saw some early footage of David Attenborough, contrasted with some footage from one of his latest series, Life in Cold Blood, in which he came across the smallest chameleon in the world. It was quite moving stuff as you could see just what it meant to the great man.

We also saw the footage made by Disney of the infamous lemmings myth - in which the film makers just pushed a bunch of lemmings off a cliff and created an entire generation of lies. You could see some of the lemmings scrabbling like mad to stop themselves falling. This is all part of the 'drama' wildlife documentaries usually involve, to create moments of tension and so forth - but this was a case too far, obviously.

We then got a few sneak preview shots of a new BBC series coming out soon called 'Life' (large in scope then) and these are known as "Blue Chip" documentaries - the type only the BBC can make due to the cost and time invovled. We heard from Paul how he had spent four weeks camping wild in the Arctic, only to miss the shot they were after - even after one 60 hour wait at one point. Never work with children or animals.

We also learnt why they now insert these 10 minute 'diary' segments. They sell the show to the US sans the diary segment - so it comes in at 50 minutes, for ad breaks presumably - and to make up the hour for us, add in these bits. Makes sense.

Afterwards there was a free glass of wine and a chance to look around the Grant Museum of Zoology - where Darwin lived / studied - which was very interesting too - lots of weird and wonderful skeletons and pickled animals in jars, and there was a chance to talk to these speakers, both very nice chaps. Overall it was a very interesting and enlightening talk from two very amiable, interesting presenters. And, as it was all for free, was credit crunch value for money too. Perfect.


Note for London based people - I found this via a great website for interesting, quirky, under the radar events - Ianvisits.co.uk: updated weekly. Worth keeping an eye on for things of this nature.

No George Formby jokes please

After all that talk of mandolins a few posts ago I now have a ukulele too thanks to my brother. Here's a vid of us. One take. Done.

Where do we go from here?

Yesterday a friend used the phrase 'Web 3.0'. I think it was the first time I'd heard it said and it made me wonder if we are on the verge of the third age of the internet. Web 1.0, or just Web as it was known ,was a bit rubbish, (in hindsight) a bit beta, but Web 2.0 has been an unqualified success - Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Wikipedia, Google and all its spinoffs etc. that we now use day in, day out, without a second thought as to quite what these services are actually offering us.

Web 3.0 though. What's it going to be? Wolframalpha? Google Chrome? I'll admit I don't know what it will entail, or does entail already, but it seems likely that as we hurtle towards 2010 the phrase Web 2.0 will start to look outdated, especially to the new generation of technology developers who will soon be arriving on the scene, aged 15 - 21, who will no doubt design and develop the next web successes. It should be an interesting time. The future usually is.

What's in a name?

Clearly a lot according to Aviva Union, or Norwich, as they're going to be called soon. Or are called already.

In the first adverts they released to inform us of this change, Ringo Starr asked "Would any of this (being in The Beatles) have happened to me if I'd have still been Richard Starkey?" to which the answer is, "Well probably yes actually. It did to the others, the best 75%, and they used their own names". Well Paul's first name is James, but we'll let that slide.

Then, in the newest adverts, a bunch of celebrities and normal people are shown demanding a list of things they want from their insurance provider ("don't treat me as a target market", "take me seriously" (asked by a clown - oh clever) "just recognise me" (this from a man who is shown to have 3 identical brothers - which I think is a bit of a hard request actually).

And what does Mr Ringo Starr (who, remember, would never have been world famous if he had been known as Richard Starkey), demand?

"Don't call me by my stage name"

What? Hang on a moment. Make your mind up. Is it Starr or Starkey? Richard or Ringo? Ringo Union or Nowich Starkey?

An Icelandic horse

For work I regularly have to make use of copy right free images - perhaps from dedicated sites like Morgue File (a staple of university days) - or be perusing the various terms on Wikipedia and Flickr images to see if they are free to use. Being a small company it's important to be judicious with funds you see.


What I like about this is three things:

One - that people are willing to be so open with their images. They take them and uploaded them purely because they will of interest, benefit and use to millions of people around the world. Often in ways they couldn't imagine.

Two - how many talented people there are out there. Some of the photos you come across are truly fantastic, and yet they are in all probability taken by a keen amateur photographer who is happy enough to see the image online.

Three - the best reason though is just the fact you can come across some fantastic, striking and beautiful images completely at random. Earlier today I was looking for an image of Iceland. I found this one, which is a beautiful shot and will be the one we use, but I also came across this (the image above), which is also a wonderful shot and finding it through such a roundabout way makes it all the more enjoyable.

Lost

Okay, just a short Lost based entry here. Season five finished on Sunday night, with more twist, turns and surprises than you could shake a really suprised stick at. They certainly know how to keep you guessing. I said similar things about season four.

The show is so far on now that no-one who is still watching can surely hold any 'they're making it up as they go along' thoughts, and, in many ways the show has repeatedly showed how shrewd and crafty the writers are. Case in point:

Season four ended with a slow reveal over a coffin to show us the, as then, unknown inhabitant inside. As the camera rose up and over the open lid the music swelled to reveal...Shock! It's...(Spoiler potential - but you probably know if you watch the show).

Season five - final scene of one strand of the finale - slow reveal over a make shift coffin, the music swells as the camera rises in exactly the same angles over the coffin to reveal...the same person inside...who we thought was alive and well...

Now it's not explained yet how this has come to happen but I was suitably impressed by a show that can end a season finale, with, basically, the same shocking twist as it did a whole 18 episodes previous, and yet it be so utterly different and as baffling as before. Roll on the final season - if only to get this whole thing over and done with.

Crouch End 10k: rain, doughnuts and more rain.

This morning it was a short walk over the hill to the start of the Crouch End 10k. During the night the heavens had opened so surely it was all set for a crisp, dry race? Perhaps not.

We queued up and, about five minutes before the start, the heavens opened...off we went, around the start which was in the local park, being slowed up by the narrowness of the course and the number of runners, which meant the first kilometre passed in a terribly slow 5.35m. The rain was sheeting down now and I was soaked through.

Kilometres 2, 3 and 4 passed quickly (after running a marathon 10km seemed quick anyway) and soon I had caught up with a friend who was running too and we ran onto kilometre 5. I had been aiming for sub 45 minutes on this run but halfway around I was at 25 minutes so clearly not on schedule. I made a quick calculation and figured if I really ran hard I could do 5k in 20 minutes.

So I pushed on and went careering around the course, overtaking everyone in sight; there's no better feeling in running that reeling in runner after runner, using the overtake as a catapult: you can almost sense their annoyance at someone passing them at pace. It's good, self-centred, motivation.

To kilometre 8 and I needed to run the last two kms in nine minutes something. Just about doable. Perhaps. So on I went, the rain lashing incessantly down, the wind buffeting us from all sides, and I spied the 9k sign coming into view. I sprinted on and after around 200 metres had to slow down. How the marathon professionals do it, I have no idea. I now had two minutes to finish the final 800m. Not going to happen.

I ran on and entered the finish area in the park. Around the final few corners, including a great sprint around the final bend to overtake two runners who had just overtaken me (ha!), and home in 47m 37seconds. Tantalisingly close. I think the lesson learned here was, need to run the first 3k faster and ideally start further up the field to avoid the 50m runners. This was my third 47 minute 10k, from three, so at least I'm consistent.

A delicious doughnut from a local bakery and a banana later and, with my two runner friends found, we headed home. As we did so the rain stopped and the sun came out. Typical.

P.S. In the race information booklet that was sent out, there was a comedy little mantra that read, 'remember, you'll go faster with pasta, but when you get to the end make our free doughnuts your friend.' Which I love. I actually thought about this at kilometre nine. Yum.