Old News

A nice story here on the BBC website about children who were born when the BBC launched its internet site ten years ago thinking up how the news might be delivered in the future.

My only query is that for a piece all about new technologies and fancy news delivery services is why on earth does Picture Eight show a piece of paper pegged to a line with two odd pegs and written with a pen that was clearly low on ink. It's hardly high-tech.

Even in ‘my day’ we had blackboards and didn’t rely on washing lines and pegs.

A Toast to Planning

Why would Tesco produce a toaster that doesn’t accommodate a normal size piece of bread?

If you are manufacturing a toaster surely the most fundamental design element it needs is the ability to house the bread, followed by the ability to toast it. I mean for a toaster that’s pretty much the main two objectives: 1) accept bread, 2) toast bread.

But for some reason the toaster we now own in our new house doesn’t do this. Despite using a slice of highly mainstream and commercial bread – a good staple size to test against I would have thought – the toaster is unable to accept the bread horizontally so it must be placed vertically. This of course leaves around 1/8th, possibly 1/10th, protruding from the toaster which means you either have to waste the aforementioned size which doesn’t get toasted, or keep and eye on the bread-becoming-toast, to turn it around to try and ensure both ends of the bread are toasted – which means the middle becomes more toasted than either end, giving rise to a slightly disconcerting taste sensation whereby the toast start mildly toasted, becomes moderately toasted before reverting to being mildly toasted again.

The whole point of a toaster is to remove the element of watching, a-la the grill which requires constant supervision, but with this method you are once again chained to the kitchen watching the toaster, wasting time when you could be doing other useful 'morning' things. And all this because the 'geniuses' who designed these infernal contraptions didn’t think to measure the average size of a piece bread before they started mass-bloody-producing them.

Every little helps? A little bit more thought would help a lot.

Troubled Bridge Over Water

Having lived in Cardiff for four years I can only agree with the sentiments made in this story about the toll charge only taking cash. Some of the comments below make interesting reading too.

It’s so pathetic and bureaucratic that in the year 2007 when people can now pay with a VISA Paywave system in shops for payments under £10 in 10 seconds people can’t pay by chip and pin on a major bridge which deals with 10 customers a second roughly.

Futhermore as many people say in the comments there isn’t even a cash machine for people to take cash out on site. Instead they are made to drive back to England to get cash – with the effort of closing two directions of motorway east and west to escort the car across the road – including if you have £5 and not the final 10p that was added on recently.

The answer here is for drivers to form an unspoken system whereby if someone in front can’t pay the fee the person behind, or nearby, pays the fee, they exchange details and send the other person a cheque for their help.

Nonsense

The stupidity of the modern world is almost funny. Almost.

Wanting a loan from Barclays to pay off a career development loan I have, with Barclays, was met with the information they don’t give out a second loan, even if you are going to use it to pay off the original loan that is at a higher interest rate. So even saying, “you realise I’ll just go to another bank and they will get the money instead?’ is met with a cheery “oh yes, it’s just company policy.”

So to Bradford & Bingley – a company I’ve long thought was above such random stupidity, but alas, no. Firstly they wouldn’t give me a loan because I hadn’t ‘started’ work yet – even though I had proof of upcoming employment. Then, after starting work, moving to London and sort myself out, I give them a ring, they’ve changed the system. You have to be 23 to get a loan. Why? Just new policy (admittedly I didn’t really push for a full answer but that was the gist). So despite being able to afford the repayments I can’t get a loan – they are now losing out on the money I wanted to give them instead of Barclays.

Isn’t that ageist anyway? Not giving me a loan I can prove I can afford because of my age? Probably not. But it still makes no sense to me.

What was it Jarvis Cocker said?

Captivating

This story - although confusing to read with all the mad acronyms flying about - is a really interesting example of just another way the internet uses the power of sheer numbers of people to get a task done. Wikipedia is the people’s encyclopedia and now, for example, if you wanted to comment on this blog post, you could be helping to transcribe an ancient text to the internet by typing in a blurry word - which I think is great.

My Mate Dave

A brilliant piece of rebranding here. The confusion that comes from a sentence like this - "The head of Dave, Steven North, said:" - is fantastic.

Catch-up

Sorry all. Lack of internet and a new job have meant little to no blogging action. Relax though as all is well and I am fine, very much enjoying London and my new job. London is a fine old place – although the tube strike was not much fun, and the tube is expensive, as are most things, but so far I like it. It’s odd when the tube stops and there isn’t a sound from 100 or so people. I wonder if it was like that in the early 1900s.

I have already been getting busy at work, phoning MDs and doing interviews and had a nice trip to the Dorset offices too.

Journalism wise? Well shorthand is useful and I have had the pleasure of some very helpful PR people, so far…Free papers are everywhere but you have to give them some credit, they do cover all the main stories reasonably well and come 5:30 most people I see are reading them avidly, what it will mean for the future of newspapers I don’t really know though.

Lack of coherent structure here probably indicates it’s lunch time and I am just getting a blog done. I shall hopefully return to normal (ish) ways sooner rather than later.

(No) Logo

I'd rather this man's logo was used instead of the rather less attractive official logo. Sausages will always be in fashion but new-rave will not.

Another Start

Well I haven't written on this for while have I? What to say...

Well I start gainful employment on Monday in London with a company called Hemming and I will be working across a few of their magazines and doing a bit of everything by the sounds of it.

This blog, which was started as part of a course assignment, will remain much the same, but will now be written from the perspective of a full-time Londoner (as if there aren't enough of them) and full-time journalist.

I wonder what will have changed by next September...

Hidden Histories

On ITV last night, at 11pm, was a program entitled: "The War on Democracy"by John Pilger. It was one of the best pieces of television I have seen in a long time.

It dealt with the various regimes the USA has helped install in South America since 1945 and how, by and large, these were undemocratic regimes, which installed puppet dictators, such as General Pinochet, in power at the expense of leaders who had originally been democratically elected - Salvador Allende - by the peoples of the country.

The program also highlighted the USA's support of the failed coup d'etat which took place in Venezuela in 2002, during which Hugo Chavez (interviewed in the documentary) was over-thrown, but then re-instated when the population of Caracas marched on the presidential building and demanded his return. Chavez is a man who, despite unrelenting media criticism (likening him to Hitler on many occasions), has overseen the setting up of a constitution for the first time ever in the country - something which those ordinary civilians interviewed by Pilger made clear was something they held to be highly important for them, and their children, if the future of Venezuela was to be secure.

The coup sought to remove this security and the US government went on record - a clip was shown from the press conference - claiming to be in support of this new government. Presumably because the new government was full of business tycoons who would ensure good business for the USA.

The most shocking part of the entire program was when a former CIA chief Duane Clarridge not only ignored Pilger's hard evidence, that thousands of people had been tortured and executed in Chile after the coup, by many men trained in the USA, but when he then claimed Chile was better off for this in the long run (i.e. Life's Cheap for Oriental / Latin American): Pilger then interviewed a woman who had been kidnapped and tortured, and known pregnant friends to be murdered, a man who was 18 at the time and had been beaten, alongside hundreds of other prisoners of politics at Chile's national stadium, and then a couple living in poverty on the outskirts of Santiago who saw little benefit from the regime of Pinochet.

The whole point of this program was to show that America is no "Champion of Democracy" at all. It is infact a champion of it's own interests. Democracy / Dictatorship - which ever suits the US government best is what will be looked for. So if Cuba turns Communist they launch the Bay of Pigs invasion. If Chile elects a man who doesn't conform to their ideals - who sets about introducing land reforms that could damage US imports, then they remove him, through a puppet, and then either ignore the problem or deny it ever happened - or even worse, claim it was for the best anyway.

I suppose the length of this post underlines how frustrated I felt that this type of history goes so unreported and unknown in the western world. I also felt the documentary should have been shown a lot earlier, with far more advertising, and with the premise of the show stated clearly. If they repeat this show, or release it on DVD, I urge you to see it. If Michael Moore can make documentaries that people rent out, then this is also worth your time.

Good or Bad?

This article here about Facebook and it's creator is very interesting but it is the final quote at the end that really hits you: "Adds co-founder and VP of Engineering Dustin Moskovitz: "I have a note on my account that says Facebook will saturate the world population by 2010. It's not a joke."

Which is amazing as it means one company, almost one person, would in theory be able to contact the vast majority of the entire world. Even the president can't do that at present. But some mid 20s guy from Harvard could potentially write what he wanted on the news feed and we'd all be able to read it - and we probably would.

Of course if it became controlling then people could easily move away and find a new site, but it is an astonishing thought that one website could feasibly contact the entire planet's population - or at least those that have access to a computer and are on Facebook - and with $100 laptops in production and Facebook being a fully open site, that's not as impossible as it sounds.

Better late than never?

So did the Olympic Committee not notice the pollution when they visited some eight years ago? Did they just say someone was having a bonfire? One year before in 2007 and someone asks, "Er, why can't we see the sky?".

Monkey News

I love stories like this - Passenger 'hid monkey under hat' - and mainly I love the captions. You just never know what you are going to have to write next in journalism. It said he came from Lima, Peru so the hat they used to smuggle in Paddington Bear must have been massive.

R.I.P. T.V.

T.V. is dead. Or at least linear T.V. is dead. T.V. that involves sitting down at a set time of an evening and gathering around together. Why bother to be a slave to the clock after work now we have Sky Plus or Virgin OnDemand? Just record it and watch it whenever you want. Watch the most violent film ever at 7am, or Doctor Who at 3am after a night out (bit sad though)...Or even watch it online via Youtube or Google Video - and now the BBC's iPlayer thing they have launched is the latest of these gizmos.

Interestingly my parents believe this is a "bad" thing. I suppose they could be right: the loss of a communal, national, conscious for a truly great T.V. program - Pole to Pole in the early 90s maybe? But the fact remains it will become a rare event. Not that rare, but not common either. The other day I watched all six episodes of The IT Crowd on Google Video over two days because I could. I didn't have to wait six weeks for an entire season. Peep Show series four was on at 9:30pm on a Friday evening. Now I missed most of them because of this as I was out. But by Sunday they were online and I was able to watch them and discuss them on a Monday morning.

Perhaps another reason for this death of linear T.V. is that the companies themselves seem fully of aware of this. Or at least, this must be the reason, surely, for the utter dross that is on every night at the moment? The summer season might not be the best for T.V. but even this year is a new low. Baby Ballroom? Big Brother 8! The BBC is just churning out cookery show after cookery show - although whether or not we should trust the BBC that these people are indeed cooks is another point entirely...

Still though, if T.V. does become a format that becomes random and unscheduled - perhaps all shows just being made "available" at some point during the week - what will this mean? No advertising? Less money? Or more specific shows for more refined audiences? Well, who knows just yet, but like the advent of colour and then extra channels this could be the start of a new, significant chapter, in the history of T.V.