blog by Sam Bailey

How to fit a dishwasher

2011-08-27T13:29:00.000Z

Remove freezer from spot in kitchen (moving it down the cellar) to free up spot for dishwasher.
Stare at plumbing under sink for half a day, carefully listing all the parts you'd need, then go to shops and buy everything you need in one go.
Get home and start job. Realise you haven't bought everything you need, and make 90min round trip to shop for one more £2 part.
Realise that dishwasher is 2cm wider than the space it should go in. Shit.
Decide you need to move upright piece of board, in order to expand the space. Realise that said board is screwed to wall, glued to floor, and notched into skirting board. Sweat a lot, as you change these things.
Finally, slot dishwasher into place. Dishwasher sticks out by 2cm. Shit. Realise those 2cm are the depth of the plug and socket behind the dishwasher. They're going to have to go.
Determine which fuse is for kitchen sockets (of course, realise it's the final one you try)
Remove socket from wall, safely taping up cables left behind (it's a spur, so no joining required).
Run dishwasher and washing maching flexes to a different socket, drilling hole in aforementioned upright board to facilitate.
Realise washing machine flex has been extended using bare terminal block. Rewire (using junction box thankfully found in cellar).
Re-fit dishwasher, and washing machine. Hurrah, everything fits.
Do test run of dishwasher. It will leak water on floor, but you'll just need to tighten a few things.
Mop up.

Bush demolition

2011-07-24T14:17:00.002Z

It started out as a massive ivy bush, which fell over in a storm

After much wrestling with twigs, there was then the extraction of a massive root

Then there was cleaning up a bit, and laying down a few railway sleepers discovered at the bottom of the garden

Then add a bamboo screen, and a few paving slabs

And now we've got a mini patio for pots and a barbecue. Lovely.

I made a table!

2011-06-11T17:10:00.011Z

Warning - this blog post is nerdy, and not particularly interesting. But I've spent weeks of brain power on this seemingly simple project, so I thought I'd write it all down.

We've got a spare room in our house which my girlfriend decided from an early date would be our Craft Room. The main thing you need in a craft room is lots of surface space, but we also want the room to be versatile - for example, accommodate a put-up bed from time to time. So I set about designing a table that you could stow away.

I'd tackled this engineering task before, in the camper van, and opted for a hinged table which folded download, with a fold-up leg. I thought about this for the craft room, but decided against it. The main reason is that I would need to hinge it upward instead of downward, meaning leaning on the table would put a constant strain on the hinge.

So instead, I opted for a table top that you entirely remove from its legs, and slide into a housing on the wall. The table top is a pre-made piece of pine furniture board, and the fixings on the wall are made from timber as well. When you set the table up, you lay it on the bottom fixing, and drop a couple of loose long bolts in to two holes, to hold (but not fasten) the table in place.

The trickier part of the job was finding screw-in table legs. I knew these would be hard to find, because I also looked during the campervan job. All of the table leg systems out there are for permanent fixing. I did manage to find a screw-in system from a small manufacturer called EES, but their legs were £20 each which I thought was too much.

Looking to make my own, what I really wanted to buy was a pair of these clinch nut plates, but nobody in the UK seems to sell them. Instead I made my own, using these simpler pronged tee nuts which you hammer into the underside of the table, and a pair of metal plates I had in my junk box to stop them popping out. I opted for two cheap £2 banister spindles for legs, and screwed these hanger bolts in to them (worth saying only one place I could find hanger bolts after an extensive search - thanks Woodfit).

There you go, one temporary table. We might even put a picture on the underside, so it looks nice on the wall.

HD Sound - is there much point?

2011-06-07T14:24:00.005Z

A number of radio companies (notably Absolute Radio, and the BBC, who I work for) have started experimenting with programmes being available in "HD Sound". This sounds really exciting! Ever the early adopter, I decided to look into this a bit more to see if there was something my area (Radio 1) was missing out on. I was disappointed.

I don't know what I was expecting - something that would blow me away, I guess, like my HDTV does every time I switch from channel 101 to channel 143 and notice the difference between BBC1 and BBC1HD. And maybe that's the wider problem here - I'm not as much of an audio fidelity snob as I am a picture quality snob. I can't hear much difference above a 192kbps MP3, and I know lots of people can. That notwithstanding, I still expected more excitement.

HD Sound offers better quality sound (of course), but really that just means higher bit rates on digital files (whether that be via higher MP3 rates like the BBC, or the FLAC lossless codec like Absolute). And that's the big difference point with HDTV, which is high quality distribution, but it's also a fundamental change in the production of content as well - better cameras, better sets, lossless editing, etc etc. An HD TV channel is encoded in a higher bit rate yes, but its content is also (sometimes) made in HD as well.

In the most part, sound production has been high quality and digital for decades, with not a lot of room for further improvement. Add to this the fact we've had a high quality distribution medium in our lives for years already (my Dad got his first CD player when I was 5), and digital distribution is just playing catchup; HD Sound seems to be an umbrella term for various attempts to reach CD quality on the web.

Which brings me to my final point of difference. HDTV is on my TV, just like old TV was. I can easily compare the difference, which adds to the impression it makes. HD Sound or HD Radio is not radio at all - it's a file that you download on your computer. If you have to consume it in that way, why not just stream the uncompressed WAV files? In this world of ubiquitous high speed Internet, what difference does a few hundred megabytes really make?

Calling "higher quality than radio" versions of programmes "HD Sound" is perhaps useful for marketing, because it does instantly make you think of higher quality. But audience members expecting as awesome an experience as they get with their HDTVs are probably going to be massively underwhelmed.

Inane commentary over Back To The Future

2011-01-03T19:24:00.001Z

I watched Back To The Future the other day, and realised I think the same thoughts every time I see it (and that must be at least 20 times). So I decided to tweet my inane thoughts. Here they are. Watch BTTF and read these along with it.

I will now provide inane commentary over Back To The Future on Blu-Ray
Surely the experiment at Twin Pines Mall was not Doc's VERY first experiment? He went to all that effort without doing small scale trial?
The camper van the Libyans chase Marty in is almost identical to my camper van. There's no way it can do 70 on the flat, let alone 90
The plutonium is a very very clever plot point. Perhaps the cleverest. Think about all the things that wouldn't have happened without it...
No plutonium, no radiation suits, no bullet proof vest underneath, no denouement. (You could easily get 1.21GW from a local power station)
Is it acceptable to rip pages out of phone books in cafes? Also, Marty buys 1955 coffee with 1985 coins. Wouldn't be possible in the UK!
Michael J Fox was 24 playing 16. In the other two films he was 28 playing 16. At what point does a short guy say "that's just patronising"?
In 1955 lorraine's dad says "who the hell is John F Kennedy?". JFK was elected to congress in 47 and senate in 53, so was prob quite famous
(ok so 1.21GW is quite a lot to get from a power station... Just read that all of Belgium's power stations only generate 1.01GW)
Why don't we harness and store the electricity from lightening storms? Must be possible, surely?
The average peak power output of a single lightning stroke is actually about 1000 Gigawatts - surprised the flux capacitor didn't blow!
Could 1985 Walkmans with foam wire headphones really play loud enough to make you feel that level of pain? (Eddie van Halen pain!)
Blu-Ray is very unforgiving to the very obvious stunt doubles in the skateboard/car chase set piece. Check out "Biff" driving in particular!
Did the lightning strike the clock tower at precisely 22:04:00? Are you sure? It's a rather hokey old clock with no second hand...
Christopher Lloyd is a master of comic timing and facial expression.
I always remember the Dance section of this film so well. Aged six, I had a mini-comic, which came free with Shreddies. It was part 5 of 6.
You caused $300 damage to my car you son of a bitch, and now I'm gonna take it out of your ass #snigger
After George decks Biff, I always look for the "I think he took his wallet" guy in the gathering crowd.
That ginger dork that cuts in when they're dancing, he's got a bloody maniacal laugh!
Hey Chuck, it's your cousin Marvin Berry. You know that new sound you're looking for? Well listen to THIS, then plagiarise it word for word!
Oh but actually Chuck, you've missed all the good bit and now he's just going a bit mental on guitar. It's ok, I can remember most of it.
Do you think their memories would be so addled over 20 years that they'd not notice their son growing to resemble the guy who set them up?
He has to hit that cable the split second the lightning strikes! Why not use a long tether cable, to give him more of a margin of error?
10 minutes? You're in a time machine, you've got all the time you want, but you're only setting the clock back 10 minutes? Gaagh!
Bring Jennifer along, this concerns her too. When the actress decides she doesn't want to be in the sequel, we'll just recast her
Where we're going we don't need Rrrroooads
And that concludes my commentary of Back To The Future which, all evidence to the contrary, is one of my favourite movies of all time.

Smerins on 6Music part three

2010-12-18T17:28:00.004Z

Having accepted the Christmas Challenge from Nemone on 6Music's, George appeared on the show last week to introduce the results. I love that Nemone calls him Mr Smerins all the way through, and I also love that the band are the official title of the episode in BBC /programmes (as a guy who updates these all the time, that's a strange little personal thrill).

And don't forget to get your free copy of Walking In The Air from their website, and watch the making-of video.

Live from the interactive Xmas lunch

2010-12-09T21:35:00.004Z

We had our xmas lunch today - a nice long lunch in a nearby pub, hats, xmas crackers, the usual thing. Greg James got wind of this and decided to call me three times during the show to get regular updates. The first time he called, it was out of the blue and I didn't really know what to say ("interactive telephone"??), but I was expecting if the second and third times. Thankfully I hadn't had too much wine, and didn't make a complete moron of myself. Oh what a larf.

Smerins on 6Music part two

2010-12-07T23:14:00.000Z

Smerins have been played on 6Music again, this time with an added challenge from the show to record a Christmas Song in a Smerins stylee (or "a Christmas track, version of your deciding" as Nemone eloquently put it. I'm hearing rumours that East 17 Say Another Day, or Aled Jones' Walking In The Air might be coming out of a studio near Bristol some day soon.

My brother's band, played by the BBC!

2010-11-12T01:29:00.004Z

UPDATE: They've now been played by Rob da Bank on Radio 1. Here's the audio clip -

And because they've been played on the BBC, they're now entitled to a BBC Music artist page, which is here - http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/artists/4bcaf0d6-c07e-42d0-bf35-37eddce057b4

-----------------------------------

My brother's band, Smerins Anti-Social Club, were played on the radio! This is very excited, so I clipped the bits for posterity. Obviously I cut out the track (Doctor Who) - you can download that for free at their website.

On 6 Music with Nemone on Monday -

Then mentioned again the day after -

And then played on Janice Long on Radio 2 -

I also took a snapshot of them being listed on Janice Long's tracklistings. Very weird to see their band name on something so familiar as a BBC /programmes tracklisting page!

e-books should be free

2010-10-31T10:32:00.001Z

Last Christmas I got a blu-ray movie for Christmas, and it came with a free digital copy. Very easy to do - inside the sealed package was a redemption code to download the movie from iTunes. Absolutely brilliant (and perfectly targeted, as the film was Star Trek, the geek movie event of 2009).

The logic of this (Spock would be proud) is quite progressive if you think about it. When you buy a movie, what you're paying for is the intellectual property, not the piece of plastic (which costs pennies when produced at this scale). So why not sling in an alternative version of the same intellectual property. It costs them nothing, it instills a huge level of audience satisfaction, and there's a strong chance it helps to prevent piracy (as the geek doesn't have to rip the movie to put it on his devices, and the copy he's downloading from iTunes is DRM protected).

So I'm really surprised I haven't seen this business model anywhere else since. Admittedly, I've not bought too many blu-ray movies in the last year, but the one place I'd expect to start seeing it is in the book publishing industry. Why aren't publishers packaging free/cheap e-books when you buy their hard copies?

Earlier this year I bought Tony Blair's autobiography, on release weekend, for half price at WHSmith. It's a mighty heavy tome! I do most of my reading (limited as that still is) on the tube, and there were days when the book was simply too heavy and bulky to fit in my bag. But I do have an iPad... so I found a hooky PDF copy of the book via bit torrent, complete with appallingly ripped punctuation symbols, and have started to read that instead. Morally, I don't feel bad since I have paid money for that intellectual property (and contributed to The Royal British Legion in the process), but of course I have technically committed an illegal act.

So come on Amazon, drag your Kindle-loving business model into the 21st century. For every hard copy purchased, throw in a free or cheap copy of the e-book. I bet you'll sell more hard copies, and you'll probably persuade people to buy more Kindles in the process.

Back to the Future

2010-10-07T22:22:00.001Z

I went to see the digital re-release of Back To The Future tonight. It's one of my favourite films, and I fear this will be one of the last times I'll be able to say I'm watching a 25-year-old film on the big screen for the first time. I've seen this film maybe 20 times, on video and DVD, perhaps mostly recently only a year ago. I honestly didn't expect to say I appreciated it for anything more than the rip-roaring tale I know and love.

But something weird happened in the cinema - I and the other people around me found the film funny. I've never found the film funny before. I've found it thrilling, massively entertaining, tense, spectacular; but never laugh-out-loud funny. I was laughing at it like I'd never seen I before, and I think other people (plenty of 20- and 30-something blokes in the audience) were too. So why?

The main source of humour was the nuance of Doc Brown's facial expressions. I'd never noticed how clown-like and comical Christopher Lloyd's performance was. I'm sure part of noticing this was the sheer size of the image in front of me, and the digital clarity. That, combined with the film getting probably the closest attention I've ever given it (as there's nothing else to distract you in the cinema).

The collective viewing experience surely has a lot to answer for here as well. I may have imagined it, but as soon as one person laughed, it was like the cinema had given everyone else permission to laugh, and the giggles got more intense as the film went on.

I guess it's also easy to forget that this movie was a massive family blockbuster. It being a classic had somehow made me forget how really silly it is. Moments like "buffoon Biff" bringing in a box of books for "new George", and like the daft historical society lady collecting money for the clock tower, had the audience guffawing; I remember them being in the film, but never being that worth noting.

I'm left with a hunger for more classic movies that I never saw on the big screen. But there's not a lot left. Other people have mentioned Ferris Bueller, Goonies... but somehow I only managed to see these films once I was a student. I remember being aged 5 reading a Back To The Future comic that I got in a box of Shreddies, and not seeing the film until I was 10, and that was on VHS. To see it on the big screen tonight was a joy, and I don't think that's going to happen again.

US Midterm Elections

2010-09-23T16:54:00.005Z

On 2nd November, it's the U.S. Midterm Elections. I nerded it up quite heavily during the 2008 U.S. General Election, even finding a way to go to President Obama's Inauguration. I've remained interested in US politics during the last two years, but it's taken a new election for me to really get bogged down in it again. So here's what I know!

Who's being elected?

All 435 members of the House of Representatives will be elected (as happens every two years).

34 Senators will be elected (the bi-annual churn of 1/3 of the Senate) and 3 special elections will be held for the Senate seats vacated by Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and the late Robert Byrd.

37 State Governors will be elected, plus the Governors of the Territories of the US Virgin Islands, and Guam. I get the chance here to use one of my favourite words - gubernatorial. Though, not in any meaningful context.

There will also be a bunch of local elections, judicial elections, and state ballots and referenda.

Who will win?

The polls are showing that control of the House hangs in the balance. There is a very strong chance the Republicans will take back control of the House, elevating John Boehner (is that pronounced "boner"? Surely not) to Speaker.

It is likely the Senate will stay with the Democrats. Of the 37 seats up for election, 19 of them were Democrat and 18 were Republican. The Democrats would effectively have to lose 9 seats to lose their voting majority. Most of the polls only show 6 or 7 seats as "too close to call".

Those 39 governorships are pretty evenly split as well - 20 (D) to 19 (R). There's no "balance of power" with governorships per se - they only have power in their states - but the big ones that are too close to call are Florida (I), Maryland (D), Mass (D), New Mexico (D), Minnesota (R), Vermont (R), and California (R - Arnie is retiring because of term-limits).

U Ctrld Katy

2010-09-15T15:59:00.012Z

Two weeks ago, on a Tuesday, the Executive Producer of the Scott Mills Show came to me and said "we want to put Katy Perry in a room for an hour, streamed live on the Internet, and for the audience to be able to tell her what to do. Can we do that?". Sure, I said, when? "On Thursday". Oh, OK then.

Well it wasn't exactly like that - we'd been thinking of Katy Perry ideas for several weeks, since her management had come to us and said "lets do something other than just a straight interview - Katy's up for most things". Various ideas had come and gone through the process of feasibility and approval, and I'd had wind of the U Ctrl idea a few days earlier, but it was only on the Tuesday morning that it was green-lit by Katy's management, meaning we had 48 hours to make it happen. The first things that go through my mind on an occasion like this are the following.

Where will we do it?

It obviously has to look right (in this case a big white space, like off of Willy Wonka), but it also has to be easy for Katy and Scott to get to (within 10 minutes of the radio station). We toyed with the idea of dressing one of our meeting rooms at Radio 1 Towers, but ultimately decided this would look crummy, and besides we had only 48 hours to build it (in fact less, if you consider the time needed to then rig cameras etc). Wherever it was we also had to consider the need for a strong upstream internet connection to get the thing online. Which brings me to the next point...

How will we stream it?

Our technology plan for streaming is well established - we designed it two years ago when we live streamed from Scott Mills' house, and it's done well or us all that time. It involves a video signal, an audio signal, an AV-DV converter that turns them into a combined Firewire signal, and a laptop running free Flash Media Encoder software to upload the stream to the BBC's Akamai accounts. To do this, we need a 1mbps upstream internet connection, with little or no contention.

Thankfully, we found a cracking location just around the corner from Radio 1, which had everything we needed. As a post-production studio, it was used to handling large files, and had something insane like a 40mbps upstream connection. It also had a small but perfectly formed infinity cove studio with a lighting rig. So, we could put Katy in a room, film her, and put it out online. But the last piece of the puzzle...

How will we the audience control Katy?

We have a number of tools at our disposal for this - our Facebook pages, our Twitter, our SMS system, and a chat product called Cover It Live that we've used for more than a year now. The problem here was not the tools, but developing a human process to filter the good stuff out of those various sources (it's fair to say we were expecting a lot of, ahem, unusable suggestions from the audience).

We devised a system where three members of the team would select good suggestions from the audience, and filter them into a shared Google Document - sorting the wheat from the chaff. Scott's producer Emlyn was then the final filter, sorting through the wheat to decide what would get put into the... cake (sorry). He then published chosen instructions to the 'auto-cue' facing into the studio, as well as the Cover It Live window online. I hawked this diagram around all day Wednesday to help explain it to people (made using Popplet on iPad - show off, I know).

A note on Cover It Live - we decided not to use this for audience input, just for reflecting output. We felt that having a constant flow of suggestions alongside the video, with only some of them being carried out, would be quite distracting for the viewer. Having the audience input in a different place to the performer output was a peculiar user journey, but important to create a meaningful presentation.

Build-up and prep

We announced U Ctrl Katy on that Tuesday, on-air and on all our social spaces. During that time we deliberately encouraged people to think wildly about what they'd have Scott and Katy do. Obviously, during an hour-long broadcast we couldn't materialise props etc out of thin air, so this time was important to let us know that kind of things we'd need to bring to the party. My favourite here was the Potter's Wheel - a listener called Marshall Line on Facebook suggested that Scott and Katy should recreate the famous scene from Ghost.

We also knew that an hour of two people stood in a white room wasn't going to be completely sustained entirely by audience suggestions, so we planned a few other surprises like balloons, paints, swingball etc. During the show, we gave the Facebook and Twitter audience advance notice (5 mins or so) that these props were going to be brought out, to give them time to offer suggestions for instructions.

How did it go?

Well... you really had to be watching it to completely get the surreality of it all. Several people described it to me as like "being inside somebody else's weird dream". We served a good number of video streams - not our highest ever, but good for the time of day. Here's the highlights video and the photo gallery.

The main thing we learnt about this project is about volume! We received more than 7000 suggestions during that hour - that's two every second. Inevitably that led to some disappointed people. Some people even suggested it wasn't live and we'd made it all up - I can assure you it very much was live, which a read-out of my heartrate would have attested. In particular, a popular movement toward the end for Katy to put a shoe on her head wasn't picked up by the process, and was used by the doubters to 'prove' that it wasn't live. I wish that one had got through to us in the studio, but it didn't.

There are undoubtedly better ways to flow that data, perhaps using some automation/aggregation technology, a central control panel, etc. But given we had 48hrs to develop the whole proposition, I'll forgive us not getting this perfect the first time.

Where next?

I'd love to do it again. In a way, I think it's a shame that we started with one of the biggest stars in the world (though, that's clearly at the core of the audience appeal) - I like the idea of a series of U Ctrl, building up through the chart until we have people controlling Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Beyoncé, R-Patz. Whether anyone else is as open to doing it as Katy though, remains to be seen.

Google Instant A-Z

2010-09-09T18:31:00.003Z

So, Google Instant is out. As soon as you start typing into Google, it offers you immediate results. No more hitting "search". It's scarily fast. And what are the nation searching for? It turns out we're a nation of shoppers!

A = Argos
B = BBC
C = Currys
D = Debenhams
E = Ebay
F = Facebook
G = Google Maps
H = Hotmail
I = ITV
J = John Lewis
K = KLM Airlines
L = Lotto
M = MSN
N = Next (clothes shop)
O = O2
P = Paypal
Q = QVC
R = Rightmove
S = Sky
T = Tesco
U = UTube (no, honestly!)
V = Virgin
W = Weather (Google Weather inline, then BBC Weather as a search result)
X = Xbox
Y = YouTube
Z = Zara (clothes shop)

I love that nothing beginning with U is more frequently searched for than the mis-spelling of YouTube. Brilliant.

What I did on my holiday

2010-07-22T14:56:00.000Z

It all started 4 months ago when Freya read an article in the Sunday Times about a guy called Greg who runs Under The Thatch - specialising in quirky, interesting places to stay in Wales. Freya knew of UTT because she'd been trying to let their Romany Caravan for years, but found it to be always unavailable. The news that the Romany Caravan was for sale, along with 19 other Welsh properties, was quite exciting.

Alas it was also too expensive. We're not rich - my BBC salary plus Freya only having been in work for about a year, don't add up to much - but I did buy my first house in 2000 and have benefitted from the rise in the house market over the last ten years. I've been keen to do something with that equity for a while now, and when we saw Greg's three welsh log cabins on sale for about £40k each, they seemed like the perfect investment.

Alas again, all of his were already under offer. But he was kind enough to put us in touch with some other people selling theirs, and so we came up at Easter Weekend to stay at Penlan Holiday Village and visit a few cabins.

We were worried at first, as a lot of the ones we saw were quite chintzy or bland, and we've always had quite strong views on how places to stay should have character and individuality. And then we saw our cabin - owned by the same couple for more than 30years, and broadly unchanged from the 1970s, we fell in love with it immediately.

Pine panelled throughout, it instantly felt warm and cosy, bright and inviting. The kitchen was adorably cute, made out entirely in red and white. And out a large picture window, this stunning view, over our deck, across fields on to the Preseli hills.

We put in an offer immediately, had it accepted the same day, and three months later, the cabin - rechristened Cabin Ishbel after my tidy Welsh Gramma - was ours. So this past week has been about sprucing up the cabin ready to receive guests, the first of whom will be the aforementioned grandmother who has no idea we've bought it!

Jobs have included replacing the kitchen (same layout, just new cupboards), making all new curtains (Freya and her trusty sewing machine), replacing mattresses throughout (that's seven in total), destroying built in wardrobes, tearing up tired carpet, and lots and lots of cleaning.

Seven days later, we're ready to receive guests, but quite knackered. Not much of a holiday maybe (a change is as good as a rest?), but we've now got this amazing place we can come and stay at any time of the year, and just look out at that view, and it'll all be worth it!

Hospital adventures

2010-02-04T18:59:00.007Z

On Tuesday morning I was riding to work on my scooter. A driver pulled out without looking, and I had to slam the brakes on. I skidded, dropped the bike, and broke my wrist. Here are some tweets from the last few days -

TUESDAY

Check me out - interarticular fracture to the left wrist, after coming off scooter - http://twitpic.com/11072u
Nurse just asked me if I had a medical background! Apparently I ask a lot of good questions
It's my left wrist btw, and I'm right handed. Phew. (aiiiiii)
Gah! Gonna need an operation and will be in hospital for a couple of days.
I'm in the ward now. Man next to me has six broken vertebrae. From a motorbike accident. For now, I won't be getting a replacement.
Hospital food. Blahhhh http://twitpic.com/111p6d
Ok here's the grim picture of my arm. Not for the faint hearted http://twitpic.com/112hkc
Some more photos of today's adventures http://twitpic.com/112ujv
Nurses at St Thomas' were really lovely http://twitpic.com/112uou
Least impressive. wheelchair. ever. http://twitpic.com/112uyc
This is how I have to sleep tonight http://twitpic.com/112vfs
Oh and here's my hospital view. Pretty good! Night night all. http://twitpic.com/1134kk

WEDNESDAY

I'm Nil-by-mouth now, whilst everyone around me is eating breakfast. Rubbs!
This is so they operate on the correct arm. Which is reassuring. http://twitpic.com/115awq
Hello world. Am alive and back on ward. Arm dead weight due to nerve blocker. Quite surreal. Op all as planned.
I am the bionic man now - http://twitpic.com/115y9x
Arm is waking up. It's as if a hundred frozen cars have defrosted and are trying their engines, one by one. Vroom (ow), Vroom (ow) etc
Look what's right outside my hospital doors? http://twitpic.com/117ksn
SHUT THAT FUCKING BEEPING UP!!! #tryingtosleepinahospital

THURSDAY

Going home today, around lunchtime. Woot. Meantime, here's the view this morning http://twitpic.com/11b41s
One last picture for now. I want one of these NHS bowls and might nick one - http://twitpic.com/11b494

I've decided not to ride a scooter again. I normally don't allow things like this to set me back, but my other half has asked me not to. She very rarely asks me not to do anything, so I have to take notice. Thing is, I'm an excellent rider, driver, and cyclist - all in all, a very aware road user. But accidents like this happen completely out of your own control, no matter how good you are. So I'm going to stick to the tube and the camper from now on. Was fun while it lasted and I'm glad I learnt to ride and had some fun.

Lots of stuff has happened

2010-01-16T12:27:00.009Z

I just got an email from my day saying "lots has happened in the last few months, you should blog", and he's right. Though, I suspect he's the only person that reads my blog, and so this is a pointless exercise. However, using the headings he gave me in his email, here goes.

1. Vespa

I bought a Vespa! I've wanted one for ages, and I kind of bought this one as a spur of the moment thing, without having passed my test of ever having ridden a scooter. So I bought it on ebay, then took my CBT, and picked it up on the way home. Since then I've ridden it into work a bunch of times, and left it at home in the snow and rain a lot more times. I'm sure I will ride it more when the winter ends!

I've only had one drama - thought someone had nicked all my petrol but it turns out the bike fell over so all the petrol poured out. Damn. I've also bought a ridiculous amount of kit so far, including a jacket, gloves, two covers and two helmets. Now bugger off winter, so I can actually ride it!

2. Promotion

Back in September, I had a job interview with the hope of becoming Senior Content Producer at Radio 1 and 1Xtra. I didn't get it. But it turns out I didn't do so bad after all, because I was told in December that our other SCP was leaving and that I could have his job. Well, kinda. It's a BBC thing. So yeah, that's good. I started officially last week, and so far have been doing my old job as well because other people are on holiday. But the next few months look like they could be a bit different workwise.

3. Christmas

I'm not sure what Dad wanted me to write about Christmas. It was lovely, and was spent as usual in Loughborough and Nottingham with the two branches of my family. A noteable absence from the Loughborough leg was Gramma Gorman who couldn't make it due to a wobbly turn and bad snowy weather for driving. Santa got me a waterproof ipod, a new steering wheel for Billy, a new camera (yes another one), and a dazzling array of teeth-rotting delights.

4. Lanzarote

Freya and I decided to get away from the chilly UK for some winter sun and after much searching, opted for Lanzarote. It's popular for winter sun because it's only 4 hours away, same time zone as the UK, and is about 24-degrees at this time of year. Yum. £300 from teletext holidays.

Far from being 'Lanzagrotty' it was really lovely. Yep there's plenty of egg-and-chips British and Irish bars, and if you didn't explore you could really get stuck in that and come away thinking it was sunny but naff. But we hired a car for just one day, and explored a lot of the island, which has every type of terrain you can think of, and some really gorgeous spots.

So thanks Lanzarote, you were just what the doctor ordered. Apart from the last 24 hours that is...

5. Lanzarote the Return (flight)

We had a bit of drama getting home. I was so glad when we took off on time on Tues 5 Jan because it meant we would most likely land hours before winter gripped the South of England and close the airports. But with the plane just a minute off the ground and climbing, the air conditioners above the overhead lockers started spurting out smoke. This got lots of people panicking on the plane, with shouts of Smoke Smoke and Fire Fire (original huh?). Whilst the cabin crew came on the PA to explain it was just the warm air and cold air mixing, the Captain was less comfortable and decided to turn the plane around and land it back at Lanzarote. Balls.

A wait, a bus, a wait, a hotel, a meal, a sleep, a bus next morning at 6am, a wait, check-in, another wait, some more waiting, and then a two hour wait on the plane finally led to us taking off at 2pm the next day. Because of snow, we were bound not for Gatwick but East Midlands Airport near our parents' houses. Not the end of the world, but still annoying enough for a small uprising to insist on getting their bags off the plane and staying put instead, hence the two hour delay on the runway. In the end, we had the last laugh because just as we approached it, Gatwick had re-opened. If we'd arrive any earlier or later, we wouldn't have got that window to land there, as they closed it again shortly afterwards.

6. Boilerlessness

Just before we went on holiday, the boiler packed in. It's been a temperamental old thing for ages, and has usually responded well to a firm thump on the side of the cabinet. But before Christmas, the magic thump was no longer solving the problem. As we were not going to really be around for a couple of weeks we decided to leave it until after Lanzarote, and booked a plumber for the day we returned.

But he got snowed in didn't he! So we were ruddy freezing for a lot longer than planned. Luckily we had electric heaters and immersion tank so it could've been a lot worse. And THEN, when the plumber did finally get here, he turned the boiler on and it worked first time!!!!!! I was so annoyed, as I'd been trying that every day just in case. There was nowt he could do really, he just packed up and left again - and was kind enough not to charge us a penny.

But that evening, of course, it wasn't working again. Icicles return. So I resolved to get to the bottom of it. OK here's the science. A motor, turns a fan, which blows air up a pipe, which pushes a diaphragm pressure switch, which sends an electrical signal saying it's therefore safe to let the gas flow and light the boiler. This wasn't happening. The fan was blowing, the pressure switch was switching, but there was no spark. Having found a circuit diagram on the floor of the boiler cupboard, I traced the wires to the point where they join the circuit board and, erm... I gave them a little prod.

Yep, thumping the boiler has been replaced with prodding the circuit board. Dad has a thing about how engineers used to carry rubber mallets or something, and I suppose all I've done is narrowed down my field of interferance from something 2 feet wide to something 2mm wide, but it did the track. There's clearly a lose or dry connection there, and it is now, for the time being, connected. Phew.

Now don't report me to those Corgi's, because I'm sure I'm being naughty doing that, but I'm comfortable with the fact it's electrical not gas, and I've been very cautious and sensible. And I'm now warm, so whatcha gonna do about it?

OK you're all up to date. Enjoy reading it, Dad!

We planted some plants

2009-10-26T08:12:00.006Z

Since Freya's been back from China, we've been looking at how to brighten up the flat and make things a bit more cheery. We started by talking about putting some plants on our window sill outside the flat, and that idea eventually expanded to putting plants in troughs all the way along the walkway outside our flats - our 'street' if you like. Not consciously trying to 'give something to the community' but rather make the whole street look nice rather than just our flat which would look a bit weird.

So on Saturday we went to Homebase and spent a chunk of dosh on troughs, compost, and plants. Then yesterday, we spent the afternoon planting them out. We put notes through the doors during the week inviting the neighbours to come and join us but they didn't - a couple did come out and say hello and that they thought they looked nice though, so that's good. It also meant that we could eat the cake that Freya baked, all on our own.

Here's the end result, we're very happy. Slightly nervous that the council might find some reason to object, or that the nutter down at number 9 will start throwing them over the edge or something, but for now they make the place look a lot more cheery and bright.

Segway racing with Scott Mills

2009-10-22T16:34:00.007Z

This was fun (despite having to get in at 7am). I've always wanted a go on a Segway, and today I did. And I got to make a film of Scott, Becky, Chappers and Fearne having a go too. I haven't made a film with the Scott team for ages now (since Edinburgh) so it was great fun to run around the basement again.

The camera attached to the Segway was a FlipHD Mino, which was just gaffer taped on to the handlebars. It's about the size of a mobile phone, and has a mobile phone quality camera which records MP4s at 1920 x 1080. A really nice simple way of getting a brilliantly unflattering camera angle.

A photo of Fearne

2009-10-16T21:50:00.005Z

Last week I took a bunch of photos of Fearne Cotton for press, because they didn't have any "action shots" of her - plenty of posed publicity photos, but nothing of her in action doing her job behind the radio desk.

Fearne's been having flashbulbs popped in her face for pretty much her whole life, so she was a top pro and just got on with presenting her show while I snapped around her. The photos I took just got added to the stock of photos we have of Fearne.

This week the first one ended up in the press (in trade paper PR Week). Now I click on that link, and I don't find it very exciting at all. But holding a magazine in my hand with one of my photos in it, I get a buzz from. I work on quite a lot of high profile stuff, and often millions of people see my work online, but there's still something quite exciting about seeing stuff in print. Silly, I know.

And if the constantly recurring photo of 'motormouth DJ Chris Moyles' is anything to go by, this photo of Fearne could be appearing in the press unchanged for the next 8 years.

I was Greg's employee of the day

2009-10-15T15:16:00.004Z

What an honour.

Every day, Greg James picks someone to be his employee of the day. It is not done based on any specific achievement, as far as I'm aware. In fact, I believe it's based on a given individual's availability. You have to hold a jar of sweets and have your photo taken. Then you have to talk into a microphone and say the following words -

MOBO Awards 2009

2009-10-04T10:29:00.012Z

On Wednesday night, 1Xtra covered the 2009 MOBO awards, which for the first time were held in Glasgow. I was asked to get involved a few weeks ago, and said yes without realising it would involve a 10 hour round-trip train journey, but hey ho. I wasn't producing - that was left to m'colleague Karen who did a wicked job of organising the content and handling the site build. I was there doing one of my favourite things - wielding a Z1 video camera, and churning out backstage videos.

As with all these things, you make plans, but you have to be flexible and you never really know what you're going to get. The intention was to make 3 videos - each a montage of 'backstage party games' like Rock Paper Scissors, and arm wrestling. Just something a bit silly to show stars pratting around a bit, rather than filming straight interviews. Though we did a few of these, the two stand-out videos for me were both opportunistic and made up on the spot.

The first was the moment NDubz crashed JLS's live radio interview with Mistajam - not stunning radio, but a great coming-together of two of the most popular artists on the MOBO scene (we were running a chat room, and they were consistently the two most adored acts). I happened to be nearby and the camera was ready, so I just started rolling. It's nowt special, but it really captures the moment and it was quite genuine.

The second, I'm quite proud of, because it impacted the live event, the television coverage, the website, and the following 48 hours of radio discussion. I'd heard that Trevor Nelson had won the Best DJ Award and that his co-presenter Gemma would actually collect the award for him. Gemma and I get on pretty well, so I shoved her a digital camera and told her she had to take it on stage with her and film it from her point of view.

She wasn't sure, but I just told her to explain she was doing it for Trevor, and she went with that. I had meant for her to use that little excuse if the stage manager got snippy about her taking the camera on stage, I didn't realise she would tell the entire audience. She even struggled with the power button and the lens cap at one point, and I had this sinking feeling my little idea would just end up making her look stupid, but in the end the footage was brilliant. The next day, I cut it in with the BBC Three live tv footage, and it looks even better. I wish more radio presenters were as good sports as her.

Live Lounge Tour 2009

2009-09-20T08:13:00.004Z

It's bad that I haven't blogged since February 12th. So I thought I would try to kick start things again, by blogging about things I've done at work. It's cheap and easy, but it will create a bit of a record and showreel, so it seems worth doing.

This week was the Live Lounge Tour - the fourth one I think, when Whiley goes around the UK getting bands to perform in their own lounge instead of ours. This one was momentous because it was also Jo's last week in her mid-morning show slot. So it was a bit poignant all round. The line-up was Kasabian, JLS, Biffy Clyro, Dizzee Rascal and ended with Jay-Z of all people, round at Jo's house in the middle of the Northamptonshire countryside.

Here's some photos I took, and a little video I'm a bit pleased with, of Jo wrapping up the show (I edited out the bit where she broke down in tears, which I felt like a complete voyeur for filming in the first place - I don't think anybody gains anything by seeing what Jo looks like crying, except the satisfaction of morbid curiosity).

Inauguration from space

2009-02-12T18:24:00.005Z

This is a bit old now, but fuck me it's good!

Inauguration Twitter map

2009-01-29T00:20:00.002Z

I've had a Twitter account for about two years - it used to be the one thing you could say in a job interview to make it sound like you knew what you were talking about, even when you had no idea what it was any use for. I still don't. But recently my followers have tripled - people probably assume I use it and have something important to say? Well, you all know that's not true!

There must be something in the media talking about Twitter at the moment, because people who I'd never have thought would be into it seem to be swallowing up the hype, hook line and sinker.

Anyway, through Twitter, I came across this map showing the tweeting (no, really) activity on and around Inauguration Day. Somehow it knows where you are geographically (maybe I told it this when I signed up?) and if you tweeted (sigh) something positive about the inauguration, it puts a dot on the map. Or something like that. Anyway, check it out, it's cool.

And, the concentration of dots in the UK goes something toward highlight Twitter's huge popularity in the UK right now - pretty much the entire UK landmass is filled in by the end.

Jon Favreau

2009-01-29T00:15:00.002Z

Thanks to Tom for bringing this to my attention. Barack Obama's Director of Speechwriting is called Jon Favreau. Not the Swingers guy. Another Jon Favreau. And he was born in 1981. The little fucker! How does a 27 year old get to write like that???? Quite rightly, he's now getting an awful lot of sex from hot women.

Where's Wally?

2009-01-25T16:49:00.015Z

I think I've spotted me in the crowd, in this awesome Gigapan panoramic photo by David Bergman. According to his blog, it's a 1474-megapixel image, made by a system that stitches together photos taken by a robotic rig, attached to the top of the north media platform.

I knew roughly where I was in the crowd obviously, but it took ages to find me, and I'm still not exactly sure. I've gone by a number of pieces of evidence in my own photos, basically triangulating my location based on people wearing particularly distinctive hats and coats - in particular, the guy in the left of this image wearing a sky blue coat with hood zipped all the way up, and the person with the furry hood stood immediately behind me. This is what I was wearing on the day - I think the hat matches, and I think you can also see Amy and Melissa's white beanie hats too. The cyan blue top is a mystery, but I'm willing to believe that's the left shoulder of the person stood in front of me!

You can spend hours pouring over that photo, checking out all the dignitaries on the podium etc. But my favourite thing I found is these guys. See if you can find them too. I hope they're the good guys...

I did some radio reports whilst I was here

2009-01-21T23:49:00.012Z

Earlier this week, I got an email from my mate Steve who works for Hertbeat FM in Hertfordshire - as a small local radio station, they wanted to be able to pretend they had a man in Washington, so their news guy called me up and I waffled some crap down the phone to him from my bed.

So here's the audio, and here's what you can learn from listening to it

There was a good atmosphere
It was a big day for patriotism for America
They were very patriotic
There was lots of patriotism
I am actually proud of the term 'Obamarama' for which I should be shot
I shouldn't give up the day job

Thanks Scott

2009-01-21T23:27:00.006Z

Glad to hear my friends at work are enjoying my blog :)

Inauguration links I like

2009-01-21T23:11:00.004Z

Photo Mosaic on Washington Post - an image of Barack Obama giving the oath of office, made up of lots of other images from the week.

All the world's newspapers - a collossal page of newspaper front covers from around the world. Very long page.

White House website - just like the interior and occupant, it has a whole new look

The Balls

2009-01-21T15:32:00.005Z

Last night we went to the inauguration balls - we had press credentials for 4 balls in total. The Neighborhood Ball, the Mid-Atlantic Ball, the Biden Home States Ball, and the Obama Home States Ball. We spent the night hopping between the balls - ball-hoping, as we called it.

We saw the President and First Lady dance twice, and the Vice President and his wife dance twice as well. Having press credential is brilliant!

Here's the photos -

And here's the First Dance with Beyonce from the Neighborhood Ball

Swearing-in ceremony

2009-01-20T20:16:00.008Z

Today was the most incredible day. Incredible because of the occasion, but also in the stunning disorganisation of what you might think is an event run to military precision.

After much discussion about what time we should get up, we got up at at 6.30am and left at 7am. There was no metro access, so we had to walk to our entry point - we had 'blue' tickets, for the West Standing area - so far, so very well organised. Roads were closed to allow for pedestrians - we walked for about an hour, including under the 3rd street road tunnel (where Bruce Willis crashed a helicopter in Die Hard 4).

We arrived at our designated place to join the blue line, but it was already a complete melee. There were two vague blue lines, that were more throngs than nice orderly British queues. There was no barrier system, no marshalls, and no signage. There were people in our queue who were meant to be in other queues on the other side of the city, and had no idea. We queued for three hours, and proceeded about 50 yards. We realised at the this point that we were at serious risk of not making it in in time.

We had press credentials for a different area, and were thinking about moving to there, so we took the brave step of leaving the queue! It was when we did this that we realised how utterly ridiculous things were - the queue we were in was a queue to nowhere. People had formed a line, and other sheep had just stood in it. It was vaguely joining the main blue gate queue, but there was another very short line for blue gate, which we just got in, and were inside the gates within 15 minutes. Amazingly ridiculous, and it makes me shudder now to think we almost missed out - and that all those thousands of people behind us did miss out.

When we did get in, the sense of relief and excitement was intense. We pushed our way through the throng to get to a good spot - again, another example of shepherding - everyone was gathered around the outskirts of the standing area, with lousy views and no standing room. Once we pushed through, there was tonnes of open room with a view directly up the centre of the Capitol. And pretty much as soon as we got there, the ceremony began.

Now admittedly, if you watched this on TV, you had a better view of the actual ceremony that we did, and you were probably aware of the scale of the thing, from the incredible aerial shots of the crowd pouring back to the Washington monument. But to hear the wave of "O-ba-ma" sweeping from the Washington monument, all the way to the front was quite incredible. To hear the boos when George W Bush was announced on the stage, followed by the whole crowd singing "Na-na, na na na-na, heeeeyy, good bye". And to hear the people around you shouting things like "amen" at points during the speech, and seeing old black ladies crying into their hands. The scale of things juxtaposed with the small personal reactions around us.

I still need to watch the ceremony on a repeat somewhere, because I didn't really appreciate much of it - I've heard since the chief justice fluffed the words, and Obama had to correct him. Brilliant. It seems fitting, that he should be so confident while all around him are flustered in awe of the occasion.

On the long walk back to Dupont, we walked up K street, which was lined with people selling all the Obama tatt you could wish for. I've never seen anything like it. So much of it was awful tacky fairground crap. Some of it was nice, classy and looked kinda official - that's the stuff I bought. All of it brought home how messianic this guy's image is. He has been put on the biggest pedestal there's ever been, the expectation on his shoulders is surely unfulfillable. I wouldn't like to be in his shoes now.

Here are the photos I've taken today (also, in the slideshow below).

Here are a few bits of video I've shot today as well. Check out the boo-ing when Bush is announced, and the "O-ba-ma" chanting. Heading to several balls later - more photos from there!

Forrest Gump

2009-01-19T14:57:00.003Z

I knew I'd seen yesterday's scenes somewhere before. "Jenn-nnny" -

Me vs Getty

2009-01-19T13:19:00.003Z

Good to know my access to yesterday's event was as good as Getty Images'. Check out these images on the BBC website, and compare them to mine on Flickr :)

Obama concert

2009-01-19T00:04:00.008Z

Today was the "We Are One" inauguration concert at the Lincoln Memorial. Thanks to Melissa's friend Liz, we had press credentials, so were stood audience's right, right at the foot of the memorial steps. The crowd went back as far as the Washington memorial (about half a mile), so we were incredibly lucky indeed. My 12x zoom got a lot of usage - full photos on Flickr.

Stars included U2, Beyonce, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen, Denzel Washington, Tom Hanks, Usher, Jack Black. Both Joe Biden and Barack Obama did speeches. At the end of the concert, all the artists came out on stage, and once a lot of the crowd had left, Obama came out to see them - I was about 25 yards away and he gave us a little wave. I didn't have my camera ready though, unfortunately!

It was basically a live TV event, very polished and nicely shot (lots of big screens around the site). The artists sang patriotic songs and read patriotic readings, about previous presidents, the military, previous inaugurations, etc.

A great mood setter for the week ahead. And great preparation for the cold weather - I had my thermals on, and some of those hot gel packs in my shoes :)

On the way back, I bought a beanie hat and 5 badges. I intend to buy a lot more tatt this week :)

What we're doing this week

2009-01-18T13:32:00.002Z

OK so here's the Bailey Does Obama itinerary. Today (Sunday) we're heading down to the Lincoln Memorial for the special inauguration concert. There's a whole bunch of people playing, including Bono, Beyonce and Bruce Springstein (apparently, your name has to begin with B). Thanks to Melissa, we have press credentials, so can swan in and out. Tonight, we may go to a party for the state of Montana, called the Big Sky Party, at a club called Ibiza.

Tomorrow night (Monday) we're going to the Texas Black Tie and Boots ball. I won't be wearing boots, but I will be wearing a black tie. I intend to be the charming British man that everyone wants to talk to. In the daytime tomorrow, I might help Amy at her work, handing out the inauguration tickets to people that are coming to collect them. Or I may check out a musueum or two that I didn't check out before - but, it's Martin Luther King day, which is a holiday here, so everything could either be very closed or very busy.

Tuesday is the big Inauguration Day. We have tickets to the blue section of the West Standing area in front of the Capitol Building. We have to be there incredibly early - I think the plan is to leave Melissa's apartment at about 5am, and walk the two miles (from Dupont Circle) to the Capitol. We have to be screened, then we have to get in line, and then we have to get a good spot. They've given out more tickets than they have spaces for, so we have to be there super early. The swearing-in must finish by midday (it's in the constitution). You can watch it live online, or on possibly every television anywhere in the world.

On Tuesday night, we're going to the Obama Home States ball at the Washington Convention Center. It's one of the ten official Inauguration Balls, which Obama himself is therefore guaranteed to be at. He'll probably be there for 10 minutes in a room full of five thousand people, but it's still quite exciting.

Cool links -
Inauguration on Flickr
Inauguration weather
Inauguration senate committee
Inauguration of Obama, official site

The Obamarama begins

2009-01-17T12:19:00.005Z

My first experience of the Obamarama and I've not even left the uk yet. I'm sat in the plane at the departure gate and the plane is chock full of excited Americans. One lady just yelled 'raise em up for Obama!' and half the plane whooped an hollered. I've a sore throat at the moment, so my voice is too hoarse and my sensibilities too British to join in.

This same woman keeps on shouting 'who's actually going then, to the inaug, I'm actually going'. Show off. I should tell her I'm going and I'm also going to three balls, including the Obama Home States ball on Tuesday night, with the man himself. But, as I said, too hoarse, too British.

They have now just whooped and cheered when the pilot said the word Washington. And then they made a pact to, everytime anyone says Washigton, to say Obama. I can't help but think of Randy from South Park (watch the whole episode):

Ok, off we go....

Why Kentucky is so important

2008-05-17T14:18:00.004Z

It's a while now since I've blogged about the American Presidential elections. That's because I've been storing up such gems as this one. Since I last blogged, I've been to Washington DC, seen lawmaking in progress, met the American people, started to understand what makes them tick.

I've stayed up late at night waiting for election results to come in, I've become familiar with names such as 'Wolf Blitzer' on CNN, and I get daily emails from Obama telling me how important my contribution is. I've been building up a map as the states have been won - pink for Hillary, blue for Barack - and it all finally appears to be boiling down to one key state.

That state is Kentucky. It has a mere 51 delegates up for grabs, and whether he wins it or not, it looks likely to finally push Obama into the majority of elected delegates, and could herald the retirement of Hillary Clinton from the race for the White House.

But, more importantly, it'll finally allow one of the candidates to "do Blockbusters" - connecting the Pacific to the Atlantic with a string of won states. Surely, the real prize in this contest? (eat your heart out Wolf, didn't think of THAT did you?)

Biffy sound like Abba

2008-01-10T10:36:00.000Z

Every time I hear the new Biffy Clyro song (which I pretty much like btw) I think of Lay All Your Love On Me by Abba/Erasure if you prefer. Here's the comparison.

Biffy -

Abba -

American TV - DECEIVING THE PUBLIC

2007-10-09T20:52:00.000Z

I was watching the American version of Gordon Ramsey's Kitchen Nightmares tonight. I love kitchen nightmares, it's great! But the american version is just like all American reality TV - complete shlock. I just do not understand how the American style of programme has persisted. First there's the sound track - not one second of silence or wild track, constant music, and dappy sound effects.

Next there's the editing - it's cut to ribbons! It flits forward and backward in time all over the place, things from days before are put in the wrong time frame, and it's really obvious! They're wearing different clothes! There are no people in the background anymore! What do you take me for? No "crowngate" in the states, no sirree bob. I noticed these two sentences at the end of the programme in a kind of "how that's alright then" nod to their sly production techniques.

OK. Then there's the very expensive and therefore used again-and-again jib shots. In Kitchen Nightmares, it's the front of the restaurant. They had the crane for one day, so they shot the restaurant from every angle in every light - with the blinds down so you can't see the people inside. They speed it up, slow it down, reverse it... whatever, they've got to get their money's worth.

After that, there's the constant re-capping. Now there are a lot more ad-breaks in American TV, probably about 7 per hour I think. They're each about 3 minutes long, which is why an American hour is actually 44 minutes. Now, before each ad break they have to trail ahead to what's coming up in the next part, and after each ad break they have to recap what's previously happened. Assuming they take 1 minute to trail ahead and 1 minute to recap, that's another 14 minutes-per-hour wasted. Add that to the ad breaks, and you get a programme that's really only 30 minutes long. And watch that programme without the ads (like I do, cause I download it) and it's really.effing.irritating.

The other things they do, which is actually really offensive, they put subtitles on people that are completely audible! Often this is for accents that they think people won't understand, or where there's half a decibel of background noise. They need to credit the audience with a bit more intelligence.

And finally (this one's particularly relevant to Kitchen Nightmares) they do not like swearing at all. The word "fuck" is clearly forbidden by the FCC, which is a problem with Gordon, but I reckon they add a few more beeps there for words like crap or bloody. It reminds me of watching Jerry Springer, where they just used to put a beep on for about 30 seconds because it was too much like hard work to pick out usable words.

I'd love someone in the American TV industry to explain to me why all these programmes are made in the same way. The Apprentice, Supernanny, Hell's Kitchen, Big Brother ... they are all the same! Americans make drama like nobody else - British TV drama is almost universally crud - but their documentaries are laughable.

John Peel quote

2007-09-30T10:13:00.000Z

What with the Radio 1 birthday an' all, I was trying to get hold of a copy of Blood On The Carpet, the tv documentary based on Simon Garfield's book The Nation's Favourite. I couldn't find it, but I did find some extracts from the book (that I also just bought on Amazon). It's actually a compilation of interviews with John Peel that Garfield put together after John died. As with the whole book, they're intensely readable. As I lie here listening to Vernon Kay interviewing old Radio 1 greats for the special birthday show, the following strikes me as my favourite quote from those Peel interviews:

"People like Mike Read and DLT would often complain that they couldn’t go anywhere without being recognized, but of course would go everywhere in a tartan suit carrying a guitar, so they would have attracted attention in a lunatic asylum. "

And I've just noticed, in a beautiful bit of precient web surfing, and merciful logical TV scheduling, Blood on the Carpet is on tonight at 11pm on BBC Four.

Some new TV shows I've watched

2007-09-24T22:26:00.000Z

Tonight I watched a bunch of the new American TV pilots doing the rounds on the naughty illegal internet.

First I watched Reaper. This can best be described as a new Buffy, but with blokes instead of girls. A guy wakes up one morning to discover his soul is beholden to the Devil, and that his job in life is now to return souls that have escaped from hell. He does this using kit he's thrown together from the hardware store where he works, and by sucking them up with a dirt devil and depositing them at the DMV (department of motor vehicles office; 'hell on earth'). It's funny, and it's got lots of potential for fighting with demons whilst cracking American Pie-style gags.

Next I watch Pushing Daisies. Stylistically similar to Amelie, with a running voiceover that you'll recognise from Desperate Housewives, this is about a man who has the power to bring the dead back to life with a single touch. Bad news is, if he touches them again, they die instantly, for good. However, if he doesn't touch them again, someone else in the vicinity dies instead. So what does he do with this gift/curse? Why, he starts a crime fighting detective agency of course, and he runs a pie shop. Funnier and smarter than it sounds, it features Anna Friel has the love interest, with a great supporting cast.

Finally, I watched the new Jimmy Smits vehicle, Cane. Set in Miami, this show is the new Dallas, except with sugar instead of oil. In the opening episode, which moves around ridiculously quickly with a million characters, known of whom I really remember, we see Jimmy take control of the family business, wrestled from the grip of the enemy family who own the adjacent field, and whose matriarch is sleeping with his brother. There's a murderous feud that goes back generations, political intrigue, lots of money to be made, and lots of rum to drink at parties. Expect people to wake up in the shower before long, but I doubt this series will have people wondering "who shot Alejhandro" in years to come.

Still to watch, sci fi comedy drama Chuck, and the second series of Heroes that starts tonight. Already watched, the leaked pilot of Bionic Woman starring Eastender Michelle Ryan (I liked it) and the rehash of Flash Gordon starring the quarterback from Smallville (it's appalling).

TV update over.

Cover version backlash?

2007-09-21T08:23:00.001Z

I'm really loving the Radio 1 cover versions that are being played for the 40th birthday celebrations, but I'm starting to get worried about a cover versions backlash. Yesterday I was listening to Jo Whiley, and in the space of her 3 hour show, she replayed a 40th birthday cover from yesterday, played a previously unheard 40th birthday cover, had a live lounge cover from Jack Penate, and also played Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse's cover of the Zutons' Valerie. Is programming more than one cover per hour a good idea?

The other night, I was working on a radio programme's chat room, and we were asking listeners to tell us their favourite BBC sessions that they've heard throughout the years... the chatroom audience (most likely a fairly young audience) saw the word 'session' and interpreted it to mean 'cover'! The answers coming back were all along the lines of "oh I loved so-and-so's version of thingy". There are so many covers on the radio, that it seems it's now expected for a band to perform something other than their own work when they play live on the radio.

Three of the best selling albums of 2007 are looking like being Mark Ronson's Versions, Radio 1 Established 1967 (out october 1st) and Jo Whiley's Live Lounge album (out 22nd october). I'm thinking, and kinda hoping, that 2008 could be the year of the covers backlash.

Sensible talk about participation

2007-09-03T12:11:00.000Z

I read an old Time Out this morning (I have a collection of them in the bathroom) and read an article about the Cultural Olympiad for London 2012. I found myself agreeing with Claire Fox's position on participation -

"Why are the key mantras of the Cultural Olympiad “engagement and participation”? These buzz-words may sound harmless, but beware. It is clear that no barriers to participation – such as having no artistic talent at all – will be allowed to get in the way of everyone joining in. The public is asked to prove it is engaging in the arts, by being dragooned into frenetic activity – all-singing, all-dancing marionettes. We are told that engagement “should be more than just being an audience member”. Quietly contemplating a piece of music or silently watching a play is derided as passive. This seems less about enabling people to appreciate the arts per se and more about trumpeting participation as an end in itself."

Well said that lady.

Guns are bad, mmm kay?

2007-08-25T11:12:00.000Z

This is a new anti- gun crime cinema advert made by Choice FM (Matt blogged this before me)

The remarkable thing is that, as jaded as I am, I actually found myself thinking they really were going to show what it looks like when you shoot a kid. Obviously, it would have been done via CGI rather than actual homicide, but I was still really expecting it. When the kid's head came up, I actually drew breath. Clever stuff. Oh, and I like the way the skin of the fruit sort of splits itself into little segments - that's neat.

Chris Rock for Obama

2007-08-20T19:32:00.000Z

Big Arm, David Jordan, and Envy Corps

2007-08-08T22:57:00.001Z

Went to a gig at Water Rats tonight, and saw three great acts, for the bargain price of £6.

First up were Big Arm, the spin-off project from Happy Monday Paul Ryder. It was alright stuff; very poppy beatsy indie, with repetitive choruses of chantable lyrics. Paul had surrounded himself with bright young things who seemed quite technically minded (you can always tell this when the band all wear headphones), whilst he stood there looking leathery, wearing a tracksuit top and a man-bag, singing his lyrics of a sheet on the floor. The tracks all seemed ripe for remixes and the indie/dance crossover crowd (shades of Mint Royale in some of the rhythms). It's not going to change the world, and he must be feeling happy that the Mondays have reformed, but it was a good start to the evening.

Next up was David Jordan, the act me mate Tom reckons is "one to watch" over the next year or so. And rightly so; he had a beautiful voice, with incredibly tight control and a wide range. He had a very soulful, retro-pop sound, a great falsetto, and very tight trousers. It crossed over into hair-rock a few times, which is not necessarily a bad thing, especially when he was supported by a suitably hirsute guitarist. The obvious comparison here, which I suspect he is fed up of hearing, is Terence Trent D'Arby, but there were also shades of Dangerous-era Michael Jackson (the GnR rock sound helping that), and maybe a little Prince and Lenny Kravitz in there for good measure. He's being produced by Trevor Horn (whose pedigree I had to have explained to me) and it surely destined for mainstream success. I'm not sure if the youth market will embrace such a straight pop sound though - they seem to like their pop a bit more kooky (Mika) and their soul a bit more edgy (Timbaland), and I think it could be more of a Radio 2 sound than Radio 1. A bit of remix action could work wonders though.

Finally, The Envy Corps. Geek chic American indie rock, it was right up my street. Really tight guitars, keys, and an amazing drummer. It was reminiscent of Doves and Bloc Party, with no pretensions and no egos, just really ordinary guys who liked their music. The band looked fantastic too, from the Napolean Dynamite-esque drummer, through to the Jack Black lead singer, they all looked like they were ready to rock. They're doing a four-week residency at Water Rats, of which this was the first night, and I might even go to see them again. Oh, and Edith Bowman was there with Princess Leia hair, running around taking photos with a Digital SLR. Which was nice.

Colbert on Wikiality

2007-08-08T13:31:00.001Z

I keep losing this clip, and I always want to show it to people, so I thought I'd embed it here.

December Boys

2007-08-07T22:05:00.001Z

I went to see a free filum tonight, so I feel I should write some things about it (cause when you get free stuff, it's only fair). The filum was called December Boys and it starred Harry Potter and three other kids as the four eponymous Australian orphans (all born in said month) who, for no apparent reason, get to go on a summer holiday to the beach and live with a dying woman. Life-forming incidents occur, and before you can say Stand By Me, Cobber, the boys have gone through a rite of passage and come out the other side ever-so slightly more grown up.

It was alright. My friend Annie thought it was poo, but I thought it was alright. There were a few bad things about it. Harry Potter is still a rubbish actor, and he still has an irritating speech impediment that means he can't say SH or CH sounds (this film was made between HP4 and HP5, and since he also had it in HP5, I'm not surprised). He also has a a weird head-bigger-than-body thing going on, which can be excused since he is still growing, but he has very little physical acting ability and looks like a gallumphing idiot when he tries to run.

Other bad things; it was very twee, nothing really happens very much, and it's difficult to think who it's pitched at - it's from a book, which I can imagine being too simple for kids, and not interesting enough for adults. So, I don't really know who's going to like it, to be honest.

Good things about it; it looked spectacular, though I give more credit to Sheila Nature for that, than I do to director Rod Hardy. The adult performances are good, especially from their benevolent host, the dying Skipper. And there's an interesting mix of music, from original score to 60s pop tracks. It's moving in parts, not too shmultzy, and the other three kids have definate potential as actors.

It's a kinda 2/5 to 3/5 on the old star rating - it's nowt special, but I didn't look at my watch or wish the lead actor was on a broomstick at any point, and that's an achievement for the lad.

I really wanted to like the Kate Nash album...

2007-08-06T23:15:00.000Z

...but I don't. And I'm kinda disappointed in myself, because it's just soooo trendy to dislike her and I wanted to buck the trend.

People compare her to Lily Allen, and in many ways she is like her - they're both from London, they both have the Notting Hill posh-set accent, they both did the whole myspace thing, they both write observational lyrics (which, when you're just turning 20, are inevitably about going out, failed relationships, drinking cheap wine with your friends, and thinking your boyfriend's mates are much fittaaaah).

But if she were like Lily Allen, I'd really like her, cause I love Lily Allen! She's got a great variety of musical influences, she has a sweet voice, and lots of melody. And it's musically that Kate Nash is nowhere near Lily Allen standard. Kate's heard the Regina Spektor album, thought that it's acceptable to make plinky plonky noises with the piano, and chatter over the top, squeaking every now and then for effect. For Regina, it works to sublime effect, but for Kate it just sounds a bit playdays.

The album is repetitive and a bit dull, and doesn't even feature Caroline is a Victim for which she was held in good underground repute before the excellent (and really only Lily-esque track) Foundations moved her into the mainstream. But Foundations is as melodious as the album gets - you can barely notice a chorus in any of the other songs, which you just implore to kick in at some point, but never do. I've owned albums before where you never bother listening past track 6, but this is the first one where I would recommend stopping after track 2.

Bad luck Kate. And sorry for the Lily Allen comparisons, that I expect you hate, but hey ho.

PS - since writing this above, I have discovered the chorus in three more of the songs. But they're not as good as foundations'

Killing in the name of Mr Oizo

2007-08-06T10:20:00.000Z

LOVING this at the moment-
Mr Oizo / RATM - Killing In The Name [visit the MySpace]

and the DJ Clumsy remix is amazing too
Mr Oizo / RATM - Killing In The Name (DJ Clumsy Remix)

Songs Prince didn't play

2007-08-04T13:14:00.001Z

Raspberry Beret
Little Red Corvette
1999
When Doves Cry
Diamonds and Pearls
My Name is Prince
Sexy MF
Gett Off
Money Don't Matter Tonight
Most Beautiful Girl In The World
Nothing Compares 2 U (woulda been nice!)

silly purple tosser

New combined RSS feed

2007-08-01T23:02:00.001Z

Nerdy indeed, but I've combined my several blog feeds into one feed, so you only have to subscribe to one thing (yes you, loyal reader). I've combined the three blogs, flickr, and my facebook status updates.

I did this using Pipes, a service on Yahoo that let's usually visually program your feed data to combine it into one output, manipulating the data along the way with Regular Expressions, etc etc. Very neat.

Here's my pipe You can click on the subscribe button on that page to get an RSS or other feed

iPlayer doesn't work

2007-07-28T08:09:00.000Z

Tried to install BBC iPlayer, didn't work. Some random error message that caused some background process to fail to work which caused the iPlayer application to not be able to load. Or something. I'm sure they'll sort it one day, or they won't sort it at all, or something.

They really should have managed the press a bit better with the iPlayer launch, because the expectation is WELL high. All the news reports on Friday were of the BBC "launching" its new service that lets you download TV. It's not really their fault that when people go to the site and find its a Beta, and their application to use it has to be approved, they get disappointed. Well, it probably is their fault, but maybe not really.

The installation process was very complicated, even if it had worked. Go to a website, login with a password, accept an ActiveX control (but they didn't tell you about that part), install an EXE application, go back to the browser and refresh, sign in to bbc.co.uk with a different password (create an account if you don't have one, which is four screens of questions), then go back to the browser again and hopefully download the WMV file. I got as far as the EXE application, and it wouldn't run, so... meh.

I wonder if the BBC are really that geared for "delivering product". For the brief moments it lived before it was axed, the BBC Jam platform was ruddy awful. Should a corporation whose background is in making content really be trying to make computer programmes? Mind you, in both the iPlayer and Jam cases, they contracted out to Microsoft, so maybe that's their mistake right there.

Bikeathon

2007-07-14T22:14:00.001Z

Doing the London Bikeathon tomorrow. Been plotting the route on Google Maps. It's a double marathon, in two sections. The first marathon is a loop around West London, and the second marathon is a double-back loop around The City.

Quotes from The Thick Of It this week

2007-07-05T21:49:00.001Z

"that's easy for you to say, he threatened to shove an iPod up my cock"

"don't let him hear you saying that, he'd fuck you like Ron Jeremy- only with less warmth"

"I'd love to stop and talk but I'd rather have type 2 diabetes"

"we are going to ram you up Tom's arse so hard that he has to shit out of his lying mouth"

"you're so badly fucked, his bell end is wearing your appendix as a hat"

"you're about as secure as a hymen in a South London comprehensive"

"if he thinks he's leaking now, wait til I finished with him, he'll be like Mel Gibson's fucking Jesus"

"you don't go and get me some cheese, I'll rip your head off, and give you a spinedectomy"

"it's not like we're The Independent, we can't just stick a headline like CRUELTY and a picture of a whale or something underneath it"

"enough of the pleasantries, let's just oil up and get fucking eh"

"ok people WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COCK"

"you don't leak, not from the mouth anyway"

Glastonbury Photo sets

2007-06-28T22:04:00.000Z

I just wanted a place to host together the photo sets of all the mates I was hanging out with in Glastonbury. So here we go:

My new gimpPod, and, Why iPods actually cost more

2007-05-21T14:27:00.001Z

Thought I'd post a picture of my new iPod, dubbed the gimpPod because of the black wubber skin I bought for it. Pretty neat the way not one part of the actual pod is exposed, and the way the touchwheel can work beneath the rubber. Thanks to the lovely folks for a great birthday present.

I was surprised when the iPod arrived how much the iPod "package" has been paired down. A while ago I was musing about how cheap iPods are now, relative to when they first came out, and I put it down to scales of production and the iPods popularity. But actually, the accessories the iPod *doesn't* come with any more, more than make up the shortfall in cost. My 3G ipod, which cost about £300, came with -

That little £106 bunch of stuff all came in a really ornate, exciting-to-open, 6-inch cube of packaging, with software CD-ROM and user manual. All those things are missing from the iPod now, which comes in a box about the size of a fat double-CD jewel case. At £240, it just comes with headphones (<1m cable), USB lead, and cloth bag. Most irritating is the lack of mains charger - I now have to find a computer every time I want to charge my iPod.

So, if you do the maths, iPods are actually more expensive now than they were four years ago.

Hilary Clinton loves Jesus (Jones)

2007-05-18T09:34:00.000Z

Interesting to hear that Hilary Clinton's campaign theme song is Right Here, Right Now by Jesus Jones - I suspect the identity of the artist performing the song is rarely mentioned by campaign staff. Here's a "live" performance of the song, from 1991.

I find the stupid over-performance, which doesn't fit the relatively mellow nature of the song, quite amusing. They think they're big hair rockers, but they're really not. Note especially the stupidly manic keyboard, none other than the self-indulgent prat Iain Baker, who recently left Xfm in a cloud of DLT-esque "I'm not happy with some of the changes around here" (friends in the know make it quite clear he was actually let go, probably for being, umm, a bit of a twat).

Bees, glorious bees

2007-04-22T13:16:00.000Z

I've got a bee home on my balcony. Here are some photos, and here is a video.

Super Duper!!

2007-04-05T10:42:00.001Z

I haven't blogged about the US elections in a while, it had kinda gone a bit quiet as far as news reaching the UK was concerned. Couple of things caught my eye today though.

I got an email from Barack last night (he likes to write to me), telling me that he'd raised $25m so far, all from individual supporters (it's a big part of his campaign that politics should be a conversation with the people, and he's not taking contributions from corporates or lobbyists). Quite impressive considering Clinton has raised just $26m, and hasn't made such a pledge. Whether that means Clinton still has that card up her sleeve, and Obama will run out of cash, I don't know.

Then, I read about Super Duper Tuesday. "Super Tuesday" has been around for 30 years or so now; synchronous election days in multiple states, which usually cause the minnows to drop out, but often cause upsets or unheard-ofs to suddenly become heard of (think FA Cup giant killings, but with politics). This year, tired of the demographically-misrepresentative and smaller states like Iowa and New Hampshire shaping the beginnings of all the campaigns, the other states have decided to, practically speaking, make the primaries a general election. 25 states (and maybe more) will now be holding there primaries on February 5th, in what has been dubbed (it could only be so in America) Super Duper Tuesday. This includes California and Texas, who are the most populous and have the most electoral college votes. So, it could all be over and the tickets decided on Feb 5th 2007. This could be a bad thing - those small players without a voice used to rely on the gradual build up through the small states to gain momentum (Bill Clinton for example), and some commentators are suggesting this move will only be a good thing for the well-funded big candidates.

Finally, in a nod again to my working life, Joe Biden's website www.headtohead08.com is a smart use of YouTube video. Pick a candidate, and you can hear what they have to say about Iraq alongside what Joe has to say. It seems to be only about Iraq, but I'm sure that will change. Neat idea, and another example perhaps of an outsider candidate trying to quietly build support via the interwebs.

Myspace Impacts on Election

2007-03-21T16:23:00.000Z

Myspace are running a portal page to each of the Presidential candidates' Myspace pages. I'm not sure if the myspace people set up the pages as well, but it's an interesting way to a) get young people interested in politics (the youthful addiction to voting/rating things doesn't seem to spill over into the real world particularly), and b) have a cheap popularity contest, though, I guess the electorate in this vote are much younger than in the real election. Hilary currently has 3,023 friends, and Barack Obama has 74,229.

Wemberley!!!

2007-03-19T08:30:00.000Z

Me and Tom went to Wembley on Saturday, for the Community Day - the first public opening of the stadium, to test their crowd management. Their was a couple of celeb football games, but mainly it was a chance to walk around the stadium and take photos (here are mine, on flickr and here are Tom's) and go WOW.

Amusing cock-up of the week.

2007-03-18T10:45:00.000Z

The Terry and Fearne show goes off the rails on the Eurovision Making Your Mind Up show. God knows what went wrong (earpiece faults? Maybe the lead changed at the last minute? Maybe Terry's a doddery old fool? Who knows), but it was hilarious and rounded off a great day of drinking and celebrating.

Fearne Cotton seems to have become one of these "safe pair of hands" presenters - she was on Comic Relief the night before, she did the Oscars for sky - she's quite irritating, but can always keep a programme on track, always finds something to say to keep things moving (even if it is something banal and vacuous). I quite like the way she "wheeled" Terry around the programme last night, sort of acting like the tour guide to his septuagenarian tinsel-and-turkey weekender. Come on grandad, it's time to read the winner out. Werther's original? Bless.

(ps, my mate Zoe built the Scooch website, way back in 2000 and it's still live)

Tony Blair ain't bovvered

2007-03-17T09:11:00.000Z

The highlight of last night's Comic Relief show, Tony Blair appearing in a sketch with Catherine Tate. Little tricks like this can do wonders for a politician - Tony Blair is fairly universally disliked in this country at the moment, and seen as dead weight hanging on for dear life. I bet anyone that saw this thought kinds thoughts about him for the first time in ages.

Does being good looking improve your chances of getting elected?

2007-03-09T09:25:00.000Z

Erm, probably, yes. No brainer really. But they discuss it in this article anyway, just for laffs.

Sky ads highlight Ofcom cock-up

2007-02-23T00:04:00.000Z

Sky have been censured by the Advertising Standards Authority for publishing misleading adverts in Whitehaven, Cumbria that incorrectly state Terrestrial TV will be switched off there this Autumn. Essentially, they should have used the word "Analogue", not "Terrestrial", which is going to survive quite happily as "Digital Terrestrial" (aka Freeview). The reason these ads have been running in Whitehaven is that it is the testbed for analogue switch-off; it's happening there in October this year.

The most ridiculous thing about that seems to be being over-looked in all this though. Ofcom have chosen to testbed the analogue switch-off in a town which cannot yet receive Freeview or Cable!!! Essentially leaving Sky a complete monopoly on digital television. Not only is this a complete distortion of the market that puts Freeview and Virgin right up the swanny, it is also a completely unrepresentative testbed for analogue switch-off. Bloody numpties, what a waste of time.

David Palmer never had all this trouble...

2007-02-20T14:36:00.000Z

I'm starting to become more aware of the discussions going on around America about Barack Obama's "blackness". I first heard about this on the Radio4 programme Feedback, where somebody had written in to protest at BBC reporters' use of the term "black" to refer to Sen. Obama when he's actually of mixed race. A google search for "obama black mixed race" will spit out allsorts of opinion, ranging from the pathetic and racist, up to the more interesting discussions of what being "black" means to modern American society.

Far from being about petty semantics, there's a very strong sense amongst some African Americans that calling yourself black means associating yourself with Black America's long struggle for civil rights - "Black, in our political and social vocabulary, means those descended from West African slaves" writes Debra Dickerson, who also says it in this interview with Stephen Colbert.

That distinction between "Black" and "African American" (which nobody can deny Obama is) is something new to me. In fact, Dickerson goes so far to label him with a new label - "he's an African African American" - which is, frankly, pathetic. As Colbert points out, she is asserting his blackness not based on his skin colour, but on the content of his character - "a truly special interpretation of Dr King's words". Is anybody else slightly frightened that when she says in that interview "we're not the same" it sounds slightly... er... racist?

I don't mean to paint myself as a truly enlightened modern multicultural thinker, but none of this should really matter. But of course it does. And while we middle class Guardian-reading white Brits allow ourselves the opportunity to say "yes yes, about time the yanks had a black president or a woman president" we mustn't forget our own pathetic record in that same area. We may have had a woman leader for 11 years (*shudder*), but we only just had our first black cabinet member, let alone party leader or Prime Minister. And as far as I know, despite British Asians making up around 5% of our population, there's never been an Asian in senior British politics.

Obama uses gmail

2007-02-15T15:13:00.000Z

I really don't intend to dwell on the webbyness of the various presidential candidates but... Obama invited me to a rally in Los Angeles today (when I signed up, I told him my zip code was 90210!) and he invited me via his gmail account, losangelesrally@gmail.com. Part of the web, rather than just on the web; good old Obama.

Obama declares he's running for president...

2007-02-12T16:32:00.000Z

...and he does it in Abraham Lincoln's Springfield, Illinois webcasting the whole shebang. I think I'm right in saying someone got in a bit of trouble for using U2 as their walk up music in the last election... I hope they got permission this time, else I'm telling Bono.

My Barack Obama

2007-02-10T08:56:00.000Z

Oh my. My professional world and my interest in US politics merging into one. Shining light in the American presidential elections Barack Obama has a personalisation/participation/user generated content area of his website - it's called, of course, My.BarackObama.com.

There's nothing particularly revolutionary on there - create a profile, create a blog, get told about events near to your ZIP code, join groups of other supporters, and do some fundraising for your favourite Illinoisan African-American senator. To a certain extent, it reminds me of UselessAccount.com - it's a carbon copy of a million websites where you just create a profile for apparently no reason other than to feel like you belong to that website - but it's the latest example of politics embracing the web. Have a look around the rest of the website too - there's Barack.tv as well, run via brightcove, where you can watch all his little schmultzy telly messages and watch his announcement live later today (and no doubt a million stump speeches over the next two years as well).

Looking through the other candidates websites, underdog Chris Dodd has a section of his website called The Dodd Pod - at first I thought this was podcasts, but actually it's an opportunity for you to suggest songs that he should put on his iPod. Why you might want to do that, apart from to assert your recognition that he's clearly a hip cool daddio, I don't know. Of course, he has a blog, a myspace page, a flickr page, and a facebook account as well. And don't forget to join the Dodd Squad while you're there...

Hillary C's website is a little more reserved; she still has a blog, but you can't be a human being without one of those these days. There's a shedload of video on there, but again that's one-way traffic. Maybe she's still exploring the possibilities of web campaigning, as part of her exploratory committee. Perhaps it reflects the already clear distinctions between her and her more youthful main opponent (that's Obama, by the way, not Dodd). He is appealing to the young, the politically disenfranchised, the opponents of war, the minority groups, pretty much anyone looking for a change - all groups that have turned to the Internet's democratised platform as a way to make themselves heard.

Clinton is appealing to middle America, the politically apathetic, the white middle class people who hanker after a bit of good old pre-Bush democratic politics. From 1993-2001 they never had it so good, and they are quite happy for a little bit more of the same please - though, maybe with a hint less blowing up of Americans abroad. Her demographic aren't really likely to use the web in the same ways as Obama's - more turning to it for information and updates, than to actively participate with other voters. That's not to say that Obama's will necessarily provide that, but it certainly provides the illusion of it. And as UselessAccount's irony suggests, sometimes all it takes to make you feel part of something is to create a profile, then to ignore it and forget you ever signed up in the first place.

Snow fall in Clapham

2007-02-08T20:55:00.000Z

It snowed in London. I set up a time lapse camera over night and during the day to film it falling and then melting again. I used a bit of freeware for the mac called Gawker, and I tried using the camera built into my laptop, but the glare from the screen reflecting on the window was too much, so I set up my camcorder instead.

It's about midnight at the start, and 8pm at the end. It took one frame every 60 seconds. At about 5am it seems like dawn happens, but really it's the light reflecting off the falling/fallen snow making the whole thing brighter. Quite cool. Then the sun rises, and during the day you see various people playing in the snow and then it gradually melt away (boo hoo) before sun sets again. Fun stuff.

A good summary of dates and candidates

2007-01-31T14:56:00.000Z

As expected, the wikipedia community have pulled off a great one pager about the US elections, key dates, candidates announced so far. It's a bit nuts and bolts, but the facts are all there.

Liz Taylor loves Clinton

2007-01-26T17:04:00.000Z

My friend Nigel has suggested I start colating, on this blog, the best non-stories about the US election. Given there's more than 18months still to come, I think there's a strong likelihood there'll be plenty that fall into this category. Thanks to Nigel, here's story number one... Elizabeth Taylor loves Hilary Clinton. While Jeffrey Katzenberg loves Obama. Go Hollywood.

John Kerry's not running

2007-01-26T16:26:00.000Z

Ted Danson lookylikey John Kerry, who managed to screw up beating George W Bush in 2004, despite Dubya only having an approval rating of something like 35%, has thankfully announced he won't be running in the 2008 election. He announced it during a speech to the senate a couple of days ago. Thank god for that....

Sleepy Senator McCain

2007-01-24T18:15:00.000Z

A leading contender for the Republican nomination for President is Senator John McCain. But, here's a clip of him in the house for last night's State of the Union address, not really showing himself to be presidential material....

Democratic Governor from New Mexico declares interest

2007-01-21T15:19:00.000Z

Governor Bill Richardson from New Mexico has declared he's setting up a presidential exploratory committee. So that's a white woman, a black man, and an hispanic man for the Democrats. Go diversity!

American Presidential Election 2008

2007-01-20T14:22:00.000Z

I'm planning on following the two-year US election campaigns in as much detail as I can. From watching the West Wing I've started to find US politics and its history really fascinating. Season 6 covered the primary election process, and season 7 covered the general election process - knowing the process, and having seen it played out with fictional characters, I'm really interested to see it play out for real. So, to start with, here's the BBC's piece on each party's top 6 contenders. For my money, I'd love to see a Clinton/Obama democratic ticket fight a Giuliani/Gingrich republican ticket. Barack Obama, has announced he's running, and I find him a fascinating character. Meanwhile, Hilary Clinton's an obvious candidate, not as charismatic. But both would be a first for US politics, and they've definately had enough of "the usual" I think.

Hold your wee for a wii - audio

2007-01-19T17:30:00.000Z

You probably heard of this.

A woman who competed in a radio station's contest to see how much water she could drink without going to the toilet, died of water intoxication. Ten people have been sacked from the radio station since. Here's the audio of them promoting the competition: it really needs a listen.

"Can't you get water poisoning and like die?"
"Yeah, we're aware of that," one of them says.
Another DJ laughs: "Yeah, they signed releases, so we're not responsible. We're OK."

Fact of the Day (8 Jan 2007)

2007-01-08T17:40:00.000Z

David Bowie and Elvis Presley were both born on the same day. Today! (though, twelve years apart).

Fact of the Day (5 Jan 2007)

2007-01-05T13:05:00.000Z

Shocking fourth Christopher Reeve installment Superman IV: The Quest for Peace was filmed on location in.... Milton Keynes. There were a series of budget and logistics problems, including apparently some dodgy lawyers running off with a bunch of money. So, the Argos headquarters was the UN building, the Winter Gardens was the Metropolis Museum, and what is now the LivingWell Health Club was the Daily Planet building. Read more here, and also here

Fact of the Day (31 Dec 2006)

2006-12-31T18:42:00.000Z

Tony Hart designed the original Blue Peter badge. He originally asked for his fee to be paid as a royalty of 1d for each badge made, but instead was offered a flat fee of £100.

Beard Removal....

2006-12-31T17:51:00.000Z

I wanted to shave my beard into a pencil moustache to go with my New Years Eve cuban gangster costume. So I decided to have some fun along the way...

Photo 1 - Before any shaving.

Photo 2 - The sideys and beard are separated.

Photo 3 - Into the Lemmy from Motorhead

Photo 4 - Droopy Hulk Hogan

Photo 5 - Yummy tache

Photo 6 - Sideys trimmed down

Photo 7 - Shaved the top bit off: pencil tache! Shame my hair is so light, it kinda only works with dark hair. Ah well, maybe I'll put some boot polish in it....

The Pipettes @ The Roundhouse

2006-12-24T00:03:00.000Z

Saw The Pipettes tonight, at the Roundhouse in Camden. It was billed as their Christmas Party, but frankly it was a bit of a damp squibb. I'd heard lots about this flippy, hippy, fifties threesome's party-style gigs, I love their album, and I know they have a loyal fanbase. But the gig was only half full (perhaps they overestimated the appeal of a 23 Dec London gig?) and the crowd that were there were mostly under 16. The poor ticket sales were probably the reason they couldn't afford any Christmas decorations for their 'winter wonderland', and the room made me feel the least christmassy I've felt all week - seriously, not a scrap of tinsel to be seen.

For whatever reason, the crowd didn't really dance that much, and frankly The Pipettes themselves didn't really seem that bothered - their dance routines not really feeling like snappy 50s-inspired hand jiving, more like melancholy primary school play hand wafting. The kind of look they are going for (think modern indie-chic meets the Supremes/Ronettes) only works with tight sychronised dance moves that make you assume the girls are connected by some sort of telepathic link. I guess they were just tired tonight, or the batteries had run out in the telepathy machine.

They played their whole album and a few B-sides, and yet the whole gig only last 45 minutes. Perhaps this is because all of their songs are irritatingly short, something that doesn't grate when you listen to the album, but at a gig feels really odd - the crowd never had a chance to warm up, the uninitiated never had the chance to become familiar with any of the riffs. The highlight of the show was a very suiting version of All I Want For Christmas Is You, not least because it coincided with the fake heavens opening to flutter fake snow upon the crowd. Many a fake snowball fight ensued, and we all left feeling smiley. It's only when I got home that I realised how disappointing the gig actually was. But still, they're lovely, and pretty, and cute, and twee... it just wasn't quite the christmassy treat I stuck around in London until xmas eve to enjoy.

Films I really ought to have seen...

2006-12-21T15:59:00.000Z

Now I love films, I love the cinema, I really really do. But there is an awfully long list of films that I really ought to have seen and, inexplicably, I haven't. I made a list, a really long list once. I wrote it in the middle of my diary, but the end of the year came and I chucked away the diary without thinking about it. So, I have to start the list again. Here we go, and it will grow over time. Feel free to comment other films you think I really should have seen, and I'll add them to the list if I haven't seen them.

OK, so based on the "1001 films to see you before you die" listed at Listology, which I've edited down to films I've heard of that I know I want to see, here follows a list of films that I have not seen. Try not to let your mouth hit the ground:

Citizen Kane
Mr Smith Goes to Washington
Rebecca
Casablanca
Double Indemnity (and not fall asleep in it this time)
Brief Encounter
The Postman Always Rings Twice
The Big Sleep
A Streetcar Named Desire
Singin' in the Rain
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
On the Waterfront
Rear Window
The Ladykillers (1955)
Rebel Without a Cause
The Man Who Knew Too Much
Vertigo
North by Northwest
Some like it hot
Rio Bravo
The Apartment
Breakfast at Tiffany's
The Hustler
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Manchurian Candidate (1962)
Dr Strangelove
Doctor Zhivago
Bonnie and Clyde
Rosemary's Baby
2001: A Space Odyssey (seen large segments but never the whole film)
Midnight Cowboy
Easy Rider
M*A*S*H
Get Carter
Badlands
Enter the Dragon
The Wicker Man
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest
Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Rocky 2-6
Network
Saturday Night Fever
Eraserhead
The Deer Hunter
Aliens, Alien III, Alien Resurrection
Kramer vs Kramer
Mad Max, Mad Max 2
The Elephant Man
Raging Bull
Das Boot
Chariots of Fire
Blade Runner
Poltergeist
The Big Chill
Terms of Endearment
Scarface (1983)
Amadeus
A Nightmare on Elm Street
The Killing Fields
A Room with a View
Platoon
Withnail and I
Broadcast News
The Untouchables
Cinema Paradiso
Die Hard 2 & 3
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
When Harry Met Sally
Crimes and Misdemeanors
My Left Foot
Jacob's Ladder
Goodfellas
Edward Scissorhands
Delicatessen
Thelma & Louise
The Player
Reservoir Dogs
Unforgiven
Bram Stoker's Dracula
The Crying Game
Man Bites Dog
Short Cuts
The Piano
Clerks
Natural Born Killers
Casino
Heat
Fargo
The English Patient
Run Lola Run
Magnolia
The Blair Witch Project
Being John Malkovich
Requiem for a Dream
Amores Perros
Memento
Y Tu Mama Tambien

[Thanks to Nigel]-

Goodfellas
Apocalypse Now!
A Fistful of Dollars, For A Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
Gone With The Wind
Annie Hall
Dr Strangelove
Double Indemnity
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
The Big Lebowski

[Thanks to Jane]-

It's A Wonderful Life
Easy Rider
To Kill A Mockingbird
On The Waterfront
Manhattan
Harold and Maude
Vertigo

[Thanks to Andrew]-

North by Northwest
The French Connection
Clerks
Before Sunrise
To Catch a Thief
Stand By Me
Bullitt

[Thanks to Robin]- (for now, I'm giving everyone the benefit of the doubt here... though I'm sure not everyone will agree with everyone else's choices)

Cinema Paradiso
Whisky Galore
Barbarella
Street of Crocodiles
Amores Perros
Forbidden Planet
Plan 9 from Outer Space
Eraserhead
Jacob's Ladder

[Thanks to Rachel]-

Citizen Kane
The Battleship Potemkin
Throne of Blood
The Sorrow and the Pity
The Third Man
Godfather Trilogy (I've seen Part I)
L'Atalante
Rashomon
The Apartment
Sunset Blvd
Some Like It Hot
The Big Sleep
The Maltese Falcon
Chinatown
His Girl Friday
Talk To Her
Yojimbo
Sleeper

Now THAT is spin!

2006-12-18T11:48:00.000Z

Impressive work by the Itsu japanese restaurant in Picadilly, where your man Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned. They've boarded it up and are advertising it as a "world famous meeting place" where an "international espionage incident" occured. Outstanding work.

Carpet completes the job...

2006-12-13T10:40:00.000Z

Oh yarsh, it's looking swell. New carpet an all now.

Telly on the wall

2006-12-07T07:54:00.000Z

My lounge is really starting to come together - got to conceal the wires properly with a channel inside the chimney down into the box, and then the new carpet arrives in a week....

My New Telly Arrived!!!!!

2006-11-22T11:23:00.000Z

My new telly arrived!!!! And as I suspect, Sky MPEGing makes the picture look a little bit rubbish. So I did what any self-respecting geek would do... I put on Star Wars :)

Don't believe the HypeMachine (but do)

2006-11-21T11:36:00.000Z

This website lets you search blogs and stuff for MP3s that people have uploaded alongside their posts. You can then listen to or download the MP3s. Naughty, but nice. Just do a search, then click the "Popup Flash Player" button to listen to all your search results.

http://hype.non-standard.net/

Projector or LCD TV?

2006-11-12T23:10:00.000Z

Oh the most important decision I think I've ever made - shall I get a Projector, or shall I get a flat-screen TV. I know, it's dead important. Options seem to be:

Projectors 1280x720, and go for as high contrast ratio and brightness as possible

- Hitachi PJTX200 Projector £1,175
- InFocus IN76 £1,295.00

or, in the tellies, I'm thinking 32"

- Samsung R74 (good, but has connectors on the back, not the underneath) £949
- Sony Bravia (with the bouncing balls and Jose Gonzalez) £1,295

Any advice on this tremendously important decision, do leave a comment.

S

I'm 61% Gary Oldman

2006-09-12T13:40:00.000Z

Face recognition software at myheritage.com - you have to register which is quite annoying, but I am apparently 61% gary oldman, and 57% robin gibb. Imagine the children....

Diet Coke and Mentos... to a new level

2006-09-12T08:54:00.000Z

Now, everyone has seen Diet Coke and Mentos. But this is application....

"Back to the Future: The Enchantment Under the Sea Dance Revisited" (2005)

2006-07-31T23:09:00.000Z


Wonder what it would be like to have Parts I and II of "Back to the Future" synched up on a split-screen during which both Marty McFlys are together? Here's your answer! (time gaps are due to logical off-screen action)

Bournemouth's Grow Graduate Show

2006-06-06T00:02:00.000Z

I went to see the work of some of the students from Bournemouth Media School's Interactive Media course at their graduate show on Sunday. I'm afraid to say it was a fairly sorry affair, set in what looked and felt like an old car park off Brick Lane. The venue was very hard to find, aided only by a helpful security guard and by some of the students wearing sellotaped A4 notices on their backs in a desperate bid to lure people in from the street. Best attempts had been made to partition and divide the big white space and inject it with some colour, but ultimately it was an empty echoing chamber with a few computers dotted around the outer walls.

That said, a space to think is important when you're taking in the cutting-edge innovations of the UK's leading bachelor's degree in the interactive media arts. It's unfortunate then that the work on show was as vague and disoriented as the notice-wearing students out in the street. On the whole, the content (each piece of which represented about 4-5 months of toil and each student's major degree submission) was bland and derivative, with very very few pieces showing glimmers of innovation.

I'll declare my interest, and my angle for this review, from the offset. I graduated from this same degree programme in 1999, having been one of the first cohort when the course started in 1996. I then worked at the School for two years, before becoming self-employed but continuing to Lecture and produce digital learning materials for them. I'm aware of a great deal of the internal machinations and politics of the school, and approach my review with (though you might not believe it) not a small amount of bias in favour of my old haunt, and with a continued interest in promoting the School and the course's better future.

When we started the course in 1996, it was a fairly brave new idea - the University took one of the most solid and well reputated Media Production degrees in the country, and split it into a conventional TV/Film course and this more contemporary New Media Production course (as it was then called). Back in 96, no-one really knew what they were doing (both student and professor alike) - the medium was new, the technology was rare, the audience was undefined; we always felt like the TV and Film students' poorer cousins. And I'm sure that some of the work we produced was shockingly bad. But some ten years later, the students and teachers of the class of 2006 do not have those excuses to hide behind. The medium, though constantly changing, is more defined and has a visible framework. The technology is everywhere. The audience is clear. And interactive media is both sexier and more ubiquotous than TV and Film. So why was this content so very dull?

The work could be separated into essentially two camps; the abstract arty pieces, and the more level-headed 'real world' web pieces. Of the two approaches, the former produced by far the more succesful pieces of work, though it was also by far the minority approach. The most outstanding piece of the show, by a mile, was Jack Hughes' abstract environment "Through The Glass... View From My Window" (shame about the name though), which offered an addictive exploration of all the different ways a mouse can be used to interact with an item on the screen, using delightfully simple graphics and a meditative soundtrack. The user was never quite sure if they'd discovered everything, and was spurred on to continue playing in the hope of exhausting all their options. Also falling into this category was "Amira", an interactive video drama built on a proper DVD-Video platform, using the built-in multiple camera angle functionality that offers. Though this piece didn't really pull it off technically, it showed an understanding of the platform and tried to use that lesser-known functionality as part of its narrative (and never have I seen so much attention paid to a Tutorial section, which was a clever complicated rap with music-video visuals filmed in a packed church hall).

That piece in particular summed-up what I had always thought Bournemouth's Interactive Media degree was all about - it is a Bachelor in Arts, not Science. It doesn't matter if you don't quite pull if off technically (that can be worked on), it's the ideas that matter, and you will be rewarded for innovation and breaking the mould. It worries me where that approach may have gone. The majority of the pieces I saw fell into the second of the two camps I described above - they were websites or CD-ROMs for real life (or pseudo real life) products or services. These pieces have to be judged on entirely different criteria to their more pure-art show-fellows. To start with, they can't be judged on the choice of subject matter - even if the student has gone to great lengths to think up an entirely revolutionary new perfume/aftershave line, this isn't a product design or marketing course, you can't give them good marks for thinking up a fun topic.

If they are setting out their stall to make a product that sits within the real-world realm of interactive design, they have to compete with the big boys. The pieces have to be navigable, they have to be usable, they have to be accessible, and most of all they have to have content. There is no excuse - NO excuse - for pages marked as "under construction" at this level of degree work. There is no excuse for a website that contains seven pages, three of which feature a single paragraph of text, and one of which is a web form for signing up to a mailing list which doesn't exist because it's a fictional product running off a local hard disk. Perfunctory add-ons such as downloadable wallpaper, ringtones, and off-the shelf re-skinned flashkit games are just padding; it's good to think that the student has considered their audience might like this, but I fear in many cases these were used to seemingly add more depth to a shallow piece of content. I counted at least five pieces of work that had no business whatsoever being Flash content - there was no material in them at all that could not have been presented more efficiently as a regular HTML website, with all the advantages of accessibility and web standards that this approach would bring.

Some pieces do remain in the memory, for varying reasons. James Griffiths' "Touch Me" offered a glimmer of inspiration, setting itself up as a touch-screen food ordering system you used at your table-side in a restaurant. He had limited all interactivity to emulate that touch-screen environment, and created a fictional community where the user spends their money and gathers credits for spending on bells and whistles. It was a shame that one of his bells was a bog-standard off the peg Bip Bop game which relied on the user having a mouse to be able to play, but it was an interesting concept that, notwithstanding burger-greasy fingers ruining all the monitors, you could actually imagine working in the real world.

Hannah Bliss' panoramas of the curiously semi-eponymously named Bliss bar and restaurant were good fun, though I was never entirely sure why the product existed and who might use it, and I feared she wasn't sure either. There were two almost entirely identical travelblog projects, both reinventing the wheel for products that already exist out in the real world, which I questioned the point of. And there was a marshal arts instructional CD which made good use of what I was told was called rotoscoping (the tracing of frames of a video to produce a fairly pleasing 2D/3D animated effect), though again I'm not sure the audience was well addressed and the content particularly navigable.

Credit must go to the students that organised the attendance at the show, put on as part of the wider "Free-Range" art schools' exhibition. I understand that each student had to put £75 of their own cash towards the show, and that explains the less than 50% student involvement. Though the University contribued some funds, it is easy to think they could have been more involved, since the show so directly reflects on their reputation - I hope for the University's sake that the better students were the poorer ones who couldn't afford to take part in the exhibition. Particular credit should go to the designer of the show's branding, Gregory Coe, for a really stunning visual identity for the marketing. The website may feature a really irritating soundtrack which you can't switch off, but the visuals are a delight.

I guess my ultimate disappointment came from knowing the process that these students have gone through to get to this stage. They are first taken through a process of prototyping their project and submitting it for approval - this is known as the minor project and they have to actually produce a fair weight of the project to get it approved. They then have the best part of the third year of their studies to turn that piece into something worthy of submission as their major project, making up something like 30% of their final degree classification. I cannot for the life of me understand how some of these projects, having gone through this rigourous process, have been allowed to be submitted in this state. The process of checks and double-checks that tutors should be going through to ensure the projects are of substantial enough scope in the first place should be catching some of these ideas and rejecting them out of hand. It is sadly a shocking reflection on the course, and I worry that my old tutors are out of touch with the real world, and what we as employers, but more importantly as part of the audience, expect of interactive media professionals.

It disappoints and surprised nobody more than me that I have chosen to right such harsh words about my dear old Bournemouth. But there's no place for rose-tinted glasses in an industry that only looks forward.

12 rules for the tube

2006-04-19T15:49:00.000Z

Don't bother pressing the "Open Door" buttons on the train doors - they don't do anything. They're just there to fool South Londoners who are used to overground trains.
Don't get out of your train and stop dead on the platform while you decide which way you are going to go. If you do that, I'm going to walk into you. On purpose. Scoot your bad self to the edge of the platform and wait til the crowd has gone down.
As 2 above, but specifically with reference to people with those pulley trolley suitcases. You were carrying it by the handle, but now you're on the platform/street, you want to extend the retractable handle and walk along the street pulling it like a puppy. But if you do that right in front of me, I'm going to trip over you. On purpose.
Don't get your Oyster Card or ticket out of your wallet at the very last minute. There's no need to do that! You've usually been stood on the escalator or in the lift for the last 30 seconds minimum, plenty of time to rummage in the handbag, rucksack or wallet. Or did you forget that the turnstiles were coming?
If you're walking along the crowded platform waiting for a good spot to stop at, don't gradually... slow... down... when... you... spot... one. There's a whole crowd behind you doing that funny little dance that only English people do rather than just barge by you.
Don't carry large luggage and rucksacks between 8-10am and 5-7pm. You'll be hated
Just cause you're speaking Croatian, doesn't mean you're not speaking loud (and English folk, please remember how annoying this is next time you're on holiday)
Tss tutu tss, tss tutu tss, tss tutu tss, tss tutu tss. Waaaaahhhh, Tss tutu tss tutu tss tutu Tsss tutu tss tutu tsss. You're killing your ears. And raising my blood pressure.
On a crowded train, when you want to get off, it's just quite possible other people want to as well, so there's no need to push and say "scuse me scuse me", just go with the flow. And if you're sat on the seats, why bother standing up 2 minutes before the stop and trying to get near the doors? There's no room to breathe let alone move. What's the worst that could happen? You end up at the next stop and lost 4 minutes of your life.
When you are at the front of a crowd waiting to get on an empty carriage, and you all stream on, think about efficiency. Don't sit on the nearest seat, just for the next person to sit on the one next to you and so on. The whole queue is held up while you shuffle your bags around. Sit in the middle man, it won't harm you to have two people sat next to you (one either side). You'll lose that precious 50% of personal space. But it really ain't all that bad.
Scuse me, you're sat on my coat. Scuse me, you're err, sat on my coat. You're sat on my coat. Yeah my coat. It's ok, it's not your fault, it's not my fault, it just happens sometimes. Don't you fucking tutt at me, it's your arse, my coat was there first!
Have a reality check. A wait of "4 mins" for the next train does not merit a stream of curses. You'll just miss the first beats of the Eastenders theme tune.

Divided loyalties? I don't think so

2006-02-04T19:27:00.000Z

So Wales lost. Again. Fifty-something, to something-teen. My friend texted me after the game and said "Bet you're not so Welsh now, sucker". There seems to be a view amongst my friends that, because I wasn't born in Wales, I'll stop supporting them if they play badly, and it winds me up (which, to be honest, is the real reason my friends dig my about it).

I'm English, I was born in Loughborough, Leicestershire, and raised there. But both my parents are Welsh, and since I was a little boy I've been surrounded by a passion for Welsh rugby. My Gramma's house, where my mum was brought up, is a stones throw from Neath All Blacks' Gnoll Park ground. My Uncle and Gramps went to Neath games all the time, and there was just no option other than to support Wales. It wasn't a decision, I didn't wake up one day and say "I'm going to support Wales", it just was always the way things were. Is that so hard to understand?

I don't make it any easier for people by supporting England in the football. Now that was a conscious decision. Mainly because no-one in my family gives a shit about football, in fact they hate it. In fact, it was almost difficult to admit in my teenage years that I quite liked football. I decided to like my local team, Leicester City, and to like England, my national team. Mainly because that's what everyone at my school did. So just as I followed family tradition when it came to rugby, I followed the school crowd when it came to football. See, quite simple really.

I've heard about British Asians having this problem as well - England in the football, Pakistan or India in the cricket. But why should it be a problem? We have mixed heritages, why not be allowed to allocate those heritages across different sports? And come to think of it, why not be allowed to support whoever the hell you want, no matter where you come from. As long as you are consistent. I can support Croatia in the World Cup if I want to. But I have to support them after that as well, forever, and I can't support another team just if they're doing badly.

So yes, I'm just as Welsh as I was before (whether that's half welsh, quarter welsh, not at all welsh) and I still support WRU. And I'll be wearing my WRU top to work on Monday, just as I always do the day after a rugby match, win or lose.