Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Recent Books
It feels like ages since I wrote about some of the recent books I’ve been reading. Let’s try to put that right with this handful of recently finished books. Taipei Story by Rebecca F. Kuang I first discovered Rebecca F Kuang when I read her fantasy epic Babel a couple of years ago. Her lastest…
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OCD Example
Realising that the reason the woman in front of me exiting the tube this morning is walking so slowly is that she’s checking her Blackberry the nanosecond she’s back in reception. (We’ll leave aside my Facebook refresh tendencies…)
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BAFTA Awarding
I didn’t comment on it at the time, but the best “Continuing Drama” award was given to Casualty. This was seen as a bit of a surprise at the time (As were many of the other awards – and I’m sure Ross Kemp on Gangs is good, but that good?). As I don’t watch any…
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Panorama on Wi-Fi
Oh dear – a very poorly argued episode on the supposed dangers of Wi-Fi. I just don’t know where to begin with this sensationalist scaremongering. The relative powers of different kinds of transmitters was ignored, the inverse square law was ignored, and it was mixture of facts and unproven information. We heard about Sylvia who…
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100 Films
John Naughton and Sean French are baffled about how someone could put this sequence together of 100 quotes from 100 films counting down the numbers from one to one hundred. Naughton thinks that it’s un-Googleable. Well it’s very Googleable. Or rather, with a good knowledge of various sites, you could do it. It’s worth noting…
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BAFTA TV Awards
Some high/low-lights: The ridiculous charade that is “Continuing Drama Series” when they mean “Soap” Award. The look on Ross Kemp’s face when he realised that “Ross Kemp on Gangs” had actually won. OK – so I’ve never seen an episode, but it must be really good to beat the others: Tribe, Stephen Fry – Secret…
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Culture, Media and Sport – Fifth Report
Here’s a dull sounding subject which doesn’t seem to have had an enormous amount of coverage this week. The House of Commons Committee for Media, Culture and Sport has published a report of recommendations across a wide range of media issues. There are 28 in total, covering a wide range of issues – I’ll concentrate…
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Alan Johnston
Happy 45th Birthday Alan Johnston, wherever you’re being held.
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Local Stations for Local People
So what is localness? I’m just wondering because today Xfm announced its much rumoured (within the radio industry at least) initiative to get rid of its daytime DJs and run an “all music” daytime schedule. Between 10am and 4pm each day, Xfm will be running “Radio to the Power of U.” And this will happen…
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Uncool Flickr
We all know that Flickr is really cool don’t we? I mean, I’ve certainly always thought so. Until now. That’s why I was appalled to read this post from Rebekka who’s easily one of the more famous Flickr photographers. She put up a composite of several photos she’d taken of her home country Iceland and…
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Sky on Freeview
The whole Sky on Freeview situation has become quite complicated, and it hasn’t been made a great deal clearer today. To recap: back at the start of February, on the day that Virgin Media launched, Sky announced that it wanted to launch it’s own DTT platform. Sky is a part of the Freeview consortium, and…
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Random Media Stories
Even if John “Foghorn” Sweeney did come out as a bit of a clown towards the end of the Panorama on Scientology, they remain a somewhat sinister “religion.” And “sinister” is not a word that any religion should really want itself to be described as. You’ve got until next Monday to watch it again online.…
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A World in Your Ear
There’ve been one or two pieces recently bemoaning the sad departure of several treasures from Radio 4 and Five Live including in particular A World In Your Ear. Essentially, it’s too expensive and labour intensive to put together. I must admit that it’s one of those programmes that I know I enjoy, but never find…
Hadrian’s Wall
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