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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Channel 4 Not Dumbing Down
I’ve got an apology to make. I may have lead readers of this blog in the past to believe that Channel 4 has “dumbed down” with vacuous programming filling up most of primetime after the worthy stuff has gone out against the soaps. (Take a bow “The Search”, the latest feeble attempt to mimic the…
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Threat Level By Email System Unsafe?
I mentioned the other day that MI5 is now offering to send out threat levels via email. What I hadn’t realised until helpfully pointed out by Spy Blog, was the terribly unsafe system they were using. The BBC has the full story.
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Reconstruction of Waterloo
OK – I know that it was a light-hearted piece about a proposed “merger” with France back in the fifties, but I did laugh when a clip showed a re-enactment of the Battle of Waterloo was shown, and the po-faced phrase “Reconstruction” appeared on the screen to prove we weren’t watching actual footage of the…
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Radio Comedy
Today’s Media Guardian leads off on a big piece about the state of play of radio comedy in this country at the moment. The piece is titled “Why Radio Comey Is a Joke”, although all it seems to do is question whether quite as many radio series are making it through to TV as they…
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ITV Play In Breach
In Ofcom’s latest Broadcast Bulletin (pdf), ITV Play is found to be in breach for the first time for one of their games. In one of their “tower games” callers were invited to identify “things you might find in a woman’s handbag.” The sample answer was “mobile phone.” Correct answers (well answers that received prizes)…
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A Kind of Addendum
A short aside from the previous piece on Apple. In the presentation, Jobs pointed out that Apple had got more than 200 patents on various parts of the iPhone. And a recent Audi A6 TV ad talks about how it has taken out more patents than NASA has ever taken out for its new car…
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Apples Are Not The Only Fruit
OK. I know every website, newspaper and blog in the world has already commented on Apple’s announcements yesterday, but I just had to get a few things off my chest. First of all, I want to know why everyone practically has orgasms about new Apple launches. I mean CES has been taking place in Las…
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Threat Level By Email
I noted the introduction of the UK’s very own threat level last year when MI5 introduced it. Almost immediately, the threat level jumped from “Severe” to “Critical”. A few days later it dropped back to “Severe” where it’s been ever since. Well now the BBC is reporting that MI5 is going to allow us to…
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Frustrations With ITunes
Please do let me know if I’m doing some obviously wrong, but I’ve got a bit of an issue with iTunes that I can’t solve without using a workaround. I have iTunes on a work computer (ahem – don’t tell our IT department) and also on a home PC. I like to listen to podcasts.…
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The Sky At Night
There’s much coverage about The Sky At Night celebrating it’s 650th edition yesterday (well, very early this morning actually) in the fiftieth year of its broadcast, and the fact that Sir Patrick Moore is annoyed that the programme went out at 1.55am without any fanfare. Well of course, even by Sky At Night standards, that’s…
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The Times Is Green Today
If you bought a copy of The Times this morning at WH Smith, then you got a free copy of The Rough Guide to Saving Energy – a 64 page booklet sponsored by Sky (sister company to The Times) who are running a Green Britain initiative this week. The booklet bears a “stamp” that reads…
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Someone Leaked 24…
You can bet that people at Fox are furious at the moment. This weekend, the first four hours of 24 were leaked and there are plenty of torrents of the episodes around. The four episodes are airing next weekend over two nights to kick off season/day 6. It seems that they came from a DVD…
Hadrian’s Wall
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