This is either the blog of a madman with a split personality, or a fairly normal guy from the Channel Islands who has a slightly abstract view of the world. You decide.
And again here is my list of songs played on my iPod while walking to work this morning.
Everywhere - Fleetwood Mac
Long Distance - Turin Brakes
Zombie - The Cranberries
Billy Budd - Morrissey
She's So High - Blur
Forgotten - The Open
The Perfect Girl - The Cure
Holly Roller Novocaine - Kings of Leon
I'm on holiday from tommorow so won't be updating very much, I will try and add photos of my holiday in a few days time.
I've decided to start a new thing on my blog, partly to help me remember and partly to actually have some regular content to update when my brain decided to become jelly.
This morning on my iPod I have mostly been listening to:
Every morning (when I remember or am not on holiday) I will post the list of the songs I listened to on my iPod while walking to work.
I put the pod on shuffle and got on my way, this is what it had to say (sorry!):
Unstoppable - The Calling
Pain Killer - Turin Brakes
Alright - Supergrass
Fall Fall Fall - Razorlight
Original of the Species - U2
Wreck of the Beautiful - Divine Comedy
No Ring on These Fingers - The Bravery
Crawling up a Hill - Katie Melua
Angel - Dave Matthews Band
I just read an article on the Media Guardian website with the headline "BBC Attacked for pushing Freeview", the premise of the article is that a certain group are unhapy that the Beeb are pushing the cheaper option of Freeview and the £50 and you're done boxes instead of much more expensive integrated sets and pvr/dvd recorders.
They claim that by pushing the cheaper option the BBC are somehow taking choice and opportunity away from the consumer - bollocks!
Which group are annoyed about this I hear you cry? None other than Intellect, the trade body for electronics manufacturers including Philips and Sony, no vested interest there then.
Laurence Harrison, the consumer electronics director at Intellect, said: "We feel very strongly that the BBC should be focusing more on widening consumer choice, rather than taking consumers down the narrow road of the set-top box and the £50 option."
Consumers will choose
The BBC are getting the digital message to the 'refusenicks' those people that won't have digital tv on the grounds that they shouldn't have to pay extra for something they already get.
Firstly sod-em, tv moves on, the world moves on and whether you like it or not there is a little thing called progress and sometimes we do things differently.
But that isn't what I wanted to say, just a point of contention for me, what I wanted to say was that the BBC isn't there to help advertise expensive 'luxury' products of the big corporations, the BBC is there to help people understand the benefits of freeview and the best way of doing this is making it as simple and cheap as possible.
Work to the lowest common denominator and you often catch a lot more. Work to the highest and you drop most.
The large corporations should see what the BBC are doing as a good thing, they get people interested, wet their appetites with the extra channels and the cheap box, then Intellects members can set about advertising appropriatly to get these adopters to buy their 'upgrades', free commerce and capitalism with a hint of social responsibility - wonderful!
A spokeswoman for the BBC said the corporation had emphasised Freeview because some consumers believe that receiving digital TV transmissions requires a new set or a pay-TV contract.
That comment sums it up really.
Source: Media Guardian
RELATED LINKS:
Two stories that have really struck a chord with me today cover the space travela nd computer games.
The first one is about the ESA wanting to partner with NASA to send a ship to Europa, the ice covered moon of Jupiter, this is to follow on from the success of Cassini-Huygens at Saturn.
Professor Davis Southwood from the European Space Agency (Esa) commed that "Europe could do Europa on its own", but that a cooperative venture was extremely attractive."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4347571.stm
The gaming story is about the problems that are likely to face game manufacturers of computer games for next gen consoles like the X-Box 2 and the PS3.
The thing that interested me most was the immense scale of game production, apparently next generation games will cost between $10-25m to make, with teams averaging 80 staff in size taking two years to complete a title.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4349117.stm
I just saw this great video of red Daleks dancing in the style of a BBC ONE ident, it made me smile and thought it might do the same for you, that's why I'm posting it, designed by the Who 3d project.
See the video (1.5mb avi)
I was musing the other day about television, junk food and bedtime.
My daughter is allowed one hour of television a day, this is either taken as a DVD after nursery or 30 minutes of Cbeebies before and 30 minutes after nursery.
She deffinetly doesn't get ANY television on the run up to bedtime, I get home from work at 5.00, do puzzles with her for 30 minutes while my wife spends some time with the younger boy then I prepare dinner while my daughter does puzzles or reads on her own.
We then sit down for dinner at about 6.00 with the 18 month old boy going to bed at 6.30 and the 4 year old girl going to bed at 7.00 after a bit of story time and a prayer with mum and dad.
We used to let her watch tv before bed but always had a nightmare getting her to sleep.
Since starting this routine about a year ago we have no trouble getting her to bed, she sleeps through until 7 the next morning then sits their playing puzzles until we get up at 7.30.
It also helps that we stopped all sweets and crisps, only giving her fresh fruit, veg and home baked cakes/biscuits so we can control what is in them.
It is amazing how much difference this has made to her and our lives.
I'm looking forward to the incredible broadband content on bbc.co.uk/doctorwho almost as much as I'm looking forward to the show itself.
Here are details of what the website will include according to the bbc press office.
Will include
Over two hours of specially shot on-set videos (even the Daleks have sent in a video diary).
Doctor Who Confidential: The entire BBC THREE "making of" show available on-demand (13 x 30 minute episodes). This is the first time a non-news TV show has been streamed on-demand.
The Doctor Who Years: 3 x 30 minute specially edited video compilations, mixing classic tunes and Doctor Who clips in a nostalgia tour of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties.
Conquer! -the BBC's first multiplayer online role-playing game.
Hidden sites - enter the world of the programme through a series of hidden sites referenced in the TV show. Can you find the Doctor?
Classic clips - more than 250 classic clips from the original series (everything from Tom Baker to the first appearance of the Daleks).
Downloads - the site offers MP3 downloads of sounds, and mobile wallpaper (Trust us - there will be no escape from a phone that sounds like a Dalek death ray).
Exclusive trailers - in the countdown to transmission the site is offering exclusive trailers.
Plus hidden corners, surprises, hundreds of candid behind-the-scenes photographs and more.
If you are anything like me, when your sitting at your desk you tend to eat, pick at food, snacks that aren't great for you and make you fat.
I kept a regular diet diary for bbc.co.uk/jersey last year and it was really tough not having those snacks, it's not that I HAVE to eat because I'm hungry, it's just that I WAN'T to eat because, well because you just do when you're sitting at a computer working.
I found a solution, in fact two:
1) Cup-a-Soup with a wholemeal Pita Bread, it's amazing how something so simple and good for you can fill you up for the afternoon.
2) When you get the muchies get raisins or grapes, they work just as well as sweets or biscuits in fullfilling the 'hands' problem.
I have been so tempted to give into the pull of downloading Doctor Who but have so far managed to resist the temptation, everything I have read and heard sounds like this is going to be incredible.
Classic Who with a 21st Century twist, can't wait until 26 March.
Brilliant, ten more years of top quality TV - The BBC look likely to get a full 10 year charter and licence fee.
That's it for today, couple of days late but a quick post to tell you I'm still alive.
Do you know the difference?
NICKNAMES
If Laura, Suzanne, Kate and Sarah go out for lunch, they will call each other Laura, Suzanne, Kate and Sarah.
If Mike, Charlie, Dave and John go out, they will afftectionately refer to each other as Fat Box, Godzilla, Peanut-Head and Scrappy.
EATING OUT
When the bill arives, Mike, Charlie, Dave and John will each throw in £20, even though it's only for £32.50 none of them will have anything smaller, and none will actually admit they want change back.
When the girls get their bill, out come the pocket calculators.
MONEY
A man will pay £2 for a £1 item he needs.
A woman will pay £1 for a £2 item that she doesn't need but it's on sale.
BATHROOM
A man has six items in his bathroom; toothbrush and toothpaste, shaving cream, a bar of soap and a towel from M&S.
The average number of items in the typical woman's bathroom is 337. Most of these a man would not be able to identify.
ARGUMENTS
A woman has the last word in any argument.
Anything a man says after that is the beginning of a new argument.
CATS
Woman love cats.
Men say they love cats but when women aren't looking, men kick cats.
FUTURE
A woman worries about the future until she get a husband.
A men never worries about the future until he gets a wife.
SUCCESS
A successful man is one who make more money than his wife can spend.
A successful woman is one who can find such a man.
MARRIAGE
A woman marries a man expecting he will change but he doesn't.
A man marries a woman expecting that she won't change and she does.
DRESSING UP
A woman will dress up to go shopping, water the plants, empty the bins, answer the 'phone, read a book and get the post.
A man will dress up for weddings and funerals.
NATURAL
Men wake up as good-looking as they went to bed.
Women somehow deteriorate during the night.
OFFSPRING
Ah Children. A woman knows all about her children. She know about dentist appointments and romances, best friends, favourite foods, secret fears and hopes and dreams.
A man is vaguely aware of some short people living in the house.
THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
Any married man should forget his mistakes. There's no use in two people remembering the same thing!
Watching Jamies School Dinners on Channel 4 tonight got me thinking about my school dinners, and how fortunate I am that my parents taught me about healthy food from an early age - thanks mum and dad!
My memory of school dinners has always been horrible, I was really fortunate to be brought up in a family where both my parents loved to cook and encouraged me and my brother to eat fresh fruit, veg and food generally, which is probably why I found school dinners horrible.
I remember in secondary school (90's) having an argument with a dinner lady (that saw me suspended for a week) about how repulsive the food was, just because I asked if the brown thing in the bun was sh*t out fresh that morning or if it had been sitting around for a week, I became a vegetarian at the age of 12 and started taking freshly prepared lunch into school after that event.
It's amazing how easy it is to knock up a quick pasta salad.
Fortunatly, and thanks to my parents (and my wifes parents) I have been able to make sure my two children are exposed to good food, my daughter loves vegetables, she will finish off a plate of brocolli without any problem (she is 4), and we are also lucky with her school, the nursery she goes to has banned ALL junk food in lunch boxes (there was an outcry from 'some' parents.
They are only allowed fresh food, her lunch this morning was a chicken pasta salad (bit of olive oil, pasta, fresh chicken, oregano and tomato), freshly baked banana loaf, an apple and some grapes - they are only allowed water (supplied by the nursery) during the day.
Even with the over the top cost of food in Jersey (£1 for a litre of milk, £1.50 for a loaf of bread) we still manage to comfortably feed a family of four for less than £80 a week.
Channel 4: Jamies School Dinners
Digital Spy Forums - Jamie's School Dinners
Jamie Oliver
The Government have published their green paper on the future of the BBC and the differrent areas of the media with their own opinions and positions have taken different aspects of the paper as their top line.
For most though the important top line seems to be the governors leaving.
Sky News have taken the fact that the governors are to be scrapped in favour of an external BBC Trust.
The Guardian also started the day with a story about the governors but later added another story that mentioned the loss of governors but taged it with ...but licence fee stays.
Digital Britain
The point that struck me was the line saying the BBC should lead Digital Britain.
BBC Director-General Mark Thompson said: "The Green Paper endorses the ambitious public purposes we set out in Building Public Value, adding for the first time an explicit purpose for the BBC to lead the building of digital Britain."
This is the most exciting aspect of the whole thing and for the first time puts the BBC's digital services at the forefront of what the BBC is paid to do.
Instead of the digital channels, bbc.co.uk, listen again and interactive being a sideline that isn't specifically mentioned in the Charter, it looks like they will now be as important (if not more important) than the traditional analogue services (on radio and tv).
Links:
BBC Press Release
BBC News Story
Guardian News Story
Sky News Story
Green paper in full
I'm a 23 year old new media journalist from the Channel Islands and I'm married with two children. My background is new media design but have been working as a journalist for the past three years.
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