Spelin Misteaks

I saw this last weekend, and just had to get the photo…

Premisis

The quality’s not great, due to digital zoom rather than decent zoom (bloody camphones) but I think it conveys the problem pretty well.

And no, I haven’t called the estate agents/surveyors to complain about the sign.

Yet.

YELLOW!

Wow.  Via Smashing, I’ve come across a site even more yellow than D4D™ used to be.

You have been warned…

Ring Main

Yesterday, we had the electrician out again to the house to install some lights and new plug sockets in the kitchen.

As part of that work, he discovered that the house’s ring-main for the electrics was actually not a ring-main at all, in that it wasn’t a complete circle.

I don’t profess to understand the details of ring-mains etc. – that’s why we have an electrician to do these things – but it’s also something that the previous electrician we had really should have checked at the same time we had all the other work done. Only he didn’t, because he was an idiotic cock-end.

So we’ve not had a proper ring-main for the last two years. Fortunately we don’t run anything that could’ve buggered the wiring or caused a problem – but all the same, the house is noticeably safer on that score now than it was on Monday, for example.

We’ve had a mixture of luck with electricians – the guy we now use is fantastic, and was recommended by the builder. The previous bunch of clowns we used were a nightmare – we’ve since found a number of things that should’ve been done when they were here, but that weren’t.

And as always, it’s worth noting that we tell lots of people about the electricians to avoid, then recommend the one we like…

New Door/Window

After two days with no back door (it got taken out on Wednesday, and boards put up to keep it weather-tight) we’ve now got a replacement door and window.

When we moved in here, we weren’t keen on the sliding back-door (think sliding patio door, but that also tilts back from the top) but could live with it ’til the time came to replace it. There were other improvements and alterations that took precedence but now we’ve got round to the kitchen.

The door’s now changed – and it’s a massive difference.

There’s still a bundle of work to be done on the kitchen – replacement cabinet doors, worktops, and sink, new wall and floor tiles, so on and so forth. But at least the structure’s back to being intact, and the building work is complete.

Little victories, and all that guff.

Demographics and Commercial Radio – Revisit

Following on from yesterday’s post, Ed made some further points, so I’m going to go and have another dollop of thought about it. Some of the post below has been posted as a comment on his site, but then I’m going to expand on it here.

I agree with most of what Ed says – and particularly about bloody Newsbeat, which is horrific. Might as well call it “News for Spanners” and be done with it.

2) Yes, it would seem that commercial radio is far too structured, but it has to be that way to maintain advertising income. And it has to maintain advertising income to pay big salaries. And it has to pay big salaries because the BBC, on its own initiative and with our money, pays way over the odds for big names. The BBC has to take at least some of the blame for commercial radio being so rigid
(from Ed’s post)

In this, I disagree – I would suggest that commercial radio is formulaic because it’s the format that is currently seen to “work”. If there were a commercial station that did things differently to all the others, had a decent national *and* local news (including local travel) without being brain-dead and banal, then I’d almost certainly listen to it instead of R1.

Just because most stations fit the mould, that doesn’t mean that *all* of them have to. And if someone did a different format, I suspect a lot of listeners would go to it, thus promoting that new format via listenership figures.

As an idea (and going back to the days of Laser 558) you could have a 5- or 10-second blipvert at the end of every other track, rather than a splodge every ten/fifteen minutes. “Those tracks were sponsored by [department store]” – high repetition, and thus high brand-name retention in the audience, but without being fucking annoying four or five times an hour. I listen to Radio 1 (hey, let’s widen that to BBC Radio) because I don’t want to be swamped by shitty banal little adverts. Make them different, make them interesting, make them less intrusive, I could be persuaded. I pay a licence fee in order to not be advertised to. (That might not be grammatical, but you get the idea)

Having presenters with a personality – regardless of whether everyone actually *likes* that personality, so long as most do – also helps. Commercial Radio presenters at the moment feel like an identikit “built from modules” thing, and that’s Not Good. In R1’s example, I suspect Moyles is an utter c**t, but at least he’s got personality. Chris Evans, ditto.

At the end of the day, yes, put on a presenter with personality and you’ll lose some listeners who can’t abide them, but you’ll gain far more listeners who agree, and/or who just listen in order to be offended. (Daily Mail readers, f’rinstance)

Or why not do the advertising in a completely different way? Have shows where listeners send a text message in to the show, and get an advert by return text ? Run tie-in competitions, and let the advertising be a part of that? Have show tags/sponsors in the same way that commercial TV (by which I again mean ‘non-BBC’) does?

There are any number of possible options for commercial radio – they don’t all have to follow the same format, but they do so because it’s “easier” than being original. And if a station were brave enough to go with something out of the ordinary, and original, I’d most certainly give them a fair crack of the whip.

Quizzage

Tonight, it’s our village’s Halloween quiz. Which, bizarrely, is run by the local church – and involves voluntary fancy dress. (although I probably won’t bother – the face is enough without needing a mask!) We went last year, and came second, but won the Spring one, so we’ll have to see how we do this time.

It should be fun, anyway.