Daily Fail
Posted: Fri 6 August, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Design, Media, News, Pedantry Leave a comment »Always nice to see when the Daily Fail gets to screw things up. (again)
In this case, they’ve managed to forget to put two photo captions in on one story. (This may have changed on the page by the time you look at it)
First example
Second example
Way to go, Daily Fail!
New York
Posted: Sun 2 May, 2010 Filed under: Cynicism, Media, Thoughts Leave a comment »As always, I have a bit of an issue with the entire New York car bomb ‘plot’. Like the one in London, it’s a supposed car-bomb which fails to do anything.
What it does do though – if we’re to believe the entire over-arching terrorism theme of the last decade – is bring it all right back into the limelight (again) but with no casualties, no body count, no negative press, just front and centre in the media and stories where terrorism (yet again) paralyses a city.
I wrote a piece many many many moons ago (way before D4D was even an idea) about terrorism and PR which made the same kind of points, that if terrorism is about keeping one’s cause in the media, then the ‘best’ way is to do so without causing damage or loss of life. That way it’s all about how people are reacting to the threat of terrorism, not to the reality of terrorism. There’s a world of difference between the two.
After all, if you can “design” a device/event that can be the lead story in world-wide media for a week, and paralyse a city (even if only for a few hours) and do no damage whatsoever, that’s quite an achievement.
Even better, when people then go on TV to make big press/media announcement about how their country and their people won’t bow down to terrorism and it’s in response to something like this then I’m sorry, but terrorism’s won. You’ve already bowed to it, made people aware of those causes, and kept it in the mind.
Succumbed
Posted: Fri 30 April, 2010 Filed under: Domestic, Geeky, iPhone, Media 4 Comments »Of all the temptations on iPhone, my downfall has been Angry Birds. It got recommended a while back in the Guardian, so I got it on Herself’s phone – and damn it’s addictive.
I did complete all of the first release, which was the first time I’d played to completion since the eighties.
Anyway, I’d done really well and not got it on my own iPhone – after all, I’d completed it on Herself’s phone, so I didn’t need to do it again on mine.
This week though Angry Birds has had an update, new levels and all. So I’ve had to get it on my own phone.
Of course, this also means I’ve got to get through the first bits (again) in order to get to the new levels.
So that’s my Bank Holiday weekend sorted then.
NewlyWeds
Posted: Thu 25 March, 2010 Filed under: Geeky, Media, Technology, Twitter Leave a comment »One of the funniest Twitter things this year was NewlywedsOnTJob , a prank by a best-man, automatically recording every time the newly-married couple went at it – start, stop, times, “frenzy index”, “Judge’s review”, the lot. It was very funny to just get the updates saying they were at it again – sometimes in the middle of the working day – and ended up with twenty-odd thousand followers all told.
Things went quiet at the end of February, when Best Man had said he’d be telling the groom about the prank. I hadn’t heard anything, so today did a quick search and found the end of the NewlyWedsonTJob story at I Am Staggered.
It’s well worth the read – made me laugh, anyway.
Captaincy
Posted: Sun 7 February, 2010 Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Media, People, Stupidity, Thoughts Leave a comment »So John Terry did end up getting sacked as captain of the England Football Team and replaced with Rio Ferdinand.
Purportedly the sacking is because of Terry’s shagging around with the ex-girlfriend of a team-mate, which somehow makes it impossible to be a captain, as it’s a bad influence on the players, and the perception of the England team. Or something.
And then you get to this part of the BBC story…
Ferdinand, 31, is currently serving a four-match ban for violent conduct after only just returning to action following a three-month lay-off because of a back injury.
So, replacing a “bad influence” with someone currently serving a four-match ban for violent conduct. And that is the message we want to send out to the impressionable people who follow football and (apparently) model themselves on the behaviour of footballers.
Shagging’s a terrible thing, but violence? Oh, that‘s OK.
I really don’t understand sport/media, obviously.
Newsworthy
Posted: Sat 30 January, 2010 Filed under: Cynicism, Media, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »Today a lot of the mainstream media are bleating on about the England captain, John Terry. Apparently he’s had an affair, and the other person was the girlfriend (or ex-girlfriend – sources vary currently) of another player at Chelsea (Wayne Bridge, if that means anything)
Now bear in mind that I couldn’t identify John Terry in a line-up. Hell, I didn’t even know he played for Chelsea.
But I still really don’t see how this is newsworthy. Sure, he’s been a fuckwit, and being a fuckwit the the partner (or ex-partner) of one of your team-mates is even more fuckwitted. But is it news? No, not really.
The other side of it is that he’s supposedly going to lose the captaincy of England because of this – and again, I don’t quite see how the two are related. As Adrian said, it could be that the friction between Terry and Bridge would affect the team at the World Cup – assuming Bridge is on the team, and I can’t comment on that one, as I’ve no feckin’ clue. (And don’t really care, either)
To me though, it’s still not news. It’s not relevant to the world in general (it’s not like Tony Fuckbag Bliar and the Iraq War, for example) and really there’s only three or four people that are affected by it – Terry, his wife, Bridge, and the other woman. That’s it. No-one else cares.
So why is it in all the papers, and every news broadcast? Maybe I’ve missed something, I don’t know.
Avatar
Posted: Wed 27 January, 2010 Filed under: Media, Reviews(ish), Thoughts Leave a comment »After wanting to see it for a while, I finally went to see “Avatar” last night. I even managed to get to see the 3D version, which made it the first “Real3D” film I’ve seen.
In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting much from the film – most of the reviews I’d seen made far more of the technology and so on in the film than of the film itself – but I was pleasantly surprised. Sure, it’s a bit too long, could do with losing about 20 minutes of trite shite, and has some deeply vile sickly-sweet bits for American audiences, but overall it’s pretty damn good.
In fact probably my biggest bugbear with it was the name of the wondrous material that was being mined on Pandora – “Unobtainium”. I mean, please. It’s not unobtainable – it’s fucking difficult to get, fine. Call it “fuckingdifficultium” or something. But “Unobtanium”? Sheesh – just make up something new, don’t try for sounding cool – and miss it by a mile. I do realise there’s a cultural history for calling things Unobtainium – but for a film that’s trying to be fresh and new, it just seems to be something that harks back to the 50s/60s, an in-joke that’s just not very funny.
So yes, there’s little bits that irritate – and the occasional bit of “Look! It’s 3D!” that grates – but in general it’s actually a pretty good film.
The director, James Cameron, has brought in a number of his standard themes – particularly Evil Big Company going ahead with plans at the expense of other less capitalistic influences (survival, global dynamics etc. etc.) – which makes it quite interesting in the current situation with global warming etc., and the awareness of “Going Green”, which is itself quite a major theme of the film.
As for the effects, and the way it’s filmed, I think it probably is one of the more radical developments in film/cinema history – I found myself thinking back to it, wondering how some of the stuff was done at all. In that context, it’s remarkable – in a similar way to when “The Matrix” came out, with effects no-one had really seen before. Avatar’s the same – it’s not quite “the next thing from colour”, but it’s pretty remarkable all the same.
All told, it’s a good film. Not a great one- although that’s really what it aspires to be – but pretty good all the same.