On the Beat

I have just been reading a piece on the New York Times website about the increasing role Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media play in our lives (via BoingBoing.

It reminded me a lot of an article I read in the Independent earlier in the summer; I meant to blog about it at the time (indeed, I was going to tie it in to an article in The Economist about Jimmy Whales – the founder of Wikipedia - although, irony or ironies, articles on the Economist website can only be read by subscribers: it is distinctly not open source or “web 2.0”).

The article in the Indie, by Michael Savage (no idea if he is this Michael Savage or not; but it was in keeping with his thesis that I needed to Google him!), takes a privacy angle: are we happy that all this personal information is out there? (I was going to write “private”; but of course if it is on the internet, private is the one thing it isn’t.)

( Read more... )

I haven't been playing here for a while. I have been on holiday in the west country - Somerset and Bristol. And then working, this week.

* * *

Yesterday morning, I lay in bed early in the morning listening to the radio. I was more than half asleep. The early morning business bulletin introduced (as I heard it) "an analyst from Intel." He then started talking about cheese. I thought this was so bizarre that I thought I must have been dreaming.

It was only when I heard the later business bulletin (basically a repeat of the earlier one) that I realised I had got it wrong. It was an analyst from Mintel, a market research company. I still found it very bizarre that he was talking about cheese, though.

* * *

Looking at the listings in today's Grauniad, I was interested to see that ITV2 was showing the movie "Groundhog Day" today (though not really, since I don't have Freeview). When I saw they were showing it tomorrow, too, I had a real feeling of deja vu.

No one on my flist seems to have posted any links to this yet, so I hope I am the first.

Homer Simpson v Cerne Abbas Giant.

The photograph had me in stitches.

And proof that some religions - ok, practioners of religions - really do have no sense of humour.

I had a friend visiting last weekend, and we decided we wanted a pizza. I let slip that I had never ordered a pizza delivered to the door before.

( Read more... )

In the past couple of weeks, I have seen

• Clive Anderson, looking angry in Piccadilly - he was in a hurry
  
• the lovely Siobhan Redmond in York Place; she was wearing bright red lipstick - she looked tired and disolute, but her lips looked lovely
  
• Melvin Barg Bragg on a bridge over the Thames, hurrying to the South Bank; I'd like to think he was off to do the South Bank Show, but I kind of doubt it.

I tried this one on my local edinburger community, but to no avail as yet, so I thought I would throw it open to the wisdom of my f-list...

I have a DAB hifi radio, and over the past three or four weeks I have noticed that the reception has steadily deteriorated - there are now so many cracks and gurgles that it is almost unlistenable to.

At first I thought it might be the weather, but it has not gone away.

I have an interior aerial - which was fine until October. The signal strength is fine: according to the unit's instructions, I should be getting really good, clear reception (the minimum for a clear sound is 5/16; my signal is 15/16) - but it is still gurgling. It is a mains-powered unit. Aaagh!

Any ideas or suggestions welcome. (Please don't tell me to get an external aerial, though! Or to move flats...)

The new jeans behaved exactly like the old jeans: falling off my slender frame.

This called for drastic measures.

For the first time in – oh, maybe fifteen years – I have to wear a belt.

I don’t like wearing belts; they get in the way, I don’t find them comfortable, and generally I just haven’t needed them. I can’t quite work out why I need one now, but clearly I do.

At least my trousers aren’t falling down.

Did anyone wonder - like me - why "Spooks" was on last night rather than tonight - Hallowe'en? ;)