March 28, 2007 by dafyd
Ski down the escalators, save yourself literally seconds…
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Kids, don’t try this at home. The British Transport Police says it is dangerous. Also dangerous: Nottingham tram surfing.
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March 27, 2007 by dafyd
I’m in the middle of an exchange of emails with a “Microsoft EMEA Technical Support Clerk” (a tech support guy – of which more later), so here’s a Simpson’s video.
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*I think you need to click it to start it. Or maybe not. I don’t know how these computer things work.
Looks like they’re getting funny again. Bodes well for the movie.
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March 22, 2007 by dafyd
Yesterday I toddled off on a jaunty saunter down to London (well, it would have been even jollier if Midland Mainline were able to display even the slightest hint of competence).
As always (just ‘cos it’s something I always do), I headed off to Waterstone’s Picadilly. And who should follow me through the front doors? None other than everyone’s favourite convicted perjurer. Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare was launching his new “novel”, a fictional retelling of the events of the New Testament according to Judas Iscariot, and was doing a short signing and television interviews in the store.
I’ve spent the last 24 hours trying to work out a joke about Archer, the Bible, and Judas… but I thinkthat pretty much it doesn’t need anything doing to it..
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March 20, 2007 by dafyd
This was, without doubt, one of the very funniest bits of the Comic Relief telecast on Saturday. Quite how he manages to subvert absolutely everything about the charity is rather impressive…
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Catherine Tate wasn’t bad – certainly, the DVD wouldn’t be a bad investment (£5 to charity…) – if only for the image of Tony Blair (the Tony Blair) asking “Am I bovvered?”. And David Tennant: “Are you the doctor?” “Doctor who?”. And the whole Deal or No Deal sketch… Very, very funny.
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March 13, 2007 by dafyd
Running alongside a Grauniad blog article is an advert for a new ITV drama, Mobile.
But Mobile isn’t on tonight. It’s on next week. Oops.
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March 12, 2007 by dafyd
On February 25th there was a transit of the Moon across the face of the Sun – a solar eclipse – but it could not be seen from Earth. This sight was visible only from the STEREO-B spacecraft in its orbit about the sun, trailing behind the Earth. The two STEREO spacecraft were launched last October to study solar storm activity.
Because the STEREO-B spacecraft is about 1 million miles away from Earth, the Moon appears about five times smaller it does to us on Earth.
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How awesome is that?
Incidentally, NASA’s Image Gallery contains some of the coolest images in – literally – the universe. I can spend hours going through the gallery – it never, ever gets boring…
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March 12, 2007 by dafyd
Apparently, Teletext (for some reason) ran a survey recently about books that people don’t finish. Top of the fiction list cam DBC Pierre’s Vernon God Little, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, and Joyce’s Ulysses.
Ulysses I can well understand. I’ve never, ever met anyone who has actually read the whole thing thorugh (certainly no one who understood it). I started once, got about two chapters in (so, a good couple of hundred pages…) then gave up. I couldn’t cope.
But Vernon God Little and Harry Potter 4? Pierre’s book is not even 300 pages long. It is, admittedly, not a terribly readable style, but it’s a fairly engrossing story, pretty much an updated Catcher in the Rye. And Goblet of Fire is one of the more readable instalments in the series. Surely people weren’t put off by the length? It is true, though, that a book ostensibly set at a school doesn’t necessarily need to spend the first 150 pages describing the summer holidays…
I’ve just finished (yes, finished – apart from Ulysses, I tend to struggle through books) Nick Hornby’s Complete Polysyllabic Spree, a collection of his “Stuff I’ve Been Reading” columns from the Believer magazine. Now, I’m not a fan of Hornby’s writing in general – I vaguely enjoyed About a Boy, but High Fidelity and Fever Pitch didn’t really do much for me. But it turns out that he reads the same sort of things I do. So, unfortunately, having read 400 pages of (basically) book reviews, I now have a long list of books he enjoyed that I want to try. Meh.
He makes some very good points about “popular” fiction as opposed to “literary” fiction. What’s the point, after all, of a critically successful novel if no one wants to read it? Reading should be about enjoyment – you should be able to sit back and relax for as long as you want with a book, without it feeling like a chore.
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March 8, 2007 by dafyd
I love Last.fm. I love being able to track exactly what I’ve been listening to, when, over the last two years. I love finding other artists and albums that I should enjoy. And I love finding other people who like the same music as me.
I love reading. I read, easily, a book a week. Often more. I tend to have more than one book on the go at once. I wish there was an easy way for me to keep track of what I read, when. I wish there was a way for me to find other people who read what I do. And I wish there was a way to find other authors and titles to enjoy.
But there isn’t. There is – as far as I can tell – no “social reading” site out there. In this whole Web 2.0 thingy, books seem to have got left behind.
Sure, there are sites (and software, for Macs, at least) that let you put your library online. That let you swap books with other users. That let you “release books into the wild“. That recommend new books to you.
But nothing that truly acts as a Last.fm for books. LibraryThing is the closest, but it’s nothing like as easy to use as it should be. I have to dig around before I can enter when I start and finish reading, enter a review or tags, rate the book… Shelfari is also promising (and has lots of money from Amazon, so could get better), but still not what I want.
Has anyone else come across a better “social reading” service? Or am I going to have to get my hands dirty and code something for myself?
I’m going to keep a track of what I’m reading on LibraryThing for the time being, but from the playing about with it I’ve done so far, I can tell I’m going to get fed up with it quite quickly…
Photo by me, at Flickr
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March 5, 2007 by dafyd
According to the Radio Times, our quarter-final match against Edinburgh will be broadcast next Monday (12 March), 8pm, BBC2.
Be there, or be square.
Mind you, we’ve not heard from Granada or the BBC that it’s actually us playing that week… but I seem to remember us being the second quarter final, so it makes sense.
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March 5, 2007 by dafyd
Newsweek has a fun article about the effect Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will have on summer holiday camps: [via TLC]
Peter Kassen of Maine’s Hidden Valley Camp is issuing a gag order for his faster readers. “We as a community will be sworn to secrecy,” he says. “We want to make sure the surprises aren’t spoiled for the younger kids.” Kleinman is ordering dozens of books for counselors to read aloud to campers, and they’ll be using the book for clout. “Getting them to bed is always a challenge, but we’re going to tell them we aren’t reading until they get in bed.”
Eleven-year-old Jake Kern, the camper whose father requested a midnight run, was satisfied to know that counselors will read the book aloud, but when he gets his own copy, he’ll read it straight through, neglecting even archery and baseball if he must. “Once I start it, I probably won’t put it down until I finish it,” he says.
I know that when the last Potter novel was released, I saw a couple of dads of boys I knew at Waterstone’s, at midnight, buying copies for their sons, who were leaving for Scout camp the next morning.
When Order of the Phoenix (book 5) was released, I was in the Hague, of all places. I picked my copy up at Schiphol airport, read it on the plane and train home, and was in Waterstone’s selling the book, bright and early on the Sunday.
This year, I’ll be in Canada. Which means I’ll have to make do with the Canadian edition. Which, I’ve just discovered, is exactly the same as Bloomsbury’s UK edition. Now I’m happy. I can’t stand the US editions. Too cartoony. And American books always feel cheap. Something about the paper. Anyway, rant over.
137 days to go, by the way. Have you pre-ordered yours yet? £8.99 from Waterstone’s and Amazon… Pre-order it from ‘Stone’s and you even get a free book…
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