but the trailer looked great
30 September 2005. Inspired by the edit.
Meet Jack Torrence. He's a writer looking for inspiration...
to be frank
27 September 2005. Inspired by the reply we've all been wanting to write, about four times a day.
Frank: This is not holy scripture, and it's not a legal presentation, and it's not even a Guardian editorial leader. It's a BLOG.
There is no requirement to be balanced. We are like magpies picking up shiny things: some are gems and some are milk bottle tops. If you are entertained for five minutes, that's great. If you are not, there are another 20 million blogs out there. Go away and find one you like. We don't care.
> that means 75% of the blog is going
> to upset people and not just nutters.
Anyone who is upset by that has serious mental problems and probably needs counselling -- or at least, to get a life.
Look, Frank, there are tens of millions of people dying of AIDS, tens of millions of malnourished children, and millions of children dying of easily preventable diseases. Hundreds of millions of women are being mutilated, raped or otherwise enslaved. Industrial fishing is destroying ocean life, indsutrial farming is destroying the land, and both are probably poisoning us. Natural disasters are overwhelming places from China to Indonesia to America, and by the way, the whole flipping planet is in the process of melting down.
If you really think Beattie's 33 points are worth getting angry about, then I think you need to take a long hard look at your values and your sense of priorities.
Posted by Jack on September 27, 2005 08:54 AM.
(near the bottom; we loves the man with the pipe, we does)
last one, I promise
26 September 2005. Inspired by a great article by John Carlin - who I've often noticed writes rather well.
But El País's article of 19th Sept was just too good not to upload.
Choice quotes in 'The New Beckham':
"If it's true what they say, and Real Madrid only signed Beckham for marketing reasons in order to use his image to conquer the Anglosaxon marketplace, now is the time to sell him and to buy a cricket player."
"Flintoff is no metrosexual. The metrosexualism of Beckham is no longer cool in England. The arrival of Flintoff marks a return to traditional English values: that is to say, the genial drunk, the libertine soldier, as an example to follow. For Flintoff, the idea of a great holiday wouldn't be to jet off to Elton John's mansion on the Costa Azul. Infinitely better for the English 'críquetero' would be a week in the English countryside, going from pub to pub."
"Yes, since 21st July, they've been playing five games, each of five days, with regular interruptions for food and for tea, and England won 2-1, with two draws. But to explain how it happened, and exactly why the bowling of Flintoff caused such joy in the English public, can only be done with an intense night of beers, plus vodkas and cranberry, in a pub."
Si, señor. We'll conquer this heathen country yet.
Bios engineered
23 September 2005. Inspired by the open access weekend I've been waiting for.
Previous readers will most likely be bored silly with my constant rabbiting on about the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and with good reason.
However, this weekend, you can find out everything for yourselves, as the 60-volume tome is celebrating its first birthday with a weekend of free access. Get your research on any pet topics in now, kids. I'm so already there.
Update:
Searching for articles including: pirate
Your search returned 210 results. 1 - 20 shown in alphabetical order
Well, there goes the weekend.
the independent choice
16 September 2005. Inspired by an unexpected mention, with good timing too.
Fortunately, number eight in the Independent's ten best guidebooks in the world isn't like that at all...
(First edition copies selling out fast, if you haven't already invested)
Inspecting the furniture
16 September 2005. Inspired by getting it all off my chest.
Now that it's had a working week to settle, here are a few thoughts on the new Guardian redesign. Brace yourself, there's a lot to get through.
In every area, revolution
16 September 2005. Inspired by a great piece of interface design.
The new wireless 'wave it around' controller for the Revolution is really, really lovely. The *genius* part for me is the design - if you want to do something genuinely new, dress it up as something familiar. And if you want to make my parents not feel intimidated about picking up a games controller, make it look like a TV remote control. There's a video of people playing with it here. Further plaudits by Mr Jones and Alice (who's jammily in Japan to see the launch). If they're this excited, I'm giddy as a weebl in a spin dryer.
In the next issue of Grafik, I spout forth about the differences in creative thinking between the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP. Without wanting to give too much away (although they will be giving away the PSP I enjoyed for a few weeks, damn them), today's announcement confirms what I said about packaging and design. As this month's Edge put it, with one of those lines that made me feel sick that I hadn't come up with it myself, "The PSP is for people who know what they want; the DS is for people who want what they don't know."
There's a market for both, of course. But, when it comes to the new consoles, I know where I want to be - round a mate's playing the X-Box 360 and saying 'ooo' to the graphics until I get bored, and go home to slash, swing and generally bounce around. If you can't find where you put the controller, I wonder if the machine will be able to locate what direction it's sitting in? And, if it's that depth sensitive, if you'll be able to use it to draw outlines around things in the room? Or people?
Suggested first additions to the peripheral basket: a mic (it's already a good shape to sing into), a sensor that lets me play a game Theremin style, a game that you can play blind (the rumble combined with the sensor opens up all kinds of possibilities), a game that works with multiple controllers a little like Magician's Power, a trap for when we've successfully caught a ghost between the streams, a ribbon to put on the end for gymnastic games, a device that stores the kinetic energy from my play and replaces the need for controller batteries, a large furry stress ball for stroking my Nintendog, a simple colour projector for turning off the lights and playing an amazing game of Rez, something playable made by Mathmos, wave-messaging capabilities, chopsticks/knitting needles.
Marks gave us the theory, and (Le)nintendo is trying to make it real. The XBox 360 isn't round. But the Revolution might just be that.
Paper trail
15 September 2005. Inspired by a sudden urge to see what academia was like.
For a lark back in August, I gave an academic paper at the University of Nottingham's Science Fiction(s) day. I was particularly pleased to see that my badge had "Andrew Losowsky - Independent Scholar" written on it (next to a holographic star), and positively delighted when the day began with a girl wearing a pirate bandana, showing us slides of Cthulu.
Anyway, my paper was on Alternate Reality Gaming and a future of narrative. The 'a' is important. Unlike some, I don't believe that ARGs will ever become much more than a niche activity, although that niche still has great potential for growth.
I do, however, think that the genre has created some exciting possibilities for interactive narrative far beyond the hypertext novels that had always struck me as slightly disappointing. My intention with this paper was to document some of these possibilities in an accessible way.
If you weren't one of the 15 people who saw it delivered in the flesh, or even if you were (and thanks to the pirate girl for her suggestions on conspiracy theorists), here's an updated version of my paper, now submitted for publication and available for download. As it says at the bottom, usual by-nc-sa/2.5 rules apply.
From hobbit to hooligan
15 September 2005. Inspired by sweet bejesus man, call that a haircut? I call it slash and burn. .
AP please, Bob
14 September 2005. Inspired by some interesting new possibilities for news.
Though David Card's quite right about the age range mythology, AP's prospective new service 'asap' could be another example of imaginative commissioning from the big boys, done under the pretext of trying to pull in younger readers in order to get it past a sceptical board. Could be naff, could be reasonable flash journalism, could be that elusive cross between Out There News and IWPR. Sadly, I suspect that only AP subscribers will find out.
Meanwhile, one of their biggest online customers is about to send out Kevin Sites to cover every major war zone in twelve months as a 'SoJo'.
I have all kinds of problems with their journalistic code ("We will strive to live, breathe, and experience the lives of the people we are covering -including the daily dangers they're exposed to from combat, disease, and hardship." - Disease? You're going to infect the poor man with typhoid?), and the Challenge Anneka feel of it ("Mission: To cover every armed conflict in the world within one year". If he doesn't succeed, is there a reader vote for who replaces him? Can I suggest Jamie Oliver?), but I can't fault the ambition. Nor can I remove that little tinge of jealousy. Anyone need a Spanish SoJo?
Day One
13 September 2005. Inspired by some overdue creative thinking.
One Day in Afghanistan has kicked off well online, and is so far looking like an excellent project. Big media companies seem to spend far too long worrying about stealing a march on upstarts, and not enough trying to use their own massive resources imaginatively. Great to see Auntie doing things like this.
I'm hoping this'll be the start of a regular series, deploying the best of the Beeb in a direction you don't expect. Now seems a good time to go to Venezuela, for instance. If only they'd let you.
It is done
12 September 2005. Inspired by my boys, my boys.
When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;
Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
The welkin will ring loud,
The great crowd will feel proud,
Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;
And the rest coming home with the urn.
It was perfect.
Cricket is a wonderful, idiosyncratic game in lots of ways, so it was perfect that the symbolic remains of a burnt bail (although actually they're apprently actually a chicken dinner) were symbolically returned (although they never left) by an umpire symbolically removing today's bails, accompanied by security guards.
At the end of the day, Harmison came out to bowl not for the batsmen, but the umpires. Four balls in, they relented. An unpleasant run chase with, say, 220 to get off 45 by the Aussies would have stopped the end being an anticlimax, but over the last two months, they really didn't deserve the chance. Though bugger me, at lunch I thought we were royally screwed. Pietersen, it turns out, only rises to the biggest of occasions. Collingwood and Giles were his bat(s)men.
I got there just after Pietersen's first onslaught, and Kitty O Sheas was loud. Me, Adam and Aiden, my new over-by-over buddies, analysed every ball, every interview, were close to tears when Richie was saying his goodbyes, and overjoyed when, as he would want it no doubt, was interrupted from self-indulgence by Pieterson's off stump a-cartwheeling.
I clapped on my feet as the Aussies did their lap of honour at the Oval in 2001. I yelled and threw beer holders in the air at the Rose Bowl when we defeated them this year in the 20/20, sure that it would be an anomaly, not a beginning. Today, I sat on a bar stool in Spain and saw the thing that, in 15 years of cricket depression, I thought my grandchildren would have to tell me, rather than vice versa: the replica of a small piece of wood raised by a Yorkshire captain.
Now I'm drunk, and I have many beers more to hand. Bring them on.
Morning everyone
08 September 2005. Inspired by the very last test.
One of the many reasons I've preordered the Ashes DVD (two discs!), regardless of the result, is to own the last commentary on English soil of Richie Benaud.
There's something rather wonderful about his insistence on retiring so he can remain free-to-air, while also remaining in the unlikely pay of the same corporation that's spoiling the party, in the form of The News of the World (where he's been writing for 45 years, starting back when Murdoch was still in short trousers and getting to grips with the Adelaide News).
Benaud was an almost-great cricketer, a fine captain, is a decent writer and an iconic, intelligent commentator who has mastered the art of not speaking when the picture demands it. He will not be easily replaced. But nothing will make up for the loss his departure brings to pro-am impersonators; in his honour, the Beeb have a farewell competition that they'll hopefully podcast when it's done. Twelfth Man need not apply. Or maybe he should.
Which is a fine opportunity to relink to the Mike Selvey article filled with hints on 'doing a Richie'.
When John Arlott finished his final stint in the centenary test, with a modest "and now I'll hand over to Freddie Truman", "the players of both sides joined the crowd in turning to the commentary box to applaud." Arlott was unique in shaping the sound of radio cricket. Benaud, who beat Arlott in this vote, has created the voice of the pictures. A similar tribute, perhaps with the players of both sides doing all their post-game interviews with Richie impressions from the confectionary stall, would be iminentlee shootible.
Lego Before Wicket
07 September 2005. Inspired by a new toy box that lets you order exactly the pieces you need!.
I know I'm excited.
you see where accountability gets you, western fools?
06 September 2005. Inspired by chinese whispers.
"And I have another surprise for him," Mr Shui said, suddenly brandishing a large blue placard with a series of numbers on it.
"Do you recognise it?" he asked.
Mr Blair clearly didn't, only spotting it was a phone number.
"It is your fax number in your office at 10 Downing Street," grinned Mr Shui.
Treble 20
06 September 2005. Inspired by periodistas21.
For those keeping up with print media online, 20 minutos in Spain is an interesting case. The freesheet isn't my usual flavour of morning reading, but it does fulfill a useful remit of covering local stories above national ones, in nine different cities across the country.
Online, it gets more interesting. The newspaper reformats all its articles, including daily columnists, into blog posts to allow open commenting. It does the same to its letters - one recent readers' letter, in the Alicante edition, regarding divorce law has 84 commenters so far. Open reader discussion, and clear advantages in the simplicity of inputting text at their end, too.
Above and beyond that, they have bespoke bloggers too. Today's new addition: Arsenio Escolar, the editorial director. He opens with an interesting tale of the 16 rules of 20 minutos front pages, and how today's paper can be seen in relation to them.
The formatting could do with being a little clearer, but essentially the clues are there as to how they treat the whole thing. Online, former print articles become semi-blogposts, while clearly showing their offline origins; the writer's participation in the debate, except in unusual circumstances, is done with. Let the readers take it from here.
Blogposts, however, remain blogposts, and more amenable to interaction, as blogs usually are. All very neat.
Oh, and is that a 'By Attribution' Creative Commons Licence to all their content down the bottom? I think it is. ¡Que bueno!
this one goes up to nine
02 September 2005. Inspired by a link on haddock.
In this week's greatest use of an API, Flicktion Sudoku!