Month: November 2005

  • Why I Hate Music Download Sites #31

    Some of these places just drive me mad. Earlier this year I got loads of free credit from Mycokemusic, the music download site. As a rule, I hate downloads. You’re effectively leasing rather than owning the music and with DRM it’s just a total pain. However I accrued a bit of virtual money and got…

  • Pub Opening Hours

    Isn’t Associated Newspapers taking an interesting line over the new pub opening hours that have just started? Today’s Mail has “Thanks Tessa” accompanied by a series of pictures of young people pissed on the streets of Britain. In actual fact, this has happened every day of the week for years and years. In fact, I’m…

  • ITV4 Breaks

    And while we’re on the subject of breaks, are the ones on ITV4 actually being planned by a human being? I really to appreciate the mix of shows from ITC fare through to Homicide: Life on the Streets. But I was just watching Senator John McCain on David Letterman (obviously I was staying up late…

  • Lost Scheduling

    A couple of months ago, I noted that Channel 4 are running Lost in a timeslot that lasts 65 minutes. What I didn’t know was how many ads they were squeezing into the slot. Today, Ofcom upheld complaints about the way the ads were scheduled within it. The problem seems to be twofold: 1) C4,…

  • New Version Of “The Prisoner”

    I really don’t know what to make of this. Granada are said, by today’s Broadcast website (no direct free link I’m afraid, although the story’s possibly in the paper version), to be making a new version of the all time classic TV show – The Prisoner. I don’t know anything else about it for the…

  • Alanis Morrisette

    Madonna wasn’t the only artist playing a “secret” gig last night. Alanis Morrisette was playing the intimate confines of the Kings College London Student Union in a one-off gig to promote the recently released “Best Of” (or rather “Collection”). All good fun with all your favourites, although the annoying idiot near me who kept shouting…

  • Golden Dagger Ban

    Just after Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason won the Golden Dagger from the British Crimewriters’ Association, they ban foreign language titles. The rumour, according to The Guardian’s Bookseller diary, it’s down to the award’s sponsor next year not wanting to promote obscure Scandinavian authors when there are lots of British and American authors to plug. The…

  • Airline Style Security Checks At Stations

    The Heathrow Express is both a good and a bad thing. Bad, simply because it’s expensive. Good, because it gets you very rapidly from central London (well Paddington) to Heathrow. But with security checks in place it’s going to take a bit longer to reach Heathrow, and some of the speed advantage of the system…

  • Messy Shops

    I know that there has been an economic downturn, and high street chains are finding it hard to maintain profits and growth, but is that really an excuse for how busy and messy all these stores now look. WH Smith has had some notable problems of late, and for a while was torn over exactly…

  • Great Big Bid

    So exactly who’s idea was it to essentially put on national television, the kind of charity auction that normally happens at expensive balls? Is it really entertaining to watch people who evidently have far too much money spending the equivalent of several salaries on various prizes? There’s something obscene about seeing these disinterested people sitting…

  • Least Likely Statistic of the Week

    According to a report from Continental Research, as published in Campaign magazine, one in ten adults watches television on the internet. Really? Already? Maybe “has watched”, but “watches” implies they do it regularly. Unless you want to catch up on last night’s Newsnight, or are engaged in downloading via bittorrent (both reasonably marginal activities still),…

  • “Not In My Name”

    On Tuesday, The Sun ran a front page showing the picture of a bloodied bomb victim from the July London bombings alongside the headline: “Terror Laws: Tell Tony He’s Right”. Except that the man who appeared on that cover, bloody and bandaged is one John Tulloch. And those certainly aren’t his words or feelings. Read…