June 2004 Archives

Recently Penguin commissioned one of those spurious polls which suggested that men who read are more attractive to the opposite sex. This isn't something that I'd previously noticed.

Anyway, there were various followups on stations like Five Live where I heard a discussion which threw around a few books which should do the trick. One of these was The Outsider by Albert Camus. So I eagerly consumed this short tome on the tube (prior to today's strike) to see if it worked. I can report no luck at all. I did get nudged in the back by one woman, and another gave me a dirty look when my rucksack toppled over onto the back of her calves. But I don't really think either of these count.

The protagonist, Meursault, really is an outsider, and I thought the snappy postscript was quite a good summary of the book. Despite not being the most descriptive of books, I certainly got an understanding of what it might have been like in Algeria in those pre(?)-war years.

ITV has been berated by viewers and forced to apologise for including the Scottish flag in a title sequence for a programme they showed on Saturday called Dumb Foreigners. It seems that there were upwards of 100 complaints from Scots who were ever so slightly miffed that ITV should think them foreign. I was unfortunate enough to see a couple of minutes of this programme, and can report back that it's basically a compendium of poor sub-You've Been Framed video clips from around the world. The brief section I saw involved people surfing with kites, and guess what? They fell in the see from time to time. How dumb can foreigners get? Who'd have thought that surfers fall off their surfboards, bmx-ers their bikes or skiers their skis?

While I can understand the offence taken by Scottish viewers, I was altogether offended by the name of the programme and the footage featured. This is the worst case of the xenophobic "Little Englander" mentality we see all too much of. Dumb ITV Execs Commissioned This Steaming Pile of Crap would be a fairer title.

[And this better not turn up as an Endemol production any time soon - I'm retaining copyright on the idea for the good of humanity]

How Low Can You Go?

Two teams of contestants compete for cash prizes. Each round one person from each team is picked to perform a terrible stunt (eg. worm eating), and is offered an amount of money - say a thousand pounds. The contestants then underbid each other to see who'll go the lowest, and how low they'll go to do the stunt which they then have to perform to win the cash.

Simple mechanic. And the worst kind of TV.

Guess who had a pair of tickets to Wimbledon yesterday? We stayed until around 4ish before deciding that there was unlikely to be any play and headed off home. Once we'd made that decision, you begin to hope that all play really will be cancelled, because you'd hate to think that as you're getting on the tube at Southfields, the covers are coming off.

I was surprised to see later on, via the rather excellent interactive BBC TV coverage, that people were still sitting hopefully on Centre Court until around 7.00pm when the announcement was finally made.

You get the feeling that they knew this was going to happen somewhat earlier than they admitted it, but there's catering companies who are banking on making money etc. In fact with no tennis on, they probably had a field day yesterday!

Still, we did get quite early word of play today via a friend who's an umpire... Not that I was likely to want to queue today after yesterday's fun. In any case, I don't think I own enough Union Flags or crosses of St George to be allowed in on Centre Court today. I've got no problem with opening up the middle Sunday to all and sundry - but calling it the "People's Sunday" is somewhat unfair. This morning there were the expected interviews with people in the queue going on about how this was a chance to let the real fans in to see play.

Uhhh... I'd say that the "real fans" are those who actually made the effort to enter the public ballot (I've done it in the past - it works - you get tickets), or play the game. We all know that tennis clubs can be snobbish affairs, but people who play the sport are quite entitled to get ticket advantages. The same happens in rugby and football. In actual fact, it's pretty hard for people to get tickets to any of our major sporting events, unless you pay close attention to the rules, and get your applications in early, and maybe join the relevant organisations. When the England football team are playing Wales in the World Cup qualifiers and tickets are hard to come by, nobody's going to say that it's not fair that real fans aren't allowed in.

Certainly, there's plenty of hospitality, but check out the number of hospitality seats the new Wembley is attempting to flog - a terrible deal incidentally. It's part of sport and it's not nice, but when was professional sport ever that wonderful?

Still Henman won today, and I suspect that the moment his game was over, some people will have been leaving the ground to get back in the queue for tickets tomorrow. It'd be unfair to characterise them all as middle-aged women wearing large felt top hats garlanded with flags and wearing free Daily Mail waterproofs (free with your copy in the queue)! But characterise them all I will. OK - that's harsh. There are also a lot of Aussies and Americans, but they're outnumbered. The only other time you come across this same cross section of the country's population is if you've ever had the (mis)fortune to ride the tube home around the same time that a Cliff Richard concert has finished at Earl's Court. You see? It's no coincidence that Cliff famously cheered up the Centre Court crowd on a previous wet Wimbledon.

And speaking of Cliff, I really hope that all the newspapers and media outlets that gave space to that ridiculous stunt (free reg. req'd.) involving Tony Blackburn were fully aware what they were doing. Unique, the company who own Classic Gold "Digital" (mostly available on AM) was founded by one Noel Edmonds. And wouldn't you know it? This week also saw their annual results. Tony Blackburn just about admitted as much at the NTL Commercial Radio awards on Friday where he was presenting an award.

Listened to an enthralling documentary from the BBC World Service entitled TV Invasion, trying to detail the impact that television has made to the Himalayan country of Bhutan since its arrival in 1999. At the same time, the country also got the internet, so you'd think that it'd be quite an upheaval. But the country is incredibly young - in the sense that over half the population is under 15 years of age. And we know that kids adapt to this stuff pretty quickly.

The saddest part of this is that of the 45 or so channels available, only one has local programming, and that's restricted to three hours a day. That's sure to make it difficult to preserve the country's unique culture. I suspect that they'd get on fine without coverage of the WWE. Actually, I suspect that we'd be better off without that coverage too.

The BBC have today published the Neil Report, which is effectively the BBC's response to the findings of the Hutton inquiry. I'm not a journalist, and I don't particularly work with journalists, but good and accurate journalism is a fundamental principle of a democracy. And the BBC is probably the world's greatest news gathering organisation, so a report examining the organistation's journalistic values is of vital importance.

The report speaks of five journalistic values: Truth and Accuracy; Serving the Public Interest; Impartiality and Diversity of Opinion; Independence; and Accountability. [NB. Fox News might want to consider points 1, 3 and 4 in particular]

I won't go into all the details of the report, since it's worth a read in its own right, and I can't really do justice in a few words to a 27 page report that's taken several weeks/months to put together. So instead, here are a few things that I find particularly worth noting.

Single sources and anonymity: Sources should be named for the most part, and if they're not, reasons why not should be given. Stories based on a single source should be "in the public interest."

Fairness: The BBC should be fair to all - both contributors and the audience.

Two Ways: Should not ordinarily be used to break serious or defamatory stories. [This section seems to be the main focus of righting any wrongs Andew Gilligan may have committed]

Outside Commitments: Restrictions are placed on what BBC journalists or presenters may do outside of the BBC, whether freelance or not. These don't strike me as harsh as were maybe first reported.

The report goes on to highlight a whole section of what should be learnt from the "Gilligan affair", before branching off into training.

Overall a fair and reasonable document I'd have thought.

So this article from Media Week has the findings of some research that says that fans don't mind company-sponsored stadia.

What a load of nonsense. This research was conducted for Arsenal, and is obviously paving the way for some blue-chip company to pay many millions for the right to call the new Arsenal stadium something like "O2 Highbury" or "Nike Highbury".

Personally, I think that this is pretty vulgar. Highbury has always been one of the finer stadia in the country, indeed the East and West stands are listed. I'd like to see the full research methodology to see exactly how this was question was asked. As the Media Week article states, none of the fans will use the name.

Thanks to Rob for pointing out in my comments that John Gibson, Fox News' commentator, is at it again, speaking out over his disdain for Ofcom's ruling. And should you really not be able to complain if you think the company you work for is being unfairly maligned by others? Gibson seems to think so.

And still he can't leave the subject alone! On Friday he was back with yet more.

Quote: I was absolutely correct in every word I said.

Ofcom: a) Ofcom does not accept that Fox News�s claim that an appointment of a monitor to detect �pro-Arab� bias is proof of an �anti-Americanism that was obsessive, irrational and dishonest� within the BBC.

d) There is no evidence, and Fox News did not provide any, that the BBC �insisted its reporter had a right to lie�.

So who's the liar now Mr Gibson?

Certainly the BBC have taken a kicking over The Hutton Inquiry, but that was one incident. It is not the one-sided biased news organisation that you suggest.

Fox News on the other hand is certainly that. Feel free to provide me with anything to refute that? (Incidentally "Foxnews" and "biased" in Google return 37,200 pages. Irrefutable evidence, if Fox News' testimony is to be believed, that this is in fact the case).

To be honest, I couldn't care less about some partisan US cable television service on the other side of the pond. But some sad and deluded souls believe what they see on television. It's for that reason that I'm glad we have the broadcasting rules that we do in this country.

Also via Boingboing comes this link to a site that has an excerpt from Ricky Jay's infamously out of print book, Cards As Weapons (as featured in an episode of Jonathan Creek - something which probably keeps it rare).

Congratulations to the team of SpaceShipOne (I'll even forgive the needless nospacesrule in their name).

I did try to listen to live audio at work, but had problems, and only saw the video on the news earlier on. Quite a good source of coverage here (via Boingboing).

Krakatoa is one of those volcanoes that everyone knows about, and in 1883 it exploded in the largest recorded manner killing thousands. This brilliant book sets the explosion in its full historical context, filling the reader in on both the scientific and social situation. Well worth a read.

With his autobiography due out tomorrow, the PR machine is in full flow. So yesterday there was a big article in The Observer about Clinton's post-Presidential life. Then today, The Guardian had an interview with the man himself, while tomorrow Panorama (who had a great programme last night on the superdollar) sees David Dimbleby get his turn at an interview. The US got a 60 Minutes interview last night.

I must admit that I'm very tempted to get hold of a copy of the book and have a read. He's a genuinely fascinating man.

Well today the BBC announced that the new Radio 4 series of Hitchhikers is coming to a radio near you from Tuesday 21 September at 6.30pm - a very specific time for something just a little way away.

Still the site has both a video and audio preview!

Meanwhile, there's a competition to win a part in the forthcoming film (whose website is also worth a gander). (News via Adam's biographer, MJ Simpson's site).

Belatedly, The Goodies is all of a sudden seeing some kind of resurgence in popularity. A couple of weeks ago there was a two part documentary on Radio 4, No Fixed Abode, Cricklewood. And now tonight, we get Comedy Connections on The Goodies, featuring interviews with all of The Goodies and John Cleese. Must buy a copy of the DVD!

Well if the plaudits for Wayne Rooney weren't enough the other day, the papers are going to go mad tomorrow. Rooney helped England to a 4-2 win over Croatia, taking us through to a massive quarter-final match against the host nation tomorrow.

Come on England!

I spent several hours yesterday, in Finsbury Park getting very wet. I enjoyed myself, nonetheless. The Fleadh is one of those festivals that's quite small, and I suppose gets smothered, coming on the weekend between the Isle of Wight Festival and Glastonbury. Still, not a bad line-up.

I'd not seen Billy Bragg live before, but he was pretty good, and as trenchent as ever. The Delays were OK, as were The Counting Crows. Quite a few people were really there to see The Charlatans who weren't bad, although I did sneak away to catch a bit of Kathryn Williams while they were on. But most people were really there to see Bob Dylan. I wanted to see some of his set, I suppose just to be able to say that I'd seen him. He was pretty good, and I enjoyed it much more than some of the music that had come before. For some reason Ronnie Wood joined his band on stage. I suspect that in reality the legend is bigger than the performances, but then the man is 63 years old. It might be heresy to say it, but there was a certain "sameness" to the songs that we heard, but I did recognise Highway 61 Revisited. Maybe I need to get hold of a few Dylan albums.

Observer Music Monthly published their list of the hundred greatest British Albums of all time yesterday. The list was compiled by critics, industry figures and pop stars.

The Stone Roses came out top, although I'd argue that this was really down to the age of the average rock/pop journalist and/or pop stars. The list of contributors is here. It's worth noting that no album from before 1965 is on the list - and Blur's Alex James wrote an interesting piece in the magazine about what was missing and possible reasons.

I suppose the big thing is to see how many of these "essential" albums you actually have. Well, I've been through the list and can proudly confirm that I have only seven of them. In order they are:

The Hounds of Love - Kate Bush (22)
OK Computer - Radiohead (24)
Lexicon of Love - ABC (42)
Parklife - Blur (76)
Dusty in Memphis (77)
Behaviour - Pet Shop Boys (94)
Sweet Dreams - Eurythmics (100)

So let's look at the exceptions. Noting in the top 20? Well there's plenty of Rolling Stones, who I've no real time for, and lots of Beatles, who I have plenty of time for, but who charge a fortune for their CDs. I'm not paying premium prices for this work, so I therefore have none of their albums. I don't own any Bowie, Zeppelin or Oasis. No Who, Jam or John Lennon. No Joy Division, Clash or Van Morrison. If I did, I'd have more.

Still I'm glad that there's not more recent stuff. If these albums truly are classics, then they can't become that within a year or two of their releases.

I'd love to see this exercise again in ten years' time to see how tastes have changed.

The best thing has got to be the press ads they're running that use old logos from The Avengers (Beckham, Owen and Gerrard) and The Saint (featuring Michael Owen). [Sorry, can't find online versions of them]

Yesterday's Mail on Sunday had a free gift that really sums up everything I hate about that company. They were giving away free stickers for your car number plate. Many new cars now come with "Euro" numberplates - little European flags on the left hand side of the plates. Having these plates means, I think, that you don't need to put the sticker on the boot of your car. As a Mail reader, you no doubt despise Europe and everything it stands for, so covering up the Euro logo with either a Union Flag or Cross of St George is a must.

The strange thing is that papers like the Mail are actively damaging the chances of the Tories doing well in the next general election. It's not the Labour or Lib Dem constituency that these people are coming from, but the Conservatives. I'll leave aside for a minute the stupidity of wanting to come out of Europe, or indeed the thinking behind voting in as MEPs people who don't actually believe in the parliament that they've been elected to. UKIP are simply racist in my book, and stupid promotions like this encourages it.

I've no problem with all the St Georges flags currently flying from houses and cars across the country for England, because I think that our national flag is slowly being reclaimed from the likes of the BNP, but there's something very wrong with the thinking of papers like the Mail.

Remember that somewhat hyperbolic, and ever-so-slightly misleading Fox News opinion piece by John Gibson?

Well because Fox News is broadcast via Sky, they get to fall under Ofcom, who have today upheld a number of complaints made about it. This in itself probably doesn't mean a great deal. However. repeat offences could result in sanctions being taken by Ofcom including financial ones, under the Programme Code. I believe that as a last resort, they can actually pull a channel off air, in the UK at least.

The most ridiculous part of the Fox News response is that if you type "BBC Anti-American" into Google you get 47,200 hits. Ofcom responded that this is hardly sufficient evidence to back up such a statement, and in any case, doesn't make any editorial judgement about how those words are used. Needless to say, I could quite easily set up 47,000 web pages myself containing those words. And, oh, a search for 'anti-american "fox news"' on Google returns 29,300 hits.

(Incidentally the other complaint upheld against the ITV drama Wire in the Blood is slightly disturbing. We have a 9pm watershed, yet you can't simply start stronger programming straight away at 9pm. I don't really understand this rational. Surely if a line is to be drawn, then that's it, and stronger programming can then be shown - particularly if a warning is made).

Carefully sidestepping any mention of last night's football, I just wanted to sound off on something that is so trivial and so insignificant, that it shouldn't matter to anyone.

I'm talking about people who leave the stickers on their digital cameras and camcorders. Why? These are those little stickers that shout about the number of megapixels the camera has, and the fact that it has 1000x digital zoom.

They're advertising stickers. They're like the tags you get on clothes - you remove them before using.

You take the cardboard things out of shirt collars. You remove plastic sheeting from new cars, and you cut off labels on new suit sleeves. Do the same with your camera.

If Sony and all the rest had meant the camera to have these garish notices, they wouldn't appear as stickers. They'd be part of the camera like the manufacturer's logo. So please, peel the stickers off!

Do the respective schedulers of ITV1 and ITV2 talk to one another much I wonder? I only ask because I note that ITV are trying to get maximum value out of their (no doubt pricy) Euro 2004 Fantasy Football. The new series "kicked off" at 10.00pm last night on ITV1, with a swift repeat at 00.40am also on ITV1. Over on ITV2, at a scheduled 00.35am, they were also showing a repeat of it - around 45 seconds ahead of the ITV1 showing. Is this what they mean by video on demand?

Memo to self: Really must read some James Joyce at some point.

There are some wonderful images from the Transit of Venus across the Sun on Tuesday. Obviously I wanted to observe this myself in the best possible way. On Monday I read an article in Astronomy magazine that said I need a solar filter. OK, where do I get one of those for my camcorder at short notice in North Norfolk? Well there's a place called Cley Spy (in a village quite close to Cley-next-the-sea) which sells a massive range of binoculars and telescopes. Why should such a good shop exist in such a remote location? Becaue North Norfolk is bird watching country (Sidebar: "Twitchers" are something entirely different to your average bird watcher. Don't confuse the two). Anyhow, they didn't have a filter.

Step two was to design some kind of tripod to hold a pair of binoculars. Sadly, without either a full workshop to build such a contraption, or indeed the skills to make it, I had to forget about this idea. Next up was to make my own filter after watching a bit of Adam Hart-Davis on the BBC's coverage of the transit. You have to filter out 95% of sunlight or so. I can now reveal that three blue-tinted freezer bags folded back on themselves many times, and secured around the lens of a camcorder does not work.

Finally it was a pair of binoculars with one lens covered up projecting the image onto white card. This worked fine, but required two hands so I couldn't get any photos of it.

Now roll on the Cassini probe.

A story that I can empathise with enormously in today's Guardian. I hate all the chatting that people think they can get away with in the cinema - and also put it down to the advent of videos and watching films in home.

Simon Busch, the author of the story, says that the protagonist in the Julian Barnes short story, Vigilance, tries to trip a concert goer down the stairs. In fact, I once tried something very similar. I was at the Barnet Odeon watching Three Kings, and very quickly became annoyed with a gaggle of girls down the front who were constantly wandering in and out of the cinema going to the toilet repeatedly in massive groups. All the while slurping their illegally smuggled in alcopops. I don't know why they'd bothered coming to see the film - a total waste of their money. Repeated "shushes" got no response. I got so irritated that, when sitting in the aisle seat I did try to trip one of the girls up as she went down the stairs by my side. I was probably fortunate that I missed as the accident might have been quite nasty. But at the time I was so furious that I was quite willing to put up with the consequences.

These days, I'm quite likely to ask people ever-so politely at first, and then less politely to shut up. But I do feel like I'm in the minority.

One of those books that I picked up largely because it was award winning. In this case it's the winner of the Crime Writers' Association Steel Dagger. Set in Germany, Serbia and Italy, it's a postwar story set among the investigators of the International War Crimes Tribunal. In fact it's a well constructed very modern day thriller written by someone who knows his stuff. I read it eagerly.

I've never previously read any Jules Verne and with a "suspicious" new big-budget film version upcoming, I thought I'd read the original.

I suppose the version of the story I'm most familiar with is the Willy Fog cartoon version - famously originating in Spain, and with the dubbed characters speaking rapidfire English over a massive 26 episodes. So it was quite interesting to read the original as the suave, yet aloof, Phileas Fogg. The books a real page-turner, and the story still holds up well with the oddly named Fix tracking Fogg around the world. Note to self - read more Jules Verne.

UPDATE: Hmm. The first review I've seen of the film is pretty poor to say the least.

My first Ian Rankin novel about his famed Inspector Rebus. It was a reasonably pleasurable way of passing the time, but I can't say that this procedural over-inspired me, and I don't see myself rushing to buy the rest of the Rebus novels. Certainly not at full price anyway.

There's been a Dunblane type attack in a school and the murders don't really make sense. Alongside that, Rebus is suspected of murder himself. The novel does a perfectly good job of telling the reader enough about a detective that many of its readers will be massively familiar with. This is what I always find trickiest about longrunning series of books - how to keep them accessible to new readers whilst not annoying diehard fans. I can't really say how well this latter works until I've read some other books. Overall - so-so.

It's apparently very important that this film is Good Bye Lenin, and not Goodbye Lenin. I can't say why really - not because I'd give the plot away, but I simply don't know. It's set in the months either side of the Berlin wall coming down, and a wonderfully communist mother who goes into a coma, and comes out in a new free world, the reality of which might harm her.

The lengths her son and his friends go to, to keep her under this disillusion are wonderful. An entertaining film - if a tad longer than it needed to be. It probably told me more about life in East Germany than I'd ever have otherwise known (although this book might be enlightening - it's made the Samual Johnson shortlist).

The science in this is dubious in the extreme, but you go to see a film like this for the special effects and the ride. I admit that I quite enjoyed it, and the effects are well done. I'll ignore the blatant plugs for fellow Fox channels Fox News and Sky, the painful references to Man Utd, and the fact that I seriously doubt any helicopter pilot in their right mind would have been flying around a downtown LA that was being ripped apart by multiple tornados. The plot's lousy, and the twists can be seen a mile off (if twists they really are).

It's just a roller coaster ride, and you get what it says on the tin - New York being washed away; twisters in Hollywood; snowstorms in Scotland. Better seen on the bigscreen than on video, although I expect it'll make a killer "demo DVD" for a good home cinema audio setup.

So the iPod is, what, over two and a half years old now? My big question is why no-one has quite launched the iPod killer. Yes I know that the iRiver is pretty damn good and about a hundred quid cheaper than the equivalent iPod, but why aren't there cheap Taiwanese or Chinese versions around - I mean really cheap? I'm amazed that there aren't. Today's Guardian Online lists a couple of other entrants in the market, but we're not talking mega-cheap. I know there are loads of Apple evangelists out there who can't understand why I wouldn't want the overpriced, yet beautiful simplicity of an iPod, but I want something with a big hard drive that plays mp3s and is relatively cheap. If I want a personal CD player - there's the full range to go for, but essentially from 19.99 to 199.99 they all play CDs. That's what I'm talking about.

I'm also slightly disturbed about the quasi-religious fervour with which some people talk about their iPods. I was reading the new issue of the excellent Word magazine, but as a magazine with several pages regularly devoted to all things iPod, someone really ought to tell them that "other music players are available".

I mean - really! So the old Fourth Division now becomes the Coca Cola League Two. What a load of nonsense. So you've got a new sponsor and a new logo - leave it at that. I think I may have to go back to calling everything Divisions 1 to 4.

Acclaimed film-maker Roger Graef has written an excellent essay for today's Broadcast (subscription only).

A few extracts:

Now celebrating its 50th year, [ITV] has been a source of important landmark programmes in ways too often from unacknowledged in teh PSB debate. Pressure from advertisers and shareholders led to the shameful reduction of its current affairs output - down to rare docs plus Tonight with Trevor McDonald. Put PSB obligations coupled wiuth a major contributor to the national conversation produced recent powerful dramas like The Second Coming and Bloody Sunday.

He goes on to mention September Mourning and Secrets of the Iraq War.

Enough, one might think, to win more commissions.

No. Since the Carlton/Granada merger, the value of impact and breadth over numbers has been eclipsed. ITV painted itself into a corner to achieve the merger. It promosed worried advertisers to maintain or increase their share of the purely commercial audience.

Then he gets into the part that interests me the most.

ITV is lobbying hard to shed its PSB [Public Service Broadcasting] obligations to arts and religion and a range of its regional programmes - fo purely commercial reasons, as if that made it self-evidently right. But doesn't it live in the same world as the resut of us? Doesn't it know arts are key to most urban revivals? That more people go to museums and galleries than to football? That The South Bank Show actually increased its audience by 25% in the last year?

And can it be serious about dropping religion? We're not talking about Songs of Praise. This is the issue of the 21st century - along with science, which has also almost vanished from our screens. With Bush, Blair and Sharon dragging us into crusades against Muslim fundamentalism, religion is again the engine of wars and debates in all the circles of power. Perfect time to hide our heads and count the ratings.

There is much more in this very worthwhile essay, and little for me to disagree with. Sometimes I feel like I'm banging the same old drum again and again, but I feel strongly that our television is being degraded before our eyes. It'll be interesting to see what ITV rolls out for its 50th anniversary. I understand that there's a five part documentary being made which'll no doubt air late night on Sundays in The South Bank Show's slot, because frankly it'll be embarrassing to look at the riches of its televisual past and then compare them with today.

Another part of today's Broadcast mentions that ITV want another series of I'm A Celebrity this year. Following hot on the heels of Hell's Kitchen, that's at least six weeks a year of primetime taken out of the equation. At least we don't face months of it like Channel 4 forces us to accept.

This sounds very encouraging. Looking forward to seeing the verbatims from the latest session.

Well this was only a matter of time, and I guess it was mainly a question as to how many subscriptions Sky see themselves losing, and how much they wanted to subsidise the box for. At £150 they've pitched it pretty well, although I'm unsure whether that includes the installation. (UPDATE - this price includes installation).

While this might seem to be a damaging move from Freeview's point of view, I don't believe it will be all that long before nearly all TV sets have DTT decoders built in already. The people who must be the most worried would surely be Top Up TV.

UPDATE - Having now had a look at the line-up (according to Mediaguardian), there seem to be a few channels missing. Where are UK History, UK Bright Ideas and the two music channels TMF and The Hits? It seems strange that they've been left out. And it seems a little unfortunate that the package is only available direct from Sky (according to this report). I guess that there is commission payable to Currys and Dixons when they sell a package, and the fine margins here are too small to warrant it. However, Freeview boxes are available from a pile in my local WH Smiths.

Well, more like, I've lost my faith in Faithless. I really like the current single, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the new album was out on Monday. BUT... it's got "Copy Control" on it, so it's not a real CD. I won't be able to easily copy it across to my minidisc. The disc will have deliberate errors, and the best it'll have on it is a 128k WMA file or something.

I refuse to buy these CDs - that's a sale lost guys.

UPDATE: Looks like the same is true of the Beastie Boys new album. Record company execs know this - you're LOSING album sales with this policy.

Oil prices are rising again, and over the weekend I read a couple of good pieces about where we're going with oil. First there was this piece in The Observer (the online version of which is sadly lacking the longterm oil prices graph). It actually accompanied another fascinating article about Shell's recent travails.

Then I read the cover story from this month's National Geographic (online version not fully available). This was quite an eye-opening piece detailing where any likely new oil is going to come from, but that we'd all better start facing the fact that there are going to be serious oil shortages in our lifetimes. The article even raised the question about whether it was oil that was the real reason that Bush went to war. Yes - I know that quite obviously it was, but the fact that National Geographic asked the question says something.

Good to see that Bletchley Park have finished rebuilding the Colussus Mk2. Must revisit Bletchley soon...