Month: September 2005

  • Chart

    While watching part 2 of the Dylan documentary, there was a brief sequence showing the position of Like A Rolling Stone in the charts. I’m pretty sure that the top four entries of that chart read: 1. Help – The Beatles 2. Like A Rolling Stone – The Beatles 3. Unchained Melody – (Unsure exactly…

  • Casio Shops

    Why is it that while other shops are happy to change their window displays every so often, when there’s a new season or whatever, the Casio shop in Carnaby Street in London seems to completely renovate their premises. The shop’s been closed down for the last three or four weeks – for good I thought.…

  • Dylan

    As the world goes Bob Dylan mad, BBC2 last night aired part one of a major new documentary on the man, directed by Martin Scorcese. And very good it was too – I’ll be tuning in tonight (or recording it at least, since it clashes with Arsenal’s Champions’ League fixture). But I do laugh when…

  • Sky Three

    So finally Sky Travel is to morph into Sky Three (while Sky Mix gets rebranded as Sky Two). With ITV4 and More4 about to launch, and Freeview getting ever bigger, Sky were running the risk of missing out. Sky Travel had always been seen as a bit of a stalking horse; don’t forget that Sky…

  • Scheduling

    On TNT, The Closer ran Mondays from 9.00-10.00pm EST. On C4, The Closer’s running Tuesdays from 10.00-11.10pm BST. On ABC, Lost starts its second series tomorrow, from 9.00-10.00pm EST. On C4, Lost runs Wednesday from 10.00-11.05pm BST. Why do US shows seem to run over an hour in the UK where, theoretically, we have less…

  • ITV4

    ITV4 sounds quite exciting with some good purchases. They’ve got a few “big” shows which aren’t actually quite as big as they might be painted, like Kojak and Wanted. But aside from the shift of sport onto the channel, including Champions’ League and the Tour de France, it’s the details that make it more interesting.…

  • Random Theory of the Day

    While I was shopping in Waitrose (look it’s the closest supermarket to me OK?), I was chatting to the woman on the checkout who noticed I’d been in a clothes shop. She went on to share with me her theory that men’s clothes are more expensive than women’s clothes because women buy far more than…

  • Random Notes

    After reading Ben Goldacre’s scathing attack on poor media coverage of science the other week, and then his new Saturday column in the main paper. It was slightly disappointing to read this in The Observer today. It’s presented as slightly humourous in that it costs an absurd amount of money. But only in the last…

  • The Guardian and Doonsbury

    Well the new look Guardian emerged yesterday, and the biggest surpise to me was the fact that it was still folded. Seen like that on newstands, it’s now the smallest paper there, although the bulk of the paper means that the stack is pretty tall. This might be a problem on some days. And the…

  • Ofcom on Make Poverty History

    Today Ofcom have published, at great length, a document on their findings of the Make Poverty History campaign being in breach of the Broadcasting Act. I’ve spoken before about this – to a limited extent. As I’ve always said, nobody could rightly complain about the aims of this coalition of charities. But they do have…

  • Apple

    Yes – everyone who cares knows by now that Apple’s launched the new iPod Nano. Looks lovely and everything, although I’m not sure about value for money since at £139 for the 2GB model, it’s half the size of the equivalent iPod Mini it’s replacing. But what I do appreciate about Apple is that Steve…

  • New Look Guardian

    I’m quite excited by The Guardian’s new look that should appear on Monday in the “Berliner” format – essentially tabloid, but around a centimetre wider and 9 centimetres taller. There’s a piece from Press Gazette going through the paper. What this re-launch isn’t is just a shrinking of the current design into a tabloid format.…