Month: November 2017
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Twilight
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Network
The 1976 Paddy Chayefsky film is something of a classic with Peter Finch’s network news anchor Howard Beale essentially having a nervous breakdown on air when the network first tries to push him out the door, and then, when ratings soar, grab hold of him and let him do what he wants. It has always…
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Book Making
I spent a few hours at the Barbican attending a book making course, and ended up with these two booklets. They’re books with four-hole stab binding, with 20 pages of double-ply paper inside. Actually one of them has a couple of extra holes to allow a more complex stitching pattern in the corners. My stitching…
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Changing Android Phones
I’ve never been much of a fan of Apple’s iPhones. They’ve always seemed overpriced, and far too tied down. You can only do what Apple allows you to do with them. Furthermore, the ecosystem is incredibly limited. Everyone has to use one of a very small handful of models, none of which are especially cheap…
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TV News Channels – Political Pawns
In the last few days, both Sky News and CNN have become tangentially embroiled in ongoing media takeovers. In both cases, there could be an impact on their longterm futures to a greater or lesser extent. In the UK, 21st Century Fox is trying to takeover complete ownership of BSkyB. In a response to the…
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Lights
It has been a week since British Summer Time ended, the clocks went back an hour, and suddenly the sun is setting around 4:30pm. If you ride a bike, and work regular hours, that means that you’re going to be cycling home in the dark. Now I’m a pretty live-and-let-live cyclist, in that I’m not…
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Administrative Note: HTTPS
I forgot to mention it when I switched it on recently, but this site is now HTTPS enabled. That should mean that in browsers like Chrome you see a nice green “Secure” label to the left of the URL. What did I need to do to get this to work? Not a great deal really.…
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London Film Festival 2017
I went to a decent selection of films at this year’s London Film Festival, and overall was very impressed by the range and quality. There are obviously a stupidly large number of films that you can see, and while seeing some big hitters early is always nice, there’s also the opportunity to see films that…
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If People Think It – Does It Matter If It’s Actually True?
In this week’s excellent episode of the Reply All podcast, Alex Goldman and PG Vogt explore the question Is Facebook Spying On You? In particular, a number of people are of the belief that the Facebook app is listening to what you’re saying and that’s the only way to explain why things you were talking…