Podcasting Too

The internet is great for doing quite a few things.  It’s very good for social media, where you can like pictures of kittens, or retweet angry and ill-informed comments originating from GRU bots, for fun.  It allows you to order your shopping to get delivered to you, or to research stuff like string theory or episode summaries of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Best of all, it allows you to reach out and share your opinions with others, secure in the knowledge that your views are important and will be embraced and appreciated by others, especially if you turn comments to ‘off’ so you never have to read any negative criticism, or indeed any criticism at all, of your forthright views about the casting of a woman as a female Doctor Who, or your controversial views about race and intelligence.

On the up side, for every bigot there are hundreds of passionate and positive people who want to share their knowledge, or even just their experience, about something dear to them.  Or just want to try to entertain.  And for each of these people who knock out a podcast, there are many more who engage in a positive way.

Podcasting is something special.  Technology has developed smartphones that mean we can download podcasts and take them with us, meaning that we can listen to podcasts at home, or on the move.

But the really special thing about podcasts is that the podcasts created by enthusiasts are better than the podcasts produced by professional broadcasters.

This doesn’t happen anywhere else.  A blog is very unlikely to be as good as, say, a novel or a published collection of essays from the ‘New Yorker’, because a blogger is unlikely to have the resources available to a remunerated writer, like an editor.  There are exceptions but the dross to quality ratio is high.  Likewise vlogs.  These only really succeed where they cover niche subjects and have a charismatic host.

Bringing us to podcasting.

The beauty of a podcast is that it can be high concept with a low budget, and a real labour of love.  Do you like Jane Austen?  So do I.  Do I want to hear you talk about Jane Austen for two hours?  Probably not, but I bet you can talk about her life, her literature, adaptations and legacy in fifteen minute chunks for a few episodes?  How about getting your friends involved?  How about asking listeners to contribute.  Holy shit, as Jane Austen never wrote, ‘Talkin’ Bonnets’ is number five in the podcast download charts.

The enthusiast is able to outperform the professional broadcaster for the very same reasons the blogger cannot.  They don’t have an editor and they don’t have to worry about producing to deadline to get paid.  They can craft a labour of love.  They can also interact with their community.

I love a literary podcast, two presenters knocking views about their favourite stories back and forth, it’s almost what the media was invented for.  Because while there is nothing quite like a single voice speaking directly to you, eavesdropping on a conversation is tremendous fun too.

They also provide the perfect platform for original drama.  Anyone with a bit of writing talent and some actor friends who are keen to perform, and are there any other kind of actor friends? can create an episodic drama that builds and audience and a reputation.  This is the stuff that would never have been produced by a broadcaster with a finite amount of airtime.

And of course there are the documentary podcasters.

While genre fiction may have found a more mainstream audience thanks to the Game of Thrones TV series and the MCU, podcasts are, to an extent, the fanzines of the twenty first century, produced with love by people who care about the subject for an audience who are consuming this stuff because they have a passion for it and, rather pleasingly, come to it by way of subscription, just like back in the day.

Maybe somebody should make a documentary podcast about fanzines.  Most likely, somebody already has.  So what about a drama about a fanzine, a fanzine about Jane Austen.  Now that, I’d subscribe to.

Whatever happened to CELEBDAQ?

Back in the days when you had to plug your computer into your telephone line in order to download pornography, sorry, in order to go online, the BBC had a website called CELEBDAQ.  It was fabulous, but it’s probably a good thing that this site no longer exists, for the reasons explained below.

CELEBDAQ was, as the name implies, a trading game.  It was sort of a combination of Fantasy Football and Hello! magazine.  So it was a fantasy trading game, but unlike a game of trading footballers so that you could demonstrate that you were just as fucking clueless as any other manager in the Premiership about squad selection, or fantasy share dealing where you could pretend to be the sort of person who in their day job in the City meddled with the economies of developing countries and fucked them up, then at the weekend continued to spread social ill by supporting the drugs trade and so, generally, being the sort of person Dickens tried to warn us about, you traded in how famous a particular celebrity was that week.

Celebrity fame fluctuated, so if somebody had a film premier coming out, they would get more time in the media and their profile would rise and they would become more valuable as a celebrity.  However, as their fame rose, so their share price did, so if you knew that a blue chip famous person like Tom Hanks was going to be in London promoting his new film, he’s a sound investment for that week but you could only buy a few shares.

Much, much better to go to the ‘B’ listers or, as they were also known, those who appeared on television.

As far as I am aware, ‘personalities’ were not listed.

It was tremendous fun.  You had to register, all the cash was virtual and every week there was a star trader award.

Obviously, it had to end.

The trouble with celebrities is that they have, in recent years, traded fame for infamy.  Jimmy Saville got a lot of press coverage after he died, because it turned out that more than just looking like a nonce, he was a nonce.  Who knew?  Apparently, everyone knew.  People in the industry new and, in front rooms up and down the country when the news broke people who had seen him on telly years ago knew, or at least said ‘I fucking knew it’ under their breath.  Then Operation Yewtree got underway, and might as well have been titled Operation Yewboat because it sank the careers of quite a few telly personalities without trace.

That, as we now know, was just the tip of the shitberg.  Who would have imagined that greasy fucktards would have used their positions of power and influence to take advantage of vulnerable young people.  I mean, really, who knew?

We all know that nonces look like nonces.  We all now also know that any bloke with a fat BMI who is pictured with his arm around a young woman who looks like she is wishing that teleportation were a thing is what the newspapers term a ‘predator’.  And not something sleek that lives on the veldt, or even something with a cool shoulder mounted laser canon that hunts Arnie in the jungle, no, the sort of predator that disguises its distinctive scent of sweat and fat with money and lawyers.

Bluntly, it is no fun trading celebrities when they might make the news for all the wrong reasons.

Celebrities are, by and large, individuals who have used their talent in a way that has resulted in public notoriety in a good way.

The democratisation of the media has meant that anyone with the means to do so can upload a media clip of themselves to a media platform, and other folk can watch it and leave snarky comments.  What this has proved is that although the number of people who think they have a talent is apparently limitless, the pool of really talented people remains finite.

So maybe CELEBDAQ deserves a comeback after all, because of the listing, a bona fide list of who is, and who is not, a celebrity.  Youtubers need not apply.

Showing results for 'Racist Arsehole'

Permanent petulant Li’ll Donnie has been sheeting* again.

This time, the subject of his ill-considered emission is Google, specifically how, when you search for news, a lot of the results are critical of the ‘policies’ of the subject doing the Googling.

If that is indeed the case, and it may well be for reasons so obvious they can be understood by moss then it is, at least on one level, surprising.

Surprising because over years the internet has moved from being the place where you could go for almost limitless knowledge, and limitless opinion, to the place that you go to for almost limitless knowledge, almost limitless ignorance, and a hell of a lot of opinions that align with your own.

No doubt it is the inevitable result of more and more stuff being put on the internet, so the chances of coming across a comforting endorsement of your own views, however niche those views might be and even if the allied opinion is expressed in the comments section of a teen’s instagrammed selfie, is moderately certain.  Alternatively, you could just go the media outlet or nutcase conspiracy website of your choice to have your vile (Daily Mail) or smug (Guardian) views endorsed.

Ah, for the days when the internet was the home of chatrooms and bulletin boards that were wee digital salons where great matters were discussed.  Yes, I am talking about the debate about who the greatest Star trek captain was+.  Again.

Apparently, when li’ll Donnie Googles presumably himself, he is confronted with negative news stories.

This is probably because it is difficult to be objective, and positive, about Li’ll Donnie.

It should come as no surprise to anyone but a tan-addled buffoon that the internet tends to be negative about authority figures.  And it does not matter who they are or what they have done (obvious honourable exception is Nelson Mandala).  Look at Aung San Suu Kyi, somebody who is not enjoying a whole lot of positive press at the moment, and she’s got a Nobel peace prize (details correct at time of publishing).  Even if you fade from politics and try and rehabilitate yourself, you are still fair game.  In 1997 Michael Portillo exited politics in a ‘where were you when Portillo went?’ teevee moment that was as shocking as it was hysterical.  Everyone viewing reached for their dictionary to look up if ‘hubris’ meant what they thought it meant.  Since then, he has made a series of steam-porn documentaries for the BBC where he affably wanders round Britain, guided by a guide book decades out of date.  Now he is mocked merely for his choice of attire, rather than repulsive views and making life difficult for millions when in power.

Former PM David Cameron is very much not rehabilitated.  Never mind gurning selfies from festivals, the bloke could post pictures of a UK wide tour of him in an ice-cream van dolling out free lollies to the kiddies, and the reaction would probably be that he is either a peado or, worse, is actively contributing to childhood obesity levels.

It’s doubtful, of course, that Li’ll Donnie even knows what an algorithm is or how one might be applied to sifting and sorting results for news searches.  It’s doubtful that he has an understanding that his action of putting children in cages, like the fucking Child Catcher, is likely to inspire at least mild criticism.  It’s doubtful that he understands anything that can’t be expressed on the front of a baseball hat.  He probably doesn’t know how to click past page one of Google results.

He certainly has yet to learn that you never, ever, Google your own name.  the best result is that you will find that there is somebody with your name who is more famous than you, obviously, and will probably be younger, richer and less tubby than you.  Worst case is that you, your actual self, are somewhere at the top of that first page, because that means that you have done something to attract the attention of a third party on the internet and, unless you are Nelson Mandela or James T. Kirk, the results are not going to be favourable.

* ‘Sheeting’ is a hybrid term that I’ve invented that I’m hoping will be, if not word of the year 2019, then at least accepted by some sort of urban dictionary with really, really low standards.  It’s a mash-up of ‘Shit’ and ‘Tweeting’ and describes the process of making an ignorant statement on Twitter.  In short, the digital equivalent of talking out of your arse.  For instance ‘I see Linaker’s been sheeting about a top four finish for Man U this season’.

+ Kirk.  Obvs.

The snarking of the Hunt

The internet has given us many things, the ability to call up as if by magic images of cats in humorous situations being just one of them.  It’s also the Gateway to Porn.  Back in the day, the gateway to porn was a doorway, either to a local newsagent where, you know, your mum and dad got their paper and ciggies and the owner knew you and would rather laugh his fat arse off (newsagents always used to be fat, when did that change?) telling them that you had tried, and failed, to buy a copy of ‘Razzle’ (very much the tabloid of porn mags) than have your repeat custom, or the dark door of a ‘private shop’ selling exotic foreign porn which was essentially continental naked women less hairy or more hairy than the domestic variety.

Before the wide availability of the internet, if you were a (manic) minor, your opportunities for obtaining porn were limited to the close surveillance of the hedgerow.  It may be something of a cliché but honest to God, back in the day porn used to appear in hedgerows the way Costa cups do today.  Presumably the same drivers applied; an adult disposed of something messy unthinkingly by tossing it in a hedge.  I mean the mag.

One of these days Naturewatch will do a piece on HedgePorn (although Kate Humble’s emails back to me on the subject so far have been dismissive bordering on rude), but until then, you’ll have to take my word for it.  Before the internet and Channel 4’s red triangle, you found your porn in hedges.

Of course, there was always ‘soft porn’.

Today, if you say ‘Catalogue’ to somebody, they may, if you are talking to the right sort of person, respond with reference to the ‘Laminated Book Of Dreams’, the Argos catalogue.  This was basically aspiration porn for the whole family; dad could look at the tech, mum could look at the [reference removed because of the whole metoo thing] and the kids could look at Sindy and other forms of moulded plastic that were just so cool.

Other catalogues used to be available.  Rather than being paper shops, these were mail order catalogues where you saw stuff and ordered it, and could pay by instalments.  Like a benign Wonga.

‘Stuff’ includes clothing.  Includes underwear.

Mention ‘Kays Catalogue’ to any bloke of a certain age and they will smile knowingly not at memories of He-Mans castle, but at the underwear section of the catalogue that, in the absence of Hedge Porn, was erotic to the point of emission.

Top Tip: always keep your ‘free’ hand clamped over the spine of the catalogue, or on subsequent legitimate use it might naturally flop open at a particular page.  My mate told me.

The peruse and purchase catalogue is something of a lost, possibly lamented (but not laminated), marvel.

Catalogues have been used to sell many items.  The fabulous ‘Maplin’ catalogue for electronics naturally, but my understanding is that there are other catalogues offering other products.  All sorts of stuff.

So, Jeremy Hunt got into trouble with the media, and presumably Mrs Hunt, because he forgot where his wife was from.  Japan, or China.  Easily confused.  If you are an arsehole.

It could be worse.

Given the current enmity between the previously warring nations and the unresolved ‘comfort women’ issue, the only way it could be worse if by introducing your York born and raised wife as ‘A proud Lancastrian”.  That final ‘an’ syllable would be silent as the kick to the bollocks would put your voice beyond the hearing of humans.

It’s just so awful.  Putting aside the implied stupidity and casual racism, it suggests that Jeremy Hunt is actually on a mission to make everyone in the world, even his wife, angry with him.  This is a man who already has everyone in the NHS, who look after with a smile tramps that assault them, Googling ‘Novochock’.  But to get the nationality of the Little Missus wrong?  Bad form old boy.

I am not suggesting for a moment that prospective MP J Hunt flipped to page 43 of ‘Asianish Mail Order Brides’ and made a hasty selection.

Man up

Dave Barry, the straight man’s David Sedaris, once wrote about the ‘Martian Death Flu’*.  A funny column I seem to recall, and an excellent example of the gender that does not have to give birth hugely over-reacting to minor health inconveniences.

Documentation of illness has, naturally enough, evolved over the years, like germs developing a resistance to Lucozade, a bubbling coppery liquid guzzled by wan tots in my youth and, if my colleague who told me this the other day is to be believed, loaded with caffeine, which would explain its restorative effect on the metabolism of a seven year old in 1970, if nothing else.

Dickens wrote movingly of poxes and ailments.  Operas trade in consumptive maids, oddly able to sing about their condition for three hours at a stretch.  In the 1970s there were a lot of films like ‘Love Story’, where a happy, handsome couple started a new life together, until he or she got something cinematic.  Luckily this trend ended with a bang in the 80’s when family members were killed not by a virus but by terrorists, enabling 110 minutes of bloody retribution by the Slow One, the Austrian One or the Balding One.

Journalism has cultivated a reputation for sensitively chronicling illness, and anyone that does so is to be applauded and rewarded, by getting better.  This is because when you feel under the weather, the last thing you feel like being is creative.  I’ve had a cold for the last two days and the only thing I have crated is a mound of crumpled tissues next to my bed that would put the floor of a bedroom of a teenager in a house with no parental controls on the internet to shame.

In the age of social media, people are able to share their experiences of being ill in the short, medium and long term and get support and sympathy.  A word of warning though, if you start reading any post titled ‘does this look normal?’ think twice before scrolling down.  Then don’t.

One of the worst things about being ill is that one cannot enjoy it.  Normally if somebody were to suggest to you that you should spend a few days in bed watching TV† and being brought sustaining broths, you might show an interest.  However, if the quid pro quo is a tickly cough that really gets going a few minutes after you want to get to sleep, you might be wondering if finally getting to see every season of ‘Will & Grace’ is actually worth the cost.

It’s not.  When you have a cold you suffer the double whammy of feeling ill, but not having the flu, the one everyone takes seriously.  Even the name ‘Common’, means that it’s undistinguished.  Best thing to do is hunker down and plot vile revenge upon all those bastards who still insist on soldiering on into work, on public transport, your public transport, instead of taking a couple of days to get better.

And frankly, anyone with the fortitude to successfully write about, photograph, paint, draw, etch, stain glass window or otherwise document their ailment deserves plaudits for being able to condense a cohesive thought in a medicated mind, even if that medication is simply caffeine and about 800% of the RDA of sugar for an adult, courtesy of ‘Lockets’.  This on top of the disturbance to the mental processes brought about by the constant consideration you are giving to spraying your hands with sanitiser, and the face of anyone who sneezes near you with CS gas, the next time you leave the house.

Having learned never to Google symptoms, the internet is, I suppose, a decent place for the snotty and the coughy to exchange supportive messages and a sure sign of mankinds’ advancement to a point beyond issuing anyone afflicted with anything with a pot of paint to mark their door and a bell to ring to advise others of their condition.  Insert topical joke about underfunding of NHS here.

Ironically, it marks a healthy relationship with illness that is very British, such as is not exhibited by tourists you see wearing surgical masks on London’s streets.  Not many haiku about snot.

* Don’t know where he wrote this originally** and for those who have not read the rest of the blog post before skipping to this footnote, can’t be arsed to research it.  However, I can tell you that it’s collected in the Pan paperback ‘Dave Barry’s Greatest Hits’.  This was published in 1988 when the only way to access transatlantic written humour was to go to the US or to buy collections such as this one, lovingly put together by an editor.  This was before the internet, and meant there was a lot of quality control.  The two conditions may not be entirely unrelated.

** Miami Herald most likely, just looked at the introduction to the book.

† Or as it’s known these days, ‘Netflix’.  Being in bed for a couple of days offered an excellent opportunity to catch up on all those documentaries that I have taped‡ and had hoped to catch up on when I had the time.  However, I have discovered that the perfect sickbed viewing is actually horror, specifically anything with a zombie in it.  I love a gory special effect as much as the next man, but nothing I’ve seen on screen compares to the contents of my tissue bin when it comes to biohazard.

‡ Should this be recorded?  Fuck it, I’m going to carry on using ‘taped’ until everyone stops using ‘dialled’.

I like the sound of that

Short version:  go here, it’s great!

http://www.ambient-mixer.com/

What environment do readers like to read in?  Well, apparently there are a few requirements.  Adequate lighting, obviously, because anyone who has a book that illuminates itself should properly be briefly illuminated themselves, during their incineration as a witch.  A comfy chair, and by this I mean chair in its wider sense, which is something roughly the size of a sofa, with a footstool for raising feet (essential to avoid DVT during prolonged reading bouts) and a couple of blankets.  That’s the basics and I think we can all agree that it’s a contravention of your human rights not to have at least that.  Further research though has revealed certain specific acoustic requirements which, perhaps surprisingly, are as far from ‘sussssshhhhhh’ and silence as can be.

A gentle background murmur appears to be desirable, composed of three elements and muted by very particular acoustic countermeasures.

Firstly, rain pattering against the window. Not necessarily full on ‘oh my Christ is the lighthouse going over I’ve not seen a storm like this since 1806?’ rain, just enough rain to make you glad that you are a) inside and b) not required to water the garden tonight, freeing up essential reading time.

Secondly, a crackling fire.  That means a log fire.  Log fires crackle in a pleasing way.  Ever had a log fire?  Wonderful, log fires are more Bloke than punching a bull to death to save a baby from being gored.  You build the log fire, you light the log fire, you blow on the log fire, you poke the log fire, a lot, and you feed it logs.  You end the evening smelling pleasingly of wood smoke, like an upmarket ham.  Log fires are also excellent for developing and passing on Bloke Lore. Here’s a tip, always dry out the wood.  You may think ‘G&P, you massive arsehole, the wood will dry out on the fire, that’s one of the things fire is really good for’.  And you are right, but it will also mean you don’t get so much a pleasing crackle, more a succession of loud cracks that sound like the conclusion of a drug deal gone bad.  Not relaxing.

Thirdly, murmur.  Want total silence when you’re reading?  You do?  OK.  Go away, read ‘Salem’s Lot and come back and tell me you like to read in total silence.

(Waits).

You fouled yourself at the first unexpected noise, didn’t you?  No disgrace, but a gentle background hum of voices will assure you that you are not going to be devoured by vampires.

So, why is this not distracting?  Because it’s muted by the acoustic baffles that are thick curtains over the windows and, oh I don’t know, some sort of primitive arrangement of sound dampening produced by softening the lines of the walls by installing paper along them.  Bookshelves?  Well I guess that would work.

So, a desirable acoustic environment would appear to be a Common Room at Hogwarts, rather than the bus, train (sleeper trains excepted) or even the loo (say it ain’t so!).

So how can you take all this with you?  The answer to this, like so many questions about reading, cooking and porn, is found on the internet.  It would appear that people mix their own ambient environments to listen to whist reading.  And having dipped into a few, I have to confess to finding the entire thing wholly enchanting.

Upon initial listen, there are three favourites.  The ‘Gryffindor Common Room’, because why the hell not, ‘Storm on the Hogwarts Express’ because steam train, rain and well, steam train, and finally ‘Sherlock’s apartment’.  Point of order on the last one, Chandler, Monica et al lived in an ‘apartment’, Sherlock and John live in a flat, Holmes and Watson lived in Rooms.  But it’s so good, who cares.

Ambient soundscapes, they’re a thing. They were what made ‘Marathon’ such an immersive game and now they are like a 700 foot tall ice wall against the Shite Talkers and others who would pollute the audible environment when decent people just want to crack on with their reading on the train, bus or at the dinner table with their family.

Believe in Blather

For an organisation purporting to be a communications company, Sky appear to have a poor grasp of the working of the Telephone Preference Service, a scheme that allows you to opt out of receiving marketing telephone calls, the audio equivalent of junk mail but without the occasional benefit of a free pen or handy blank envelope to write a shopping list or to do list on.

One of the consequences of working at home is that you are at home during the day.  If you watch television you will know that the sort of adverts aimed at the at home during the day demographic are heavily skewed towards health plans for the elderly, or sedate cruising, the holiday equivalent of two spoonfuls of Benzedrine stirred gently into your Horlicks.  It also means that marketing people call you and you pick up the ‘phone because you think it might be something important, or at least not something that is either going to sap your will to live, descend into a blazing row, or both.

I don’t have Sky for a number of reasons, some practical, some principled.  For instance, I don’t enjoy association football very much, but if I am interested in knowing how a match is going, I’ll tune into Radio 5.  I also don’t need any more encouragement to watch any more television.  My sporting needs are well catered for via the wireless, thanks to Test Match Special, and my drama needs are taken care of thanks to box sets and binging.

I also don’t like Murdoch products, and although I have not seen Sky programming, I have no reason to think that his television programmes would be any different to his newspapers.

Finally, I don’t like the way in which Sky’s commercialisation of football and sport generally has eroded the social value it has, with kick off times for footie matches now arranged around the teevee schedule.  Football matches kick off at 3:00 on a Saturday.  This gives the fans time to get to the venue from wherever, have a pie, watch the match, and get home.  A footie match that finishes at 9:00 at night is bugger all use to anyone facing a five hour journey home.  Likewise, test cricket should be on BBC 2.  Like a nuclear deterrent, I might not ever use it, but it’s bloody good to know it’s there if necessary, for instance to be deployed during summer holidays in England.

The lad who called me was obviously working off a script, and the script included the many, many objections that I have to Murdoch in general and Sky in particular.

I was told that Murdoch does not own Sky, or much of it, the details were unclear, anymore.  Presumably the people that own the controlling interests are not megalomaniac despots, although if this is indeed the case I am baffled as to why and how they could acquire a controlling interest in a global communications company.

The lad extolled the virtues of the product and the programmes.  Fair play to him he did a good job.

However, what he was doing was arguing with me.  He just would not take no for an answer as he more of less rebutted or corrected the many objections I trotted out as to why I didn’t want Sky.

Eventually, I just went nuclear.  I don’t want Sky, I said, because ‘A Game of Thrones’ is one of my favourite books, and the television adaptation is poor by comparison.

Silence in the call centre.  Now, it is true that GoT the teevee show is great, I am not denying that.  Got the box set, love it.  But it is not as good as the books.  Moreover, I resent the hell out of its popularity.  Before the teevee adaptation, if you saw a stranger reading A Game of Thrones you could strike up a conversation with them.  In England.

There was no rebuttal.  Sky Lad must have known that for somebody to say something so provocative meant that there was no hope of selling the package.

Also, and I am not an expert, but having an argument with a prospective customer is unlikely to seal the deal.

Improving your Broadband

Broadband has brought us many benefits.  Let’s take porn.  Back in the dial up days, your images would load slowly, from the top down and of course with porn, unless it was some really twisted stuff, it was only one third of the way down the image when things started to get in any way interesting.  Now, thanks to advances in technology, porn is right there, in your face, on demand.

Despite what the cretins at your IT support department would have you believe, technology is not magic.  However, self-appointed techno-wizzards do share a trait with priests and physicians and other professions that seek to create an air of mystery about their activities, that is, they have their own language.  And at least you have to credit those whose job is, let’s face it, half a rung up from being the guy who changes the toner cartridge for at least invention their own language (‘babble’), rather than the priests, who basically asked if anyone would mind if they used Latin because nobody else was anymore and, the Roman Empire not having as many branch offices as it did BCE, there were surprisingly no objections.

Maintaining technological infrastructure takes time and effort.  I recently learned that the internet is an actual physical thing, just like Roy and Moss’s box in ‘The IT crowd’, but bigger and more plural.  The internet is distributed among many many ‘server-farms’, that are kept in secret locations, but normally near water for, not power as you might think, but cooling.  And people have to lay fibre optic cables and so on and so forth.  Basically, there’s a lot more work requiring high-viz jackets in the technology industry than you might think.

None of this mattered when my broadband went off earlier in the week.  Even after power cycling the magic box, nada.  So, called up the company and got a message telling me that because of improvements they were making to their broadband, I might be experiencing problems with my broadband/’phone/telly, until three in the afternoon.

There is nothing quite like being told you can’t have something to turn an inconvenience into a raging desire.  Luckily, I used up all of my emotional energy fuming about the inconvenience and never got as far as desire.  An upgrade, in the middle of the day?  Really?  If I had been able to Google for my emotional state, I might have got ‘incredulous’ back as an adequate description.

Things could have been a lot worse.  First of all, the interruption was only for about 45 minutes, secondly, I was able to use this time to have lunch in front of the telly, which was working fine.  And thank God because you know what they say, mankind is only three lunches and one missed episode of ‘Loose Women’ away from savagery.

I was wondering what the hell they were doing that couldn’t be done overnight, and I have to say that I didn’t notice a hell of an improvement to the broadband speed although, really, what was expecting, that ‘House of Cards’ now plays at the same speed as the Keystone Kops?  And at least Virgin haven’t taken the Apple route of ‘upgrades’, by making sure that their customers know there’s been an upgrade because a) your iPhone home screen looks a bit different and b) your iPhone home screen is the only fucking thing that works on your iPhone now.

Still, I suppose that vital maintenance to ensure increased security and resilience, together with replacement or even modernisation of infrastructure will result in downtime.  Then again, so does turning the internet off and turning it on again if there’s a glitch and, frankly, the image of a bloke in a high-viz jacket and a hard hat standing next to a fuck off huge lever and counting slowly to ten before jacking it back upright again is one that’s surprisingly hard to shake.

ITDB

The chaps who invented IMDB.Com deserve a Nobel Prize.  I’ll get to why in a moment.

The internet has now been around long enough for apocryphal stories to grow up about it.  I don’t mean web pages that record camp fire stories or folk tales or any of that nonsense, or eBay selling haunted crap, I don’t know much about the paranormal but I do know that if there was an artefact that proved beyond doubt the existence of the supernatural, it would not be on eBay.  It would be in the cellar of the Pentagon with all the alien stuff.  What I mean is stories about the internet that are only possible because of the existence of the internet.

One such story is how IMDB revolutionised the dating scene in LA.  Prior to the existence of IMDB, any asshole with a Porche an a wrap of coke could hit on a girl in a club, tell her he’s a producer or something, and try to get her to sleep with him in the expectation that she would get a guest spot on Magum P.I as ‘Pool Girl 2’.  Only afterwards would the ugly truth emerge, that he works in a Porche dealership in Sacramento (should such a thing even exist).

Thanks to IMDB.Com, girl goes back to her place, makes an excuse to lock herself in the loo with her laptop and after a brief search, finds out that ‘Gary Hairful’ has no production credits and so will not be getting sex that night.  He will, however, get tasered in the nutsack while she films it on her ‘phone, or whatever they do in Hollywood.

The International Movie Database, or IMDB, is an internet success story the way that all success stores about tech should be success stories.  Apparently, IMDB was started by a couple of blokes (disclaimer: women can be tech giants too), probably in their bedrooms, that probably smelled of socks and Lynx, and was basically a listing of who starred in what movie and who the best boy, key grip and gaffer were.  I have no idea how they got this information but I really, really hope that one sat hunched over a keyboard and the other one read the credits as they rolled on a TV screen as a VHS tape played/paused/played/paused.  The truth is probably less romantic and no doubt involved less Pot Noodle than I imagine.

Fast forward and IMDB is now the definitive resource of who did what on movies and television.  That’s why the inventors deserve a Nobel Prize.  While others win the Prize for curing disease, these guys have cured the awful suffering of recognising an actor, and wondering where the hell you have seen them before.  ‘The Bill’, it’s always ‘The Bill’.

So, IMDB, is a force for good.

So why not another definitive and comprehensive source of useful information that could be used in social situations?

Why not an International Tattoo Database?

Just a few years ago, tattoos were a relatively scarce commodity per square inch of human flesh.  Before blokes started getting Maori markings to show their tribal allegiance to Oswestry and women started getting Cantonese symbols because they liked Number 38 on the menu or whatever, you got a tat if you were in the military, where part of a tribe, had been in prison or had been in a concentration camp.

Before tattoos became fashionable, they used to mean something.

Now, you’re in a bar, your hitting it off with a young woman and you notice her shoulder tattoo.  Does she like mystical symbols, or hot and sour soup, is she a committed lepidopterist of renown, or a sex worker, or is it a curiously shaped birthmark and she is the rightful Queen of Wessex?  A discreet visit to the ITDB and you can decide whether the evening is going to end with you already thinking about what to name your kids, or exiting the venue now via the lavvy window.

Likewise a lady can establish whether that coat of arms on a fella’s forearm is a distinguished regiment, C Block HMP Chelmsford, or even worse, a minor public school.

ITDB, a force for good.

Que the music...and the inevitable pop-up radio station

It used to be that if you wanted to set up your own radio station, far from the corrosive influence of The Man, so that you could play the records that you wanted to play, you needed a ship floating in international waters and a bloody big transmitter mast.  This got you beyond the reach of broadcast licensing (and, some might say, the reach of any law enforcement agencies that might want to take a close look at the activities of the crew of ‘The Singing Nonce’).  Obviously, when the BBC was looking to crew its, appropriately as we now know, youth orientated radio, it took DJs from the pirate stations, a sort of reverse press-ganging.

Radio 1 torpedoed Caroline and others, and the next shift in pirate radio was when even commercial radio refused to play endless twelve inch acid house mixes.  Pirate stations popped up, playing music and telling people what fields they may want to gather in that weekend to either dance in, or make crop circles in, or both.  This still required you to tune in to the crackly end of the dial.

Then came the podcast and the true meaning of pirate radio was revealed.  It certainly wasn’t to allow you to listen to music that nobody else was listening to, that had been happening for years thanks to C30, C60 and C90 (Go!) cassette tapes circulated in schools, you know, the things that were supposed to kill the music industry instead of, as they actually did, generate interest in bands and allow people to share there enthusiams.

This, and the fanzine, was analogue social media.

What the podcast does is allow a radio show to be produced without any of that tedious music to prevent the presenter stoking their ego by talking about their favourite subject for thirty minutes.  Podcasts are now like the magazine shelves of WH Smiths, there is a podcast for every hobby and pastime, no matter how obscure.  There are probably podcasts about how to knit presentational jackets for wine bottles.  If there isn’t there bloody well should be.

And that should have been it for the pirate radio station.  Killed off by being legalised and available everywhere.

However.

Small, temporary stations are starting to become something of a vogue once again.  In the village every Easter, the local Christians run a radio station for a couple of weeks, and jolly good fun it is too.  Who gives a flying frick what the traffic is like over some bridge many miles away, I want an update on what the queue is like a) at the crossroads and b) at the check-out at Threshers, both of which are visible from the front of the café the Christians broadcast from.

But, say the hipsters, how can we make this even cooler?  I know, let’s appropriate the idea, put the word ‘pop-up’ in front of it, and pass off the idea as our own.

Hence, festivals now come with their own pop-up radio stations.  Nothing new there, but the twist is that these ones are being run by national broadcasters.  For instance, Radio 2 and their recent ‘Eurovision’ pop-up.

Don’t get me wrong, I think pop-ups are a great idea.  Pop-ups make things more fun, ‘book’ and ‘penis’ are just two of the tings that can be improved by having the words ‘pop-up’ in front of them.  But radio station?

Having said that, there’s a great deal of charm in something that is only in existence for a short time and is dedicated to one particular subject, and if it’s the only way we get to hear what is, essentially, the Eurovision B side, then it’s probably of some cultural significance.  Probably.

But is it as good as being slipped a cassette in the playground, or as thrilling as happening upon a new tune emerging from crackly static at the top of the dial?

Gentleman's relish

Jesus fucking Christ would you believe the amount of porn the is on the Internet? A year or so ago the population of Lego minifigs actually surpassed that of human beings. That is, the factory that turns out the colourful choking hazards churned out its seven billionth or something. The calculation did not take into account that, very much like human beings, minifigs have a finite lifespan. Unlike human beings, I imagine that a lot of them end their days in the intestinal tract of an infant, or canine, or infant canine. That's what porn has become like, there is now so much porn that one person could not hope to get through it all and remain hydrated in their lifetime.

And the variety is staggering. I'm told that web sites these days offer sub menus to cover every taste, some of which, and I like to think of myself as a man of the world, I have never heard of. Believe me, once you do hear about them, they tend to be something that you will never forget, no matter how much you want to. For instance, if you type 'pegging' into Google will you be rewarded with links and images about a) how to secure guy ropes, b) how to hang clothes on a washing line in such a manner that creasing will be minimised or c) something so bloody deviant that you think you'll have to bloody sandpaper yourself to ever feel clean again. Answer: c, and no, pegging does not involve sandpapering bollocks, that's an entirely different category.

Before the Internet, in a kinder, gentler age, porn was distributed in one of three ways. It was sold in newsagents. Hard core stuff was sold in sex shops. And children accessed it by finding discarded porn mags in hedges. Quite why porn was so freely available in hedges I'm not sure as I never imagined that browsing through a porn mag was an activity hat leant itself to being undertaken al fresco. Now I know that there's a category for that too.

The hedge dwelling discarder's mag of choice was 'Razzle'. There's probably an official advertising or publishing industry term to describe the demographic that it was aimed at, but let's just settle for 'downmarket' and leave it at that, although 'downmarket porn lovers' is probably a fairer, shoddier picture. Razzle did though, years before people started posting pictures of their girlfriend passed out drunk and naked on the web 'for a laugh' and lads' mags featured high street girls in their pants on the covers, blaze the trail with using very-much-not-models to fill its filthy pages in a section titled 'readers wives'.

This provided a terrifying insight into the world of kitchens because, for some reason, the kitchen was the place of choice for the ladies to pose. Terribly unhygienic. There were three constants in the resulting snapshots. Harsh and unflattering lighting. That sort of flat, characterlessness that you get from Polaroid shots (this was in the days before digital photography and one hardly wanted to rock up at Boots to collect some explicit photographs and be smirked at by the oik behind the counter). And unattractive, bordering on scary, subject matter. In many cases where there had been 'tidying up' of hair down there, any trimming would of been better done taming the horrendous perms that often topped the model off.

Simply put, the 'readers wives' section was more horrific fascination material than erotic. An overweight housewife atop a kitchen counter legs akimbo is not, and never will be, erotic. Adding stockings does not help. Stockings do not automatically make something erotic. The sight of a shotgun wielding bank robber does not immediately fill anyone witnessing a bank raid with the urge to crack one off. Indeed, of anything likely to invoke gentleman's wilt, 'readers wives' would do the job. Maybe that's what the editors were thinking placing the feature half way through the magazine, instead of simply having a page adorned with the words 'enough skiving in the bogs, get back to work'.

Razzle has, I imagine, long gone and, until broadband reaches rural areas, so has accessing porn in hedges.

A la radio

The internet has brought us many things, social networking, anti-social behaviour organisation platforms, blogs, porn and a seemingly endless succession of pictures of pets dressed up.

It’s also brought us nostalgia. It provides a global platform for the heritage crisp enthusiast who wants to discuss childhood treats with others until the warm rosy glow of nostalgia almost covers the aching desperation of howling emptiness that his once promising life has become (also known as adulthood)…or maybe he just really likes snacks, who can tell?

The internet is becoming a museum of the everyday, with the mundane analysed and discussed with a refreshing curiosity. It’s fun to see a forum brimming with the same sort of enthusiasm for some plastic toy from the seventies that one normally sees exhibited by a professor turning up a roman vomiting pot or something.

It’s also provided a window on the world, as we can now see and hear instantly what others half a planet away are seeing and hearing. A part of this is internet radio, which allows you to listen to stations in far flung countries. And this cutting edge technology is somewhat nostalgic also.

Clicking your way through the international stations is a little like being a radio ham decades ago, sitting hunched over a machine, slowly turning the dial and occasionally through the static hearing a haunting song sung in a strange language as the signal bounces off of the ionosphere – only later do you discover you are listening to Radio Cardiff (you thought it was Viking).

Now you can wander the world one click at a time. My favourite station remains Allouette, the French radio station. They play a lot of pop and, even when they break for the news its not too bad, as I don’t understand French and so don’t know what they are talking about. Initially I thought from the way they were talking that there was a riot in Paris every night, then I worked out that it’s just that they are very excitable, then I worked out that there is a riot in Paris every night.

Other stations worth a visit are the Japanese and Caribbean ones. The benefit of visiting something in a very different time zone is that while all the domestic stations are trying to keep everyone calm and sane at drive time, it”s night time or even the wee small hours elsewhere in the world, and you can kick back to the soothing sounds of Caribbean Breeze – as soothing as a nice big cup of rum.

Norfolk notes - pubs and wi-fi

One of the things about getting away from it all is that it's good to be able to check up on what the all is that you're getting away from in order to ensure that you're not missing anything. That is what the Internet is for, well, that and porn obviously. In an area renowned for it's eccentric mobile phone signal reception and love of analog broadcasting (the electronics shop in Sheringham has a sign up proudly announcing that the area can now get digital radio, and I can just imagine the excitement of anyone forking out a hundred quid for a new radio, tuning into BBC radio 7 and getting a vintage episode of 'Hancock's half hour') the best tactic is to find a wi fi hot spot and ponce off their broadband.

And if pubs are the most frequent provers of that service, then so much the better. The excellent Crown at Wells and the equally excellent Ship at Brancaster both do excellent coffee and first rate broadband. Of course, one goes to a pub to converse and interact, but it's good to be able to check out the rugby scores too, not to mention research local attractions and use the weather forecast to work out how to spend the day tomorrow - although walk the dog on the beach, picnic, coffee then back to the cottage for dinner sounds like a safe bet.

The Crown at Wells has long been a firm favourite and so we wanted to check out the newly acquired and refurbished Ship Inn, at Brancaster, part of the same chain. This too was excellent, warm and friendly with just the right amount of quirk. It also had quite the best sink in the gents' loo I've ever seen - a solid slab of stone that had a trough carved out of it. The tap at one end released a stream of water that ran along the length to the plug at at the other, like a very small, slightly soapy stream.

And the rooms are called 'cabins', how wonderful is that? One could spend the entire stay talking like a pirate, ordering grog and making numerous references to the 'poop deck'.

The sweet smell of success

In a masterwork of procrastination, I spent the morning watching the video blog ‘RocketBoom’. This 3 minute daily short video discusses techhie issues with a wry, dry and oh-so-amusing spin. The presenter is super-hot, which doesn’t hurt.

Several of the pre-Christmas postings were about ‘memes’ – postings of images or, more recently, short videos - that have attracted gazillions of views and then gigazillions of parodies on video hosting sites – think some freak blubbing over Britney and you’re there.

That so many people could watch the image of somebody blubbing is the last word in the democratisation of celebrity in the internet age. Forget fame, you can now be infamous and you don’t even have to kill anyone to do it.

If you have a video camera and a PC you can have your own television show. If nobody watches it you can just pretend that it’s worthy like they do with ‘real’ telly. If everyone hates it you can feel misunderstood and plaster on the black mascara. So everyone can be sorta, kinda, famous, even if it means that the world doesn’t know your name, but rather calls you ‘blubbing guy’.

This diluting of being in, on or around the media seems to have a pretty profound effect on ‘grown-ups’, so I wonder what it’s like for adolescents? I wonder if the most popular girl in school has her own page or blog or youtube channel that acknowledges she is the most popular girl in school – or is that shot to buggery because ordinary girl has more pokes on facebook because she knows a hell of a lot about Star Trek.

Ordinary people are acting like celebrities by recording their own teevee programmes. Celebrities are acting like ordinary people by getting out of cars without any pants on – this means that here is only one real test of whether or not you are a real live celebrity – do you have your own fragrance?

Because it’s easy to lip-synch to ‘nothing compares to you’ while shaving your own head and so be that day’s hit on youtube, but it’s less easy to market the smell of you.

Which is why the most popular girl in school will always be the most popular girl in school – because if the most popular girl at my school when I was a teen had turned up and started flogging bottles of her own scent, there would be a queue of sweaty adolescents round the block ready to pay good money for a sniff of Jane.

Never mind Jane’s Addiction, let me tell you about mine

Addiction used to be simple, you were addicted to drink, or drugs, or gambling. Other behaviour, such as touching your balls in public places can more properly be considered a compulsion. The difference between compulsion and addiction is that compulsions are normally free of charge while addictions are not.

Men make better addicts than women, as they either show imagination or are weaker in character, depending on your point of view. A woman may consider herself addicted to buying shoes, for example, but this is not addiction, this is a hobby. You want addiction…go to a toy shop and watch a man buy a new piece of kit for his ever expanding train-set, studiously ignoring the mewling from his kids as they want to go home and play on their games console while doing crystal meth, sunny delight or something equally as foul.

Conventional addictions can be obvious. The other morning I missed my train. In my defence, I missed it in style – I ran for it and was able to watch it pull out of the station, all that was missing was an animatronic hand on the back carriage flashing the V sign at me. As it was, I was able to get a coffee, take a seat and read my book for twenty minutes while waiting for the next train.

(This, until I came back through my front door that evening, was the best part of my day. This has been, if not the week from hell, at least the week from a suburb of hell.)

From the opposite platform, with the startling acoustic clarity that comes from being in an almost deserted station comes the unmistakable sound of a cork being pulled from a bottle. Across the tracks I can see a chap in a suit taking a pull on what, from this distance, appears to be a bottle of wine he has produced from his briefcase. This is at 8:42 in the morning. I hope it’s something light, like a hock. Good breakfast wine.

My first reaction was to pitch up next to him with two glasses and a cheese platter, but as I had my coffee I stayed put. I might know my way around a drink and, even worse, I know that once I’ve had one there’s a domino effect as my will crumbles and I want another, but even I only rarely drink at breakfast. Or instead of breakfast.

As for my addiction – in a word ‘travain’. This is basically a stripped down sim-city game where you increase the level of your resources and use them to purchase troops and conquer new villages and so on. The difference is it’s on line and multiplayer. Which is charming when you are in an alliance and all getting along, but a royal pain in the arse when you are, as I presently am, engaged in a village vs village war of attrition with an illiterate tosser. Oh yes, you can message one another, which is where you soon learn that the sort of people playing the game can’t spell. As I guess most of them are schoolchildren, this is more worrying still.

I think I’m going to have to cancel my account with the game, I’m rapidly approaching the point where it’s just not fun.

Or better still, close one account, open another under a new name and plot to destroy the tosser in question? Or yet better still, use the time I have invested in playing the sodding game to get my life back. The ultimate ‘I win’…but of course that’s a little empty without being able to hand out the ultimate ‘you lose!’.

Cultural Guides

I suppose that travel is what you make it. The problem is that so many people conspire to make it as unpleasant as possible, from Ringtone Joe on the train through Fastlane Fuckwit on the roads to, possibly more seriously, terrorists in the air (or malicious baggage handlers, they’re about on a par).

I was on the motorway this weekend, travelling to see my family and as usual my wife saw the opportunity of our being trapped together in a speeding metal box for two hours as an excellent opportunity to discuss our relationship in circumstances that make my trying to step out the door deeply inadvisable.

So that was time well used, but it’s not always the case. A lot of the time travel is limbo, you’re in hiatus as you travel from point to point. A good example were the airport cabs I saw, travelling from Gatwick to Heathrow, ferrying folk from one airport to another, presumably to make a connecting flight. The journey is about an hour, which is a short time in terms of air travel, but a long time to waste. Which got me thinking.

More and more cars these days have these in-car DVD players, to make sure that the kids get in-car DVT rather than getting exercise and entertainment through the traditional routes of squabbling, fighting and violent bouts of travel-sickness. Most travellers are curious about the country they are visiting or about to visit - so why not have a ‘cultural guide’ DVD in the car. No segment longer than two minutes, talking about all the things you really need to know about in a country; tipping, how to avoid being roped into folk-dancing, how to greet the chap standing at the urinal next to you, that sort of thing. You can use the DVD menu to navigate the various categories and geographical areas and, of course, you can listen to it in the language of your choice (note to manufacturer, always get the translation checked, you don’t want what you think is an Armenian translation of your piece about the canals of Birmingham to actually being a bloke saying: ‘visiting Birmingham? Then make sure to visit Jeff’s knocking shop, only two minutes from the station’).

Of course the real place for this sort of programme is on YouTube as a cultural guide channel. Every programme is a maximum of two minutes, talking about one feature of your town and the thing is, you can make stuff up! I’d love to see some proud local strolling through the pretty but unremarkable graveyard of his village church pointing out the burial places of Shakespeare, Dickens, JFK, Elvis and Frodo Baggins.

Everybody must have one feature of their home town they are proud of. I’d like to see somebody standing in front of a kebab van extolling the virtues of chilli sauce with the sort of brio you normally associate with a travel journalist doing a spot in front of the Taj Mahal. Or got an area where you want to advise visitors to avoid? How about a dispatch from Dog Shit Alley wearing a BBC approved flak-vest.

On the plus side, a balanced an honest view of the off-beat delights of an area may be refreshing, the only drawback is that after seeing a few cultural guides, the tourist may well ask to tell the cabbie to turn the car round and head for home.