Russell Davies

1-11

the dry mock

This Archive Hour about irony is quite good and sounds less radio-y than most radio. Though quite a lot of it consists of one lot of people being annoyed by the way other groups of people use irony, which, ironically, I found annoying.

The right form for the job

I keep meaning to keep a tumblr for these - Media Forms That Explain Something Better Than Any Other Form Possibly Could

This would be number 1: split screen video and the speed of racing vehicles. (Found, as I remember, via Kottke)

Related: this documentary explains how darts only got really popular when they worked out that splitscreen made it really, really televisual.

 

Radio voice

We are experiencing a podcast renaissance. Mostly, I suspect, because people are starting to make podcasts that sound like American public radio. That's progress, of a sort, because podcasts used to just sound like bad radio but, ideally, podcasts would try and find new ways to sound. Maybe that will come.

Back in radioland though, are these five essays, exploring The Radio Voice. Again, the voices don't stray very far from a radio-y norm, but they're still worth listening to.

The first one points at a splendid parody of radio drama called This Gun That I Have in My Right Hand is Loaded  'adapted for radio' by one of my favourite ever (presumably) fictional names: H. and Cynthia Old Hardwick~Box.

original neonist

I was too intimidated to go in here and actually see this, I just pressed my nose against the window. Private galleries don't do welcoming do they? But, if you're braver than I this'll be good. From when neon was all just fields.

Authentics

 

Peter York, only ten years late. Ha!

Blogging area

There's a great documentary - Hoop Dreams -about two high school players trying to get into the NBA. For some reason, one of the only facts that's stayed with me in the twenty years since I saw it, is that one of the players goes on to Mineral Area College after high school. I assumed that meant there was a place actually called Mineral Area, which always struck me as a magnificently honest and straight-forward name.

 

steps

I like pedometers and things that measure your activity. I'm know we're all supposed to be sousveiliancing ourselves into a stupefied something or other but I like the way they easily let me pay attention to how much I move and walk about.

My fitbit - combined with beeminder - helps me notice how little or much walking I'm doing. I found out, for instance, that I walk a lot less at the weekends than I do in the week, and if you'd have asked me to introspect about that, I'd have said the opposite.

In 2013 I set myself a target of an average of 10,000 steps a day. I managed to do that. In 2014 I raised it to 12,000 and I made that. So this year I'm aiming for 13,000. That's going to require actual effort and lifestyle change, it won't just be a case of walking to work and wandering around a little at lunchtime, I'm going to have to make more concious effort. But it's a good trend - if I keep up this sort of progress I'll be walking hundreds of miles a day when I'm 80.

how long before property ads are as insane as perfume ads?

This is the really joyous bit though, closing the social media door after the comments have bolted:

(Via, I imagine James)

Y2Knot

Bought this from (where else?) the garden centre. Made me remember a conversation we had in the summer. We'd been walking around Derbyshire, looking at a renovated and much-loved pumping station. There are so many retired engineers around here, the tour-giver said, that there's starting to be a shortage of interesting old engineering projects to be repaired and refurbished. 

Presumably though that problem will soon be solved as new generations of engineers retire and new technologies retire with them. Soon they'll be bringing ancient voicemail systems back to life, reenacting installs of old software, getting them up and purring again. And we'll all go along to special open days and point and remember - I had one of those! I used to log in to one of those - my code was 121224! We used one of those to download TV ratings, I had to reload the paper; it had those holes along the side!

I wonder when the Sealed Knot will do its first Y2K reenactment. I wonder if, this time, we'll lose.