Vice magazine: LONDON - A&E PATIENTS MAKE ME SICK

Vice magazine: LONDON - A&E PATIENTS MAKE ME SICK

And just whilst I'm in pointing to things mode - this is the most excellent rant by a Casualty receptionist.

We do love to complain about the falling standards of the NHS - and yes, the brave founders in the 40s would be shuddering to see what's happening to some areas of it. But on the other hand, we treat it with the kind of cavalier idiocy and helplessness that we bring to so many areas of our lives these days.

I wonder what it is that leads people to treat colds like medical emergencies? Why do we have so little faith in our ability to look after ourselves? What have we done to our collective societal common sense? When did we turn in to helpless lambs looking for someone to sort us out? Is unthinking disempowerment the malaise of our society?

I blame the media.

Soap and Flannel

eBay.co.uk: 1978/79 UNOPENED PACK OF PERSIL E3 DETERGENT! (item 7409875353 end time 01-May-06 15:22:17 BST)

"Unopened packets of retro detergent have become highly collectable and I have here a packet of PERSIL from 1978/79. It has a competition on it with a closing date of July 1979, and requests proof of purchase must date after 1 October 1978. Offered sealed."

How much do I love ebay? So very, very much.

Creative Future Day at the BBC

The following are my own views, and not necessarily those of my employer, the BBC.

(Although I am about to go and help with research on the BBC web 2.0 strategy, so hopefully the two views will coincide a bit more over the next few months...)

I thought, seeing as there's a bit of a kerfuffle around this idea that 'The BBC is building it's own version of MySpace' going around the internets, that, as a public service, I'd use a couple of quid of licensefee to transcribe the actual words uttered by Ashley Highfield in the internal BBC video.

This comes in the 'Share' section of a presentation under the headings of 'Find, Play, Share, Transform, Enable'. It was part of today's Creative Futures sessions. I've tacked on a bit about the Creative Archive too, just so you get the *whole* of the share section.

SHARE

Ashley Highfield: He's the 'big picture guy'
The ability of sharing programmes, your own thoughts, your own blogs, your own home videos along with our content - creating YOUR space.
Working out what your friends are watching, exchanging views and comments, and actually sort of building bbc.co.uk around you.

Grant Bremner
The creative archive is basically a license - its a framework the BBC has created along with other partners - including the British Film Institute, Channel Four, the Open University - that allows the public to effectively download the content from the BBC that we make available for non commercial purposes, that they can use for their creative endeavors. So basically we're allowing the public to actually download our content and use it.

And from this, you get a report in the Guardian that states (at the time of writing):

The BBC today unveiled radical plans to rebuild its website around user-generated content, including blogs and home videos, with the aim of creating a public service version of MySpace.com.

And:

Mr Highfield said the share concept would allow users to "create your own space and to build bbc.co.uk around you", encouraging them to launch ther own blogs and post home videos on the site.

I'd encourage you to make up your own mind on whether or not the BBC is actually doing its own version of MySpace. The Guardian certainly did.

What I'd like to point to instead is the Programme Archive. A couple of folk here, just for a giggle, took an enormous database of eighty odd years worth of BBC output, and plopped it out on to the web. It's amazing.

The lovely thing is the way it all links together - by people, time, concepts. You have to admire the detail the hidden unsung heroes of the BBC archives have been adding to their database over time.

Imagine that, but with clips. And possibly a wikipedia entry for each show...

Anyway. If any of you have any interesting thoughts about what the BBC should be doing in this grim meathook brave web2.0 future, do let me know.

PIPEX System Status - System Status

PIPEX System Status - System Status

Sometimes, you suddenly get the desire to poke around in your hosting package. Specifically, when you get invoices from your hosting company.

Now, I've used my 'dedicated server administration' package about twice in the year I've had a server behind my domain. It's clunky, frankly, and I generally use FTP to squirt files on to the box, and that's it.

Surely some coincidence, then, that the two times I try and use the server admin stuff in the year, it's bloody broken.

Grr. Broken internets. Bad internets. Grr.

Ganking

60ganking.wmv (video/x-ms-wmv Object)

Heh. Human ingenuity, as applied to pwnage.

Sweet.

(Um, for those of you that don't speak fluent nerd.... that's a nice fan made warcraft video, showing a clever trick for killing high level characters when you're low level. Sort of David and Golliath, but with goblins, if you will.)

The Original Chinese Conjuror

Aldeburgh Productions | Series '59th Aldeburgh Festival'

My husband is - finally, after Years of very hard work, having his not-quite-an-opera performed at the Aldeburgh festival.

Hurrah!

THE ORIGINAL CHINESE CONJUROR

A Musical Diversion Suggested by the Lives of Chung Ling Soo



Music: Raymond Yiu

Libretto: Lee Warren



Director: Martin Duncan

Designer: Francis O?Connor

Lighting Designer: Chris Ellis



Almeida Ensemble

Conductor: Timothy Redmond



59th Aldeburgh Festival

Southwold Pier, Suffolk

15th, 17th and 18th of June, 2006

See: http://www.aldeburgh.co.uk/events/event_listings/series_event_display.cfm?current_row=11&catref=59th%20Aldeburgh%20Festival



Almeida Opera Season 2006

Almeida Theatre, London

1st, 2nd and 7th of July, 2006

See: http://www.almeida.co.uk/index.cfm?id=conjuror



Before the performance on the 7th July at Almeida Theatre, there is a concert given by my friend, the counter tenor Andrew Watt, who also stars in the show.

See: http://www.almeida.co.uk/index.cfm?id=concerts2006

Lily Allen

Crikey. This is going to be huge.

www.myspace.com/lilymusic

More grist to the faux/retro mill, I guess.

In other news, I'm just back from a week at MILIA. It was odd. I have notes, they may become a post at some point.

Standout event - being harangued by a very drunk, angry dutch producer whose pitch didn't win in their category. Still trying to decide whether to be really nice and contact her for a civilised chat about it all...

Put your hands in your pockets NOW.

Justgiving - a marathon for the hospices

My friend Kass is running the Marathon.

Sponsor her, immediately.

That is all.

auctineer - Google Search

auctineer - Google Search

Carla Gianolini is a Professional Auctineer. Yes, really. Trust her with your money and valuable posessions.

What Day is it Again?

Well, I'm coming to terms with the fact that yes, my body clock is broken, broken, broken.

I'm sure it's a lot to do with bad sleep hygiene, and the ammount of time I spend underneath artificial light at work, and when I get home. Clue: all of the time. It's particularly not being helped by the clocks changing today (not going back, as I've said in three different conversations already, but actually forward...).

There's added complexity to this at the moment. As I spend a lot of time in Warcraft, arranging things on server time (which is CET, or GMT+1) I've got used to mentally performing the maths to adjust to local time. I was rather excited by the idea that finally, BST would mean that Local time and Azeroth time were the same. Oh no - it turns out that Europe jumps to summertime now. I have NO idea whether any of my PC based clocks have changed, either, so I'm in an odd time-approximate limbo. Anyway, the upshot of this was accidentally going to bed at 1am on a schoolnight. It makes the Australian's trouble with Outlook look relatively trivial.

Boing Boing: Aussie timezone switch borks Exchange Server

And then thinking, weirdly, that the London Marathon was yesterday, whereas it is in fact in a months' time. Not to mention my diary slowly creeping out of control...

Something that seems to have slipped into the entertaining curiosity section of the newspapers is Friday's Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill reading in the House of Lords.

Now, more sunlight in the evenings is a Good Thing. I hate dark evenings, and long for the extra sunlight of summer. It makes me happier and more productive. But I do wonder about the bill - if, for instance, the Tabliods picked it up, and realised that it is actually a way of getting us on to Central European Time by stealth - can you imagine? it would be worse than giving up avoirdupois for kilos in the shops... I don't mind about the europe bit at all, personally, but I'm always sad to leave GMT for the magic of it being the universal standard, the zero point. It pleases my sense of mathematical balance, if not my sleep patterns.

Anyway, I'm hoping that I'll have woken up by the end of the day; at some point, hopefully, willpower willing, I'll be able to report that I've taken positive action on the whole sleep patterns thing. But I wouldn't set your watch by me.

How to Become an Early Riser

I'm bad in the mornings.

Well, actually, I'm very good in the mornings - but alas, I'm very good at the wrong thing. I'm good at not waking up, at rolling over, at being completely unrousable and dead to the world. I've been like this since I had a bad bout of depression during uni - around the same time that I developed serious RSI. I don't think the two are connected, but you never know.

Anyway. When I saw Cory linking to
How to Become an Early Riser I got a bit over excited. At last, the internet has delivered me the solution to the curse that's been ruining my life for the last few years - I, too, can become more efficient and successful, and not a complete pain in the bum to get out of bed.

It seems like sensible advice. And I read through it thinking it might be the answer. Until:

When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don't think about it. I've learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don't allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.

Ah. OK. So, fundamental understanding of the problem then. The waking up, fine. The alarm, great. The actually having enough control of myself to move, and not just to roll over and go straight back to sleep? Nu uh. That's actually the problem, love. Not the bedtimes thing, sorry.

Can someone write me a 'how to control your errant willpower when you're only semi concious, and not noted for your self control at the best of times, fatty.' article, please?

You know you play too much warcraft when...

You get one of these.

And think it's really lovely.

A Long Overdue Post about Nostalgia for Times that Never Were

Scattered around my various hard drives, and also various conversations over the last year, is a blog post. It's one of those mythical blogposts; one that would set a trend, be linked to, be sparkling and brilliant, insightful and timely. Alas, because I am nothing if not the queen of prevarication, I fear that the time for it may be past. So this is a summation, a mere shadow of the blog-that-might-have-been, only written because I find myself at home sick.

Last spring, I decided that I scented a new trend in the air. It didn't have a name, or an organising principal, but it did have some common symptoms. At the time, I tagged it as Faux Vintage, but that may not be the best term.

So - what is it? Well, there's a loose theme of nostalgia running through it, for a time before the 1960s. Roughly, it's any 'reworking' of 1890s to 1950s mainstream culture. It's camp, rather posh, about louche fun and frippery, about properly mixed martinis, about surface, about dressing for dinner, about the lost art of being a gentleman, about authenticity, about being most terribly modern.

If it had a manifesto, it would be Oscar Wilde's Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young

Its visual aesthetic is somewhere between Aubrey Beardsley, sideshow art, cheesecake pinups and the Picture Post.

It sounds like The Real Tuesday Weld, the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain or perhaps Noel Coward.

For fun, it likes to go to Lost Vagueness, or The Modern Times Club.

If feeling a little more louche, it may go to the Whoopeee Club, or even become involved with the Aristasians.

It might buy outfits from Danger Dames, or a proper gentleman's tailor.

It reads the Chap.

I'm not sure that there's much to say about it, per se, other than that it feels slightly like a response to so much slick, mediated, shiny culture; that it's a radical position in that it rejects the current mainstream in favour of a mainstream long gone. It isn't like punk, it's not a rewriting or a revolution, but it dismisses all the teenage angst of the underground with a raised eyebrow and a 'Well, I suppose it can't be helped; you are young, after all.' It's not a postmodern reappropriation either; it's not cynical enough. It's about genuinely enjoying the nostalgia, and the safe feeling of better times.

Most of all, it's stylish.

Geofftech - iBlog » All Mapped Out

Geofftech - iBlog » All Mapped Out

I love the tube map.

I also very much dislike the way that LUL's (TfL's?) lawyers have removed satirical sites that should, in fact, be covered under fair use (satire, I belive, being one of the exceptions to copyright, but I need to check the letter of the law on that one) of their prior art.

You know, like THE WORLD FAMOUS WORK OF ART, the Great Bear. Go and sue the Tate already, why don't you?

And re Trademarking; well, last time I checked, TfL weren't in the primary business of non-commercial comedy blogging, so where's the infringement?

I may actually get round to using Write To Them to register my displeasure with my London Assembly representative, the Mayor, and my MP. I encourage you to do the same.

Idiot Customer service, part Oh-I've-lost-count

I tried to join FileFront on saturday. I got stuck in an endless loop of failure to authenticate. So I told them. Here, for your edification, is our correspondance.

Kim Plowright to support@filefront.com 4 Mar (2 days ago)
Hi there,

I'm trying to use your service to upload a piece of game video.

Initially, I poked around on your Submit a File link (points to http://personal.filefront.com/) but kept getting directed to http://manage.hosted.filefront.com/ which just shows a message 'Please Login'.

So, I tried to register for your site. Interestingly, all through the registration there are large banners informing me that I do not need to register to upload video... but your submit a file link requires a login. How does one login without registering?

Finally, I went through the free registration process. The form submits my info, and returns the result page, but this loads your contextual navigation and a tall banner ad in the right hand margin of the page, then reports 'done' with no content in the content area. I'd take a wild stab at the possibility that your advertising services'
javascript is interfering with your registration system, if only because I've just had to troubleshoot a similar problem at work.

I haven't recieved any 'complete your registration' emails, so I assume that my registration isn't complete, and there was a further stage of information needed.

Can you let me know:
- What is the mechanism for uploading video if one chooses not to register on the site
- When I might be able to finish registering, and what the problem may have been?

Incidentally, I've tried in both Firefox 1.5 and IE6 on a PC running Windows XP. I tried to register using the 'register' link next to the login.

Thanks
Kim
----
L*** <***@filefront.com> to me, support 18:03
Miss,

Thank you for contacting customer support.

That is an error. You must register to upload to our site. Our records show
that your account was created. Some users email service blocks are email or
thinks it's spam and it's sent to the junk folder.

If you have anymore questions please feel free to contact me at this email
address.

Thank you for using FileFront.

L***
Customer Support Rep, FileFront
Ziff Davis Media Game Group
***@filefront.com
----

So... the answer appears to be 'Our site is wrong - and we think you're too stupid to have checked your junkmail folder, despite the fact you tried on several browsers and could use the word javascript in anger. And we didn't notice your questions, either'.

Sod that, I'll use YouTube, I think.

Peter Serafinowicz does the Oscars

O! News - Google Video

<drawls>
Well, yah, like Robert and Peeeee-ter got in touch to tell me about their latest Proooo-ject, yah?
</drawls>

Peter Serafinowicz, teh ofiishul Look Around You voice of Star Wars Darth Maul (tm) has made a piss take of Oscar night reporting. So here it is. It is silly. He does an uncanny impression of Alan Alda.

Also, he's looking awfully thin. I'm worried. Maybe his celebrity lifestyle is taking its toll.

The Artyom Reader » Reverse Evolution? This is Bloody Weird

The Artyom Reader » Reverse Evolution? This is Bloody Weird

I point to this, not because of the inherrent fascination of the subject matter, but because of the comments made by visitors to the site.

This, gentle reader, is the level of debate you'll get around genetics, evolution and human biology in a country where students are taught that evolution is 'wrong' and that intelligent design is a viable alternative.

You get people who are incapable of commenting coherrently on what evolution actually is, means or implies.

Etiquette of Common Situations

The Weekly / Etiquette of Common Situations Archive:

"Situation: Defeat at lawn tennis.

Attitude: Sporting.

Solution: Accept loss gracefully; retire to house pleading heat; belabour servants until racquet breaks."

Sigh. I really should get round to writing that modern book of manners...

You Know Me, part 3.

OK, so I'm a sucker for personality tests; good ones, that is, not 'Which Desperate Housewife are your shoes like?' of course.

So this one is interesting; I'm a cautious artist, which is quite a nice way of describing me. The extraordinary thing is how very low I score on confidence. Ouch.

Interestingly, though, it rates me as an ISTP on the Myers Briggs, whereas two years ago I was an ISTJ; I think it's more accurate, as the judging aspect of my old categorisation indicated much stronger adherence to rote and rules and convention than I have. Also, the ISTP is fiercly territorial, which is accurate...

Of course, the problem I now have is working out how to make use of the insight...

Mirror Crack'd

I love Time Out for the moments of utter last moment woo it allows you. I stopped picking up the mag a year or two ago (I decided that £2 a week was too much to pay for the illusion of a cultural life) but just by chance I flicked through a copy in the office the other day. There, nestling in the also-rans in the film section, was a single line: a one off showing of Mirrormask at the NFT, followed by a Q&A with Dave McKean.

I think I may have actually squeaked out loud in the office.

Alas, on ringing for tickets the NFT tell me it's booked up. But I can queue for spares 30 minutes before doors open.

Oh yes. Yes, indeed.

Mirrormask first popped into my conciousness... ooh, years ago. I like Mr McKean's work very much - even looked into getting him to do something for the Dr Who website, only to be given a polite 'he's busy' by his agent. So the idea of a whole film done in his painterly goth-collage style was... overexciting. I'm a sucker for a pretty movie. But then it all went mysteriously quiet - a website appeared, but no release date. No advertising, no fanfare. It seems to have snuck in to the NFT by the back door, slinking through the shadows in Gaimanesque style.

I've even had the script book sitting by my bed for months - since may, in fact, when Ian bought it as a courting present. It was unread, as I didn't want to go in knowing too much about it.

So... I was pretty excited when I managed to get tickets after getting up at the hellishly early hour of ten last saturday. And then, the film.

It's great. Really. Flawed, yes, but very very lovely. It's classic Henson, too - a dark fantasy for solitary ten year old girls who don't like boy bands, and right out of the Labyrinth / Dark Crystal tradition.

From the Q&A afterwards it was clear that McKean sees the failings of the film; if anything, he was much to hard on it. Artistic training tends to teach you to criticise your work - it's how you improve - and I suspect that he was only seeing the shots-that-didn't-composite properly, or glitchy CGI. But the audience just don't see that - it's the kind of thing you only notice when you've been locked in an edit suite for two years. The audience saw a dark fairytale, unlike anything else filmed before.

Actually, the only thing it needed was a bit of ruthless exec-ing; it looses pace about three quarters of the way through, and a tiny bit of tightening up would make it a world-beater. Specifically, it doesn't need the 'Close to You' mechanical dolls section; whilst beautiful, and cool sounding on paper, it just disrupts the flow of the story, and doesn't really give any more depth to any of the characters. Alas, I get the feeling that it was the only bit that Gaiman (the co-writer) and McKean really agreed on, which is why, I assume, it made the final cut.

Gina McKee is a fantastic choice for the mother/evil queen role; she has a slightly ethereal quality which sits uneasily alongside her very real presence, which makes the transition between Mum-to-a-difficult-teen and jealous-faerie-bitch quite natural. And of course, Rob Brydon is just genius. He's so bloody affable!

But the look of the film is a triumph. I was really wondering how McKean's work would translate into motion graphics; it would be hard to maintain the level of density and constructedness in his illustration in a film setting. But it turns out his bricolage technique - compositing by any other name - is simple to translate. I asked him about the challenges of going from flat to film, and he basically said that as he works by building raw images up into a whole on a computer, it was pretty simple to extend that to see the shot footage as just more source material.

The man has a good eye, too - the direction was unobtrusive, but not pedestrian at all.

So what are the stand out images? Well, the visual density of the piece makes it hard to single anything out - it's like dipping your eyeballs in golden syrup and glitter. The Sphynx are great - they get the human-face on puppet feel of a Tony Oursler but have convincing weight and solidity in the story world. Sequences with the black Queen vomiting out darness are as disturbing as a Chris Cunningham video. Throwing down books to hitch a lift is a genius sequence, well executed. The Cities are marvellous, with a sharded, changeable feel that suits the hypnogogic imagery.

It seems a shame, then, that Sony don't seem to know what to do with the picture; how or whether to market it, or what market it's for. And it needs a cinema release; it will be beautiful on DVD, yes, but you need a twenty foot screen to appreciate the richness of the visuals

So - to sum up. An amazing opportunity to see a film that will become a lost masterpiece even before a commercial release. I feel sad that so few others got the chance to see it too.