Year: 2002

A good article on the state of the American music industry: Looking Grim at the Grammys. I don’t know how long it’s going to take contemporary culture to figure out, but fragmentation is the new monolith – cultures are separating along the lines of interest groups – and people belong to several over-lapping fragmented cultures rather than to the mono-culture. Technology will continue to get more adaptable and less expensive, and that means that the overheads of running a media operation should now be dropping as well. And that in turn means that a variety of entertainment product – small bands, small films, for small markets – some of which may go huge – should return to prominence. The internet is making people weirder. When will you people realise this?!

I’m going to say this quickly and get it over with. I didn’t get the Community Producer gig at the BBC, I am gutted. If you want to make me feel better about it then buy me something.

Here’s an interesting link from a couple of months ago – Jakob Neilson and the BBC Front Page. The BBC redesigned their front page a few months ago, shortly after Neilson released his book – which included an analysis of the old site. Neilson’s exercise (mainly useful for people who already have the book), takes you through the concerns that he raised about the old design and shows how many of them have now been resolved. More interesting for the geekier members of the studio audience, but hey.

Mr Morgan cannot sleep at the moment, so at half-past-one in the morning we met up for a walk around Maida Vale. We broke into Paddington Recreation Ground and talked about Lego and looked through his camcorder at nearby buildings on ultra-zoom. Then I made him a cup of tea and finally chucked him out of the door at 4am.

Ok – I’m not going to go into detail about my job interview on Friday, except to say that my friends over at Barbelith certainly played their part in trying to get me a job, while in the process… well I’ve said too much already! Tomorrow I find out whether I’ve got through to the third and final stage of the process – which will be an interview in two weeks time. Keep your fingers crossed for me, people…

Proselytising for the computing age – Why OSX is the future!

The future is Mac Porn. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. I stared salivating as soon as I saw the pictures. You can sometimes feel your heart-rate speed-up too. Weirdly I don’t think I have this reaction when looking a hot men any more. Tell me doctor, is there something wrong with me?

Everyone else is linking it, so why can’t we? Today’s completely lifted link is The Man Project – a stunning and (apparently) simple looking piece of animation which resembles those cross-section models made by slicing up dead people. The most interesting technical part of it seems to me to be the way in which the figure faces, which appears to change as you move the mouse…

The only must see thing on the net today seems to me to be Sparky’s flat – frankly it’s stunning and I want it, but more to the point it’s also incredibly well captured in multiple photos. New Boyfriend, gorgeous flat. Sparky must die…

News Shock! Prince Philip mad old racist bastard! World reels in surprise.