Posts by 81stcolumn
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Sacha -
I no longer have a TV and have been quietly waiting for a subscriber on demand model that goes beyond the cable style models I have seen in the past. So perhaps my view is quite limited these days.
Are such events inextricably intertwined with television now anyway? How much influence does time-shifting have on those common cultural moments?
And yeah these are the pertinent questions - I would accept the idea that that such cultural moments were largely a product of TV and thus a technology fad excepting two issues (vaguely linked).
i) People have engaged in collective behaviour for longer than TV has been around, TV may have provided a more magnified and widespread medium.
ii) Time-shifting means I would never hear the collective gasp and roar that is shared when people watch things at the same time. It's possible that this timing effect is important to in some way.
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Trivia fans may care to note that, thanks to the impetus of the 1974 Commonwealth Games, New Zealand went colour two years before Australia. I still remember seeing one at the Cantebury A&P show, then the wonder when a boxy Thorn set arrived in our lounge.
We watched the CWG portion of the 50 years celebration via Ondemand (ta orc*n). My wife bless her, was close to tears at watching Dick Tayler take the 10,000m. On reflection I wonder whether in the future there will ever be room for live FTA broadcast. It would seem a strange life indeed to go without shared cultural moments of this type. FWIW my moment was watching Linford Christie take Gold in Barcelona - I remember sticking my head out of a third floor window and announcing "he's done it...!!" to the bemused street three floors below.
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Because the App Store doesn't sell porny apps? Really? You might be making a bit much of one phrase ("freedom from porn") in a personal email to a punter. It's not that unreasonable to cite that as a selling point on a device kids will use.
But I do find his other comments add a more revealing context;
'By the way, what have you done that is so great? Do you create anything or just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?'
which was how he finished that piece of discourse.
Which led me to comment in my blog:
Over the years I have been told;
You can’t be creative – you don’t own a Mac
You’re not a serious educator – you don’t own a Mac
You gotta be a music pirate because you don’t own an iPod (WTF !)
I wait with interest for the day someone calls me a pervert because I don’t use an Apple branded product and live in the Job’s endorsed, walled garden.
All true, and I don’t get this type of commentary from Linux users.
But I'm not going to be hating on Steve for making an appliance that just works, and defending that just-works status.
And if I could believe that the scope of the issue was limited to devices that 'just worked' I wouldn’t be hating either. But when a senior learning advisor in a University cannot be distinguished from an Apple salesman, I do think we may have gone beyond "just works".
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Entering this graveyard in Deiniolen where I used to live was in its own way like confronting war graves, row upon row of grey slate faces sacrificed in the battle for a living. It says a lot about the present state of the slate mines in the region that there appears to be one or two marble headstones appearing now.
When I moved to Sheffield one of my guilty pleasures was to ride through the old general cemetery on my way to and from work. Beauty, decay and neglect it is one of life’s great installations. A real winter Sunday place, with all the relief that comes with it.
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I don't get it - I'd hardly call the denizens of the North Shore a barometer for the nation's political mood.
Worse, has the North Shore become the equivalent of America's mid-west and I haven't noticed......
Notwithstanding the value-leden term I am feeling as though I ought to be aplogising to someone for a mighty foul deed.
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Well it seems that auntie beeb has given us the stamp of approval -
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I tried for Arthur Miller. But ended up with Doc Brown. So instead of getiing laid I got a hot meal and a bath.....
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I do wonder what the queen said to that nice Mr Cameron.
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Charming and haunting at the same time, this piece from the BBC.
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I think it’s fair to say that no party has really suffered more under the FPP system that the now Lib-Dems and their predecessors the SDP and Liberals. But the real point of this note is to draw your attention to another bit of British electoral history. Could it really be true that the fate of David Steel and the Liberal party has finally undermined by a puppet ?
But oh boy what a puppet.....