It was inevitable that music downloads would have to start being paid for; thankfully, with the iTunes Music Store, Apple have made the process of parting with cash in exchange for MP3/AAC encoded music as painless as possible. It will be interesting to see how the downloads are priced when the service becomes available in the UK.
Manchester Piccadilly used to be a depressing place to travel through; the daytime flourescent-lit and stuffy concourse did nothing alleviate the stress that train travel (in the UK) can often in induce. Thankfully, spurred on by the city’s hosting of the 2002 Commonwealth Games, the station has undergone a transformation; the concourse is now greatly expanded, is naturally lit, open, inviting and the corporate colour of fast food and major newsagent chains no longer seems prominent within its overall ambience. The place even has travelators; a rare sight north of Birmingham I can tell you. Perhaps symptomatic of our mobile obsession, something I noticed that was largely absent from the station was the good old public telephone. I had to ask someone before I was directed to a corner in which three of them hung miserably on the wall. More surprisingly, for all the modernity on display around me, only one of these neglected machines worked.
My experience of Manchester Piccadilly has always been as a place to change trains between my journey from Newcastle to Crewe; now I’ll no longer try and avoid the place by taking an alternative route.
When I was a knee-high tike, I had a habit of mishearing and therefore misunderstanding certain phrases said by grown-ups around me. For example ‘chest of drawers’ became ‘Chester Drawers’, i.e, drawers made in the City of Chester. When someone, having a hard time getting a grip on things, said ‘I’m really struggling to make ends meet’, I always heard that as ‘I’m really struggling to make hen’s meat’, to which I thought, why don’t you simply go out and buy some chicken? Kids eh?
One of the best features of Camino’s tabbed browsing system is the ability to launch links from other applications into the new tabs rather than new windows. This is useful when browsing with NetNewsWire; a series of headlines can be chosen for later reading without having multiple windows littering the screen. I was hoping that the latest beta version of Safari would include this useful feature, but unfortunately it seems to have been overlooked. Update: J sets the record straight.
So it is technically impressive and the film-makers may have sweated over 600 takes to get the shot, but, to agree with Adam, I find the new Honda ad to be a dazzlingly unoriginal piece of work. Perhaps its only redeeming feature is its lack of heavy-handed CGI; these events really happened, which I suppose counts in its favour.
Apparently, half the population are resistant to vCJD, the human form of Mad Cow Disease. That’s good news, but scientists may have discovered the rather grisly explanation for this statistic: half of us are descended from human-flesh-eating troglodytes that evolved the resistant gene through exposure to an earlier form of the disease.
Mr G.W. Bush will be immune then.
It never occurred to me that the World Wide Web was a mere twinkle in Tim Berners Lee’s eye during last Gulf war; the Web plays such a huge part in my life that I have trouble remembering how I got my fill of news without it. Being 15 at the time, I could probably think of better things to do than consume the latest on George Bush Snr’s campaign against Saddam. I’m certain that there was no blanket coverage of the war on TV (on the four terrestrial channels in the UK anyway); but that’s not to say that the 1991 Gulf War wasn’t a turning point in the whole War / Media relationship. Shortly after the war ended, Roy Harper wrote a song called ‘The War Came Home Tonight’ in which he addresses the issue of our experience of war via television. Twelve years later, the lyrics of this song seem to be even more relevent; the war comes home when the people who are reporting it to us get attacked; when blood, fresh from the cameraman’s wounded face, transgresses the TV medium by dripping onto the lens and seemingly onto the the glass of the screen. I agree with Mal, amid the confusion and the misinformation broadcast on TV, this is an image that will endure.
Unlike the war 12 years ago, we now have the web to aid us in our desire for information. According to this BBC interview with Jakob Nielsen, a result of this is that we are now ‘desk-chair generals’. Nielsen suggests that the web is a better medium for gathering information about the War because the content is more focused and in a form that is easier to digest. I’d take this a step further by suggesting that web based news has to be like this for the simple reason of archiving. If BBC News Online produced breaking news that is speculative and potentially innaccurate, any future search on the site would result in false information. Twenty-four hour news coverage on television seems to be a different matter; while news reports from the front-line can be edited and checked before being broadcast, news readers rely on unsubstantiated information for the purposes of filling air time. I tuned in to BBC News 24 over the weekend and on more than one occassion, news was broken and not followed up; it’s like a cat pouncing on its inanimate prey only to sidle off a second later in disinterest. When the US Army entered the outskirts of Baghdad on Saturday, watching News 24 was a frustrating experience; news reports contradicted each other and the lack of solid information about the unfolding events was clearly frustrating for the news readers as well.
I think the web is a place for much more considered news and analysis about the War in Iraq, but I suppose it can only be left up to the reader to filter out the truth from the misinformation.
With the release of Final Cut Pro 4 and Shake 3, Apple’s suite of digital production software is looking better than ever. What I would give to get my hands on some of this stuff! I don’t think such processor-hungry software would run on my trusty iMac DVSE though 
War-huh
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
’Jolly good. Cup of tea then Bruce’
I’m assuming that’s Meg White getting her stereotypes painfully mixed up with a shocking Australian / British accent at the end of The White Stripes latest release. It’s a great album though; the duo continue to produce stripped down rock and roll that’s sure to prompt a massive increase in sales of electric guitars and drum kits.
It is my opinion that films in which giant gorillas fall in love with human females should be left firmly in 1933. There’s no doubt that King Kong is a classic film and its effects broke new ground at the time, but surely these are two reasons for it not to be remade.