Cog

Further to various posts in various places about the wonderful Honda advert “Cog“, Honda have now released the ad, plus “making of” etc as a DVD – it’s available in today’s Guardian. Ah, the joy. I’d imagine it’s also in other papers this weekend, so keep your eyes open.

Bright, flashing lights

Oddly enough, two light-related stories in the media today. Strange, the way coincidences work, isn’t it?

The Guardian has a feature about astronomers (Stick with me on this one, OK?) and others starting a campaign to reduce the levels of light pollution. We can’t see the night skies anymore, because of the rise in the use of security lights, street lights, decorative illuminations on buildings, and the like.The CPRE are wanting to cure the “night blight” (their phrase, not mine) with a variety of measures, including streetlights that switch off after a certain time, and fitting shields around exterior light fittings.

Meanwhile, over at the BBC, there’s a piece reporting that a huge majority of children now never see true darkness because there’s always a nightlight, or a light on the landing. Supposedly, only 2% of children now sleep in total darkness.

My own recent experience of how much light pollution affects us came about when I was up in Scotland at the end of February. There wasn’t a streetlight in about 50 miles, and the nights were beautiful – I’d forgotten quite how many stars and so on there are, and how clearly they can all be seen. No matter how crazed it sounds, I do think that a reduction in light pollution is nothing but a good thing – if only because it also helps reduce our consumption of power, electricity that at the moment is just thrown out into the sky so that we can see our roads and feel safe.

Genetic talents/interests

This thought may get translated into a larger piece at some later point, but for now it goes something like this:

Both my parents are journalists – which of course makes me genetically predisposed to misquoting people as and when I wish to – and infected me with their literacy and love of the English language. (Although sometimes you’d be hard put to discern that from this site) However, I always said I definitely didn’t want to be a journalist.

However, it turns out that I got into the content editing/creation side of things on a couple of the big website contracts I worked on, and enjoyed it. And now with d4d and so on, there’s obviously some kind of urge to produce written work, personal viewpoints and so on – which really is what an awful lot of journalism, when you get right down to it.

So – do we end up being interested in the same things as our parents? Or do those interests become the exact opposite of what we want to do/be? Or is it all just random coincidence?

Train fares

Over at the BBC, they’re asking for public opinion about the fact that most train fares are likely to rise significantly this year. Considering that my first response was “Fucking Robbing Cunts”, I doubt mine’ll get published anytime soon.

Actually, it worries me as to what they term as a “significant” rise – since moving to Manchester four years ago, the price of a standard return ticket to London has risen from £80ish to £175ish today. And that’s not even first class. So if it’s been going up by £20-25 per year anyway, what the hell is a significant rise going to be?

Peterloo

Sometimes I think I should just pat my TiVo, because it’s such a neat device. Channel Four has recently had a series on called “Georgian Underworld“, a documentary about (unsurprisingly) Georgian Britain, and some of the lesser-publicised (in fact, completely bloody unknown, in a couple of cases) factors about life in that time. I’d managed to see most of them when they were broadcast, but I’d missed the fact that one was being transmitted on a completely different day. (Helpful of the programmers, wasn’t it?) Anyway, because of TiVo’s Season Pass feature, it still got recorded.

Bizarrely, it was actually the edition I’d most wanted to see – about the Peterloo Massacre. As I’ve noticed and noted on more than one occasion, my knowledge of UK history is woeful. Well, on a good day it’s woeful – on a bad day it’s simpy fucking abysmal. When my parents were up here a while back, we were walking in the City Centre, and my father said something about Peter Street being where the Peterloo massacre had taken place- an event I knew absolutely sod all about.

Anyway, the programme was all about that, and it was fascinating. The entire series has been very innovative and quirky in it’s styles of being shot – each one was done by a different director, in different visual styles. Some have been stunning, a couple have been distinctly ish. The one on Peterloo was done in a courtroom style, as an inquest on one of the people killed, and how the story came out of what happened. For me the real lithmus test is whether I’ve learned something from it – and in the 90 minutes it was on, I learned more about one portion of British history than I did in four years at secondary school. Sad, isn’t it?

Sins – Sloth

Today, Acerbia’s request is for Sloth. This is obviously a weird week for these sins, the days seem to be mimicing (mimicking?) them pretty well. Having been to the dentist’s (no sloth there, unfortunately) I’m now back to feeling as shite as I always do post-dental-anaesthetic. So I’m going to just vegetate a bit and collapse. I wish I knew what it was about that dental stuff that makes all my joints feel like I’ve got ‘flu, but there we go. So Sloth is easy.

Dentists – again

Well, I’m off again to the dentists, and hopefully this temporary crown will be a lot less temporary than the last one. It lasted less than six hours before falling out. Distinctly unimpressed – but then, that’s life.

Back later.