Search Terms

Posted: Tue 19 November, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Media, People, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Yesterday it was announced that Google and Microsoft (by which they mean Bing) were editing/updating 100,000 search terms linked to images of child abuse. That’s all well and good, except that

  1. I’m sure there’s a lot more than 100,000 terms that could be used/created/combined in order to find those results
  2. I’m also pretty damn certain that the main perpetrators, creators and viewers of such images don’t hunt for them using run-of-the-mill search engines like Google and Bing.
    1. And yes, OK, probably there are people stupid enough to search using mainstream search, but those are the ones that are easy (well, easier) to track down and locate anyway.

So really (as far as I can see) this is more of a sop to the media and government than it is likely to be of any real use or relevance.

Automated Projection

Posted: Mon 28 October, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Cinema, Customer Services, Domestic, Media, Seeing Films, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

Until recently, it had never occurred to me that most multiplex cinemas have now automated their film projection rooms. I still envisioned it as either being one-projectionist-per-screen, or (at worst) one-projectionist-per-[x]-screens.  The only reassuring fact from this is that I’m obviously not the only one to have not realised. (As opposed to being (apparently) the only one to never click that James the Red Engine was ‘reddy for anything’)

But no, it turns out you’re very lucky if there’s a projectionist at all. It’s all programmed, automated, and generally human-free. They have been for (at least) five or six years now, apparently.

I don’t know why it hadn’t clicked for me, because looking back it makes total sense. If you’ve got a 16-screen cinema that is (apparently) only staffed by four spotty teenagers and a manager or two, why on earth would you expect it to then have 16 projectionists? (Or even 2, one per eight screens)

What this does mean though, is that if there’s a fault in the showing, no-one knows about it unless you go out and tell someone.  There’s no-one in the room at the back, checking the quality. It’s all done automagically.

I’ve been in a couple now where the projection/showing has gone a bit tits-up – one with no sound, one where everything had a weird pink overlay to it. Both times the rest of the audience has sat there bitching, but still done nothing else, assuming (I assume) that the projectionist would “just fix it”.  I just go out and let a member of staff know it’s kippered, which gets things fixed.

I wonder if the cinemas should actually do more to let people know about those changes though?

Widow

Posted: Thu 24 October, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Daily Mail, Health, Media, News, People, Stupidity, Weirdness | Leave a comment »

This year’s symptom of the media Silly Season appears to be the “False Widow” spider, which is the UK’s most venomous spider, but is also nowhere near as poisonous/bad/evil as it’s been portrayed, along with the resultant hysteria.

For whatever reason though, it’s been all over the news, with hysterical coverage about people who’ve been bitten “and nearly died“. Of course, it’s hard to gauge how near-to-death anyone was when they actually survived – I could say I “nearly died” anytime I cough, sneeze, or have a particularly strenuous dump.

The latest ridiculously hysterical reaction was the closure of a school in the Forest of Dean because of ‘an infestation’ of false widows (for fuck’s sake)

Now yes, I’m quite sure the bite hurts – and that there are a tiny minority of people who react badly to said bites, in the same way that there’s a small selection of people who react badly to wasp stings, peanuts etc. But it’s a tiny minority who get bitten at all (most just introduce spider to literature anyway) and an even tinier minority therein who react in such a way. But if you read the media, they’re everywhere, and everyone’s being bitten.

I know, I know, it’s always been thus with the media – compare any hysterical theme story with people you actually know, and you’ll find that most of them are stories that only happen to a tiny minority. Supposedly it’s that fact that makes the stories “news”, but that hype then blows it all out of proportion/sanity, leaving idiots people with the impression it’s happening everywhere.

Sometimes I wish the media would just shut the fuck up about stupid hype-ridden hyperbolic stories, and (in an ideal world) allow people to get on with their lives without this hysterical bullshit constantly going on.

Solitary

Posted: Fri 4 October, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Domestic, Introspective, Media, News, Sociable, Thoughts | Leave a comment »

This week I’ve seen two stories about the ‘Angola Three’, and in particular Herman Wallace, who has just been released after 41 years in solitary confinement, after a judge ruled he didn’t get a fair trial. In 1972.  (Bizarrely, the reason it wasn’t a fair trial is because women were excluded from the jury, in breach of the Fourteenth Amendment.) Oh yeah, and he’s only got weeks to live, as he’s got advanced liver cancer.

The first story was in Reuters, ‘Dying ‘Angola Three’ inmate freed after 41 years in solitary confinement‘. The BBC picked up the story too, and has also had a couple of supporting pieces, one about what solitary confinement does to a prisoner, and one asking how people survive solitary confinement at all.

It makes for interesting reading, as well as a pretty damning indictment of America’s methods of jailing and punishing people, some of which I still feel hails from that Puritan background of the original settlers.

Honestly though, you can’t really imagine being in that kind of situation, of hardly having any human contact for 41 years. It’s hard to conceive of a lifetime (near as dammit my lifetime, anyway) with minimal human contact and interaction, being confined to a 9′ x 6′ cell for at least 23 hours a day. Even more so when it’s for a crime that they say they didn’t commit (and for which there’s no evidence to say they did) But that’s what these men have lived through.  The final one of the three, Albert Woodfox, is still there, still in solitary confinement. He’s been there since 1972, and there’s no end in sight.

I’ve sometimes wondered how I would handle solitude and solitary life – in some ways I’m quite close to it anyway, not needing or wanting much in the way of physical interaction. But that’s on my own terms, and it’s my own choice. If I want to go out and interact, I can do. Most of my contact with friends is via t’internet, Twitter, Facebook, mobile phone and the like. It’s still interaction, just not on a physical level in general.

How would I handle it if that solitude were enforced? If it was in a cell with a locked door? Honestly, I don’t know. And I really wouldn’t fancy finding out.

[Updated : Herman Wallace died, less than a week after being released.]

Transport

Posted: Mon 29 July, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Driving, Media, Public Transport, Travel, Weirdness | 1 Comment »

What on earth is going on with public transport in Europe this week?

In the last week we’ve had…

There’ve been other things too – the bus in Manchester ripping it’s roof off going under a bridge, for example – but it just seems like public transport is having a really bad time of it at the moment.

Not What They Meant

Posted: Thu 11 July, 2013 | Author: | Filed under: 1BEM, Cynicism, Media, Pedantry, People, Writing | Leave a comment »

Today in the EDP (well, on their website at least) there’s this headline

Murdered Wisbech pensioner’s niece makes emotional appeal six months after she was brutally stabbed to death and set on fire

Now, you know they mean “Niece makes emotional appeal six months after her pensioner aunt was brutally stabbed and set on fire“, but that’s not what it actually says.

So instead I’m going to be impressed at the moral strength of someone so distraught that she can make an appeal about a pensioner six months after being brutally stabbed and set on fire.

Yes, yes, I’m a bad person.

Masterchef

Posted: Mon 24 September, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Design, Domestic, Food, Media, Television | Leave a comment »

While I like the UK Masterchef when it’s on, I find I prefer the Australian version. I don’t know exactly why, I just do.

This week, I’ve been watching it, and found a chef who actually does stuff I really want to try – if only for being really inventive and clever.

The chef is Peter Gilmore from the Quay restaurant, and he comes up with some amazing things…

Last year’s challenge was his Snow Egg

 

And this years was a beautiful chocolate dessert, the eight-texture chocolate cake, which I’d just love to try…

 

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