You know your series has made it to ‘cult hit’ status when it’s only been showing in the US for a couple of weeks, and there’s already a page of BitTorrent-distributed rips of it. All credit to Spooks/’MI-5′ (sic), though one has to wonder how long it’ll take the vultures at BBC Worldwide to sit up and take notice.
Month: July 2003
I may not move to Glasgow
Wide area wireless, rolling out across Cumbria. Oh joy, oh bliss.
25.5 mph
Got the bike on Friday: finally had chance to ride it properly today/yesterday. Verdict? Rock. On. I’d even forgotten how unpleasant it isn’t to get rained on while cycling… so long as it happens on the way home, rather than first thing in the morning.
Meanwhile, in unrelated news:
- Some excellent – and hilarious – applications for a researcher post on How2. I find it reassuring that there are so many talented people out there, and for the moment at least I can make myself forget that I’ll have to disappoint pretty much all of them.
- Carpaccio of beef (seared and crusty, not plain raw). Yum, if I do say so myself.
- I finally worked out what was goofy with my install of the PHP Gallery script. It’s the Asda PhotoCD JPEGs that are borked, not the script/ImageMagick/Gallery Remote/phase of the moon/etc. Batch convert to TIFF and back again fixed everything, so I can finally get around to posting my USA photos. Give me a few more days…
Fame at last
My friends Vinay and Bea, on Joi Ito’s blog. Is that painfully hip, or what?
Hopscotch
The staircase treads at work are all falling off, so they’re being Evo-stuck back on as necessary. Today there’s lots of ‘necessary,’ each restuck tread marked by a hand-scrawled sign reading (with a delightful tinge of oxymoron) ‘Please do not stand on this step.’
Since, in some flights, more than half the steps are so adorned, climbing the stairs has become somewhat akin to performing an inclined hopscotch.
Elitism
Hoo-ruddy-rah: At ProductionBase, bang in the middle of a stream of spectacular vitriol (from both sides) on the subject of Oxbridge prejudice in the meedja, comes this glimmer of sanity.
I hereby present Jonathan’s Theory of Stereotypes:
- All stereotypes are true, but:
- They apply only in the majority of cases, thus:
- It is never safe to apply any stereotype to any given individual.
But what of the Liberator?
Paul ‘you may as well just call me Avon’ Darrow has finally secured the rights to Blake’s 7, and he’s making big noises about a new mini-series. The BBC story covers most of the useful bits, without your having to navigate the pretty but horribly slow Flash site. Sadly, they’ve taken down Darrow’s earlier, semi-maniacal ravings, that covered the preceeding two years of the project.
But good luck to them. I’d love to see B7 back. Ambiguous heroes are in short supply.
Domestic hazards
Paper cuts: sure, we’ve all had them. Bagel cuts? Hmm. Apparently it’s possible.
The Office
On Friday morning, I rang the office to admit sheepishly that I was 400 miles away:
“Hi, it’s Jonathan. I’m going to be late in today, even for me. I’m… er… still in London.”
“Ooh, did you get lucky?”
Somehow, this rather took the edge off the feeling of insubordination. And sadly, the answer was ‘no.’
Meanwhile, in a different part of the mediasphere…
Tom Coates has similar problems with Windows. It’s surprising how much one’s desktop influences the thoughts one has. At least he can seek inspiration from stairs (great photo!).