Month: March 2007

Attention hostees! Dreamhost are moving the mail server we’re on, tomorrow night. Downtime should be 2 hours. Figure on more.

[note: no email should be lost, blah blah blah]

“I’m the Urban Spaceman” on a kazoo. Played through a wah-wah pedal. No kidding. Also: the Doctor Who and Rainbow themes, ditto.

The full name of the my country of birth and normal residence is complex. More complex, indeed, than seems reasonable for what is – functionally – an oddly-crinkly splat of land off the West coast of Europe.

See, until the Acts of Union 1707, we had the Kingdom of England, and the Kingdom of Scotland (don’t ask about Wales right now, just roll with it). The Acts styled the new, single state thus, in article III:

III. That the United Kingdom of Great Britain be represented by one and the same Parliament, to be styled the Parliament of Great Britain.

But here’s the thing; at this point in history, capitalisation rules were not the same as they are now, and the word ‘United’ is commonly held to have been descriptive. Thus, the long-form name of the country created by the Acts was the ‘Kingdom of Great Britain,’ or – for short – ‘Great Britain.’ These are the forms used in legislation post-1707.

This does not, of course, tally with the opinion of many Britons, who think of their country as ‘The United Kingdom’. Now, that form came into use with the Act of Union 1800, enacted at the start of 1801. Wikipedia is quite clear and consistent on the issue:

1707-1800: “Kingdom of Great Britain”

1801-1927: “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland”

1927-: “United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland“

(Note that it took five years from 1922 to change the country name. There’s a natural inertia to such things, apparently).

However, clarity and consistency do not imply a lack of dissent, and the Discussion page for the Kingdom of Great Britain article becomes a knock-down, drag-out, even (bizarrely self-styled, by one participant) gladiatorial contest. It’s a cracking read, if only to gain an insight into what rational people have to go through to make Wikipedia what it is.

Personally:

1. I’m persuaded by the argument therein that the current (protected) Wikipedia stylings are reasonable.
2. The distinction between the state from 1707 and from 1801 seems rational and useful.
3. I’m glad I’m currently in (the Republic of) Ireland, and don’t have to worry about this stuff so much.
4. Let’s not mention the name of the national flag, eh?

I’m in London Tuesday and Wednesday this coming week, sorting out a bunch of SciCast stuff. On Tuesday evening I’m at a NESTA networking event; Wednesday hopefully at a preview of Sunshine. Anyone else in town?

I’m slightly appalled that none of the Robot Wars gang appear to have built this, since it’s rather neat: self-balancing scooter board thingy. In Norwich. With QVC piss-take end to the video.

[Hat tip to the good Dr. Bartos, erstwhile of this parish’s comments]

[update: link to the builder’s own site]

Lawrence Livermore National Labs have won the contract to build America’s first new nuclear warheads in 20 years. Damn, I should have pitched for that work, if only to get the rejection letter.

(via Kottke)

Legend has it that one of the ways things worked on Tomorrow’s World was that a researcher, when they thought they might have a story, would immediately write a script. Only when that was done would they start making calls and trying to work out what the story was. At which point they’d update the script. Iterate until done.

While borderline barking, one of the points of working like that was that, at any given stage, there was a script that a director could pick up and go and shoot. Early in the process it was likely to be nonsense, but at least there was something workable – and it helped focus the iterations. It’s a dangerous approach, because it’s easy to get trapped in a blind alley, but nevertheless it’s still sometimes a good way of working.

This article about Adobe’s development model for Photoshop CS3 sounds remarkably similar. Interesting.

Supposedly, I’m down to three days a week, from around now. It’s not going to happen in practice, of course, but I do need to start nicking bits of time from the TV project to write a couple of conference sessions for later in the year, and to get back into the schools/web video project that starts up again in April.

The trouble is, I have – and always have had – a serious problem coping with shifting contexts. My brain feels like it turns to mush, and I end up being entirely incapable of focussing on either the project I’m switching out of, or the one I’m attempting to switch into.

My suspicion has always been that this is to do with the complexity of the projects, but I may be flattering myself there. Certainly, the conference things really aren’t that hard. Well, OK, one of them is an overview of copyright law, but most of the content is stuff I sorted out for SciCast last year, so its not…

Er…

What was I talking about?

See, I can’t even construct a coherent blog post. Bleurgh.

The attached may give you an idea of why posts here have been rather sparse of late. That’s the production schedule for last month, as it finally ended up – it changed on a more-or-less daily basis. Managing it is starting to get a little easier, in that we’ve now only about nine days’ filming and about six/seven shows in progress to juggle around. That said, March is looking rather similar, and… I’m supposedly down to three days/week. Yeah, right.

Anyway – if you were wondering what TV production looks like, this is what it looks like from my desk, when it’s not looking like a backlog of scripts to review or when I’m not in one of the edits or dubs or whatever.

Fun!

Finally, a use for UGC: a cash cow for creative types. Genius.