The Daily Grind

Surprisingly interesting article in the Guardian about educational background and social mobility. Both surprising and interesting because it mostly avoids the easy stereotype-bashing wins.

• Music films and stories for preschool children.
• Interviews with the Artistic Director of the Scottish Ensemble.
• Water rocketry from the National Physical Laboratory.
• Genomics films by researchers from the Sanger Institute and EMBL-EBI.
• Schools’ shows from multiple science centres in the North of England.
  An odd combination. Such is my life.

The Hamptons-set “Tea Partay” film was pretty good, but this takes the proverbial (digestive) biscuit:

Genius.

Tip o’ the pith helmet to the Gupta for the link.

Sir David Attenborough reflects, in a speech given in London a week or so ago, on the future of public service broadcasting. I say ‘reflects,’ because much of his speech, as he admits himself, concerns the path we’ve taken to get here.

This is crucial background and perspective. There’s something naïve – gloriously, willfully, preciously naïve – about the concept of Broadcasting in the Public Service, and the people who pioneered that thinking. I was privileged to start in television when I did, and indeed where I did: children’s programmes, and production personnel in Leeds in general, understood this stuff intuitively.

Today, while I’m sure there are pockets within the BBC for whom Attenborough’s sentiments will resonate, I worry that for most television people the history he describes will feel quaint, even archaic.

I worry, overall, that on something like a decade timescale, the BBC may be doomed. This is one of the reasons I didn’t take SciCast to them in the first place, and it’s still why I’m not convinced that a broadcaster would be a ‘natural’ home for the project.

Faced with a choice between ‘Public Service’ and ‘Broadcasting’, I’ll pick the former. It’s a less grandiose goal, but I’ll take something over nothing. This is essentially where I stood with children’s programmes four years ago, and my result is SciCast – public service, not broadcasting, a tenth the budget I used to have, but at least it exists.

There are possible paths on which we wouldn’t encounter such a decision over the BBC as a whole. Avoiding it, however, would require a mass public awakening of what they stand to lose if PSB evaporates. In that future, Attenborough’s talk reads less like harking back to the beginnings, and more like an initial call to arms for a coming campaign.

Sometimes, I wonder if the BBC’s slogan should be ‘We know what’s good for you.’ It is their curse, and their burden, that many people dislike and distrust the BBC for behaving in accordance.

But it happens to be true.

At this time of year, a gentleman’s thoughts turn to his portable telephony device. Specifically, his thoughts proceed: “My, I’ve been lugging this brick around for a long time. I wonder when I’m due a new one?” Whereupon he attends to the selection of products available, from which he may choose.

Apparently my N95 has heard. We’ve been broadly reconciled, these last few months; while I still think the user interface is dreadfully (and, at times, hilariously) inconsistent, the GPS navigation system is surprisingly good, the video camera is still as good as they come, and I’ve barely scratched the surface of things like live video streaming, uploads directly to Flickr, and so on.

Trouble is, while I admire the phone’s capabilities, the ruddy thing plain doesn’t work. This week, for example, it’s suddenly decided that rather than taking a minute or two to lock down its position via GPS, it’s going to take more like twelve minutes. And now the antenna has decided – apparently spontaneously – that it doesn’t like working inside a car after all.

On Wednesday, it suddenly forgot all the custom words I’d entered into its dictionary over the last 12 months. Every single one. And it’s refusing to save any new ones I add, too, which makes texting an awful chore.

On the other hand, it’s finally decided that it does like iSync after all, and it cooperates perfectly… which it didn’t even after the last round of software updates.

Personally, I think it’s too clever by half, and it’s decided it’s fed up of listening to me talking so much rubbish, so it’s just quietly mocking me in the only ways it knows how. Hence, my next phone will be a whole lot more dumb.

iPhone, then.

This week, I watched Ratatouille, Pixar’s 2007 film. It’s fabulous. Not just a good animated film, but a great film. Genuinely lovely.

I’m fascinated by how Pixar do it; how they keep churning out terrific films. Even Cars, which should have sunk under my general ambivalence, was a charming study of an almost-lost way of life.

This article at McKinsey Quarterly, then, is right up my street – it’s Ratatouille director Brad Bird musing on what makes Pixar such a successful and innovative place. You have to register to read the full thing, but there’s a summary here. Either article is worth your time, if you’re into this sort of thing.

John Coombes gets all entropic about his coffee. Delicious.

I missed this from Gia last week:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=XbVRTM4F7Bs

She had the script with her at the SciCast Awards last Friday, but would only show me her contract, stapled to the front cover, and that she wouldn’t let me read. She wouldn’t even fan the pages so I could confirm it was indeed a screenplay underneath.

Now, I more-or-less lost interest in the X Files after a couple of series, when it became clear that they didn’t know whether it was an episodic or ‘arc’ show either. I also became completely confused by the order in which episodes seemed to be broadcast, a situation not helped by my not having a TV in the early days. Of course, there wasn’t really a web at the time on which fans could write episode guides – I think the first such site to be anything like comprehensive was the Lurkers’ Guide to Babylon 5.

Nevertheless, if Gia carries on posting stuff like this I’ve a sneaking suspicion that her enthusiasm is going to infect me. Like some insidious black oil, presumably.

Drat.

Hoefler & Frere-Jones write about ¶, ß, and &.

I love that people care so much about this sort of stuff. Also, that exploring it leads me to places like this. Should I ever find myself employing printworkers towards the end of August, I shall have to ensure I throw theme a wayzgoose.

From my hotel this morning I managed to be just sufficiently coherent to publish the list of SciCast Awards 2008 winners to the SciCast blog. It’s taken me this long to muster enough strength to note them here.

We had a terrific afternoon with the ceremony yesterday – lots of excitement, lots of impressed guests, lots of palm trees, and hotdogs inhaled at a frightening rate. Huge thanks to everyone who helped out, turned up, cheered, clapped, etc.

Photos and video over the next week or so.

Personally, I’m going to have a bit of a sleep on this train. Yay for cheap weekend first-class tickets.