The Daily Grind

OK, so I’ve managed to trick my N95 into talking to the updater app. Now, the updater downloads 120Mb of update (?! for a phone?), connects to the N95, starts squirting the update… and then the phone crashes. Every time.

Great.

A pleasure, then, to read stories like this. I always did have a soft spot for Esprits.

The current bane of my digitally-connected lifestyle is my new Nokia N95 übergadgettelefunkenphone. It has a fabulous camera… that takes forever to turn on, features astonishing shutter lag, and insists on offering to upload each damned picture to some random piece of blogware I don’t use over a data tariff that borders on daylight robbery. It has GPS… which takes several minutes to lock up to the satellites and then drains the battery while it fails to download the bit of map it thinks I’m on. It has a battery… which lasts a little under a day. It has a a slide design that automatically locks the keypad… then unslides itself in your pocket and manages to dial out anyway. It has 3G data… but refuses to pipe anything out over Bluetooth. And so on.

Anyway, it’s also quite the most hilariously unstable phone I’ve ever used. Yesterday it didn’t crash at all, but on Saturday it crashed four times in the same phone call. Flossie was not amused.

Now, I happen to know that there’s a software update for the thing. I can go to Nokia’s website, fumble with their web form, hoik out the phone’s battery (getting good at that now – when the phone warm-boots after a crash the microphone is disabled, requiring another power cycle to get it working again. Yanking the battery saves about a minute of waiting for it to draw cutesy animations that are, I must admit, wearing a little thin), and bash in the multi-digit ID number. At which point Nokia’s website proudly informs me that my phone’s an N95, which I can read in neat stenciled letters on the front of the thing, thanks.

Oh, and yes, offers the website, there is a software update. Download and install the Software Updater to download and install the software update. Umm… OK. My phone is usually hooked up to a Mac, but I’ll fire up the PC if that’s what it wants.

…and the Nokia Software Updater, of course, assures me there’s no such thing as a software update. 10.0.018 is, I’m told, as recent as it gets. Anything I may have heard about 11.0.026 and its ‘general stability enhancements’ is, evidently, a lie. Let alone 12.0.013, which I must have made up.

It turns out – according to discussions on Nokia’s own support site – that Orange’s locked N95s don’t play ball with the updates. So Nokia blame Orange, and Orange doubtless blame Nokia, and…

Apple, save me from this nonsense. Please!

Lovely, lovely article at BBC News Magazine in which Clive James explores sportsmen with brains, and what they bring to their sport after they’ve stopped playing. As usual with James, it’s worth reading simply for the flow of the language.

The story so far: there’s a new trailer out (playing ahead of the world’s most expensive toy advert, but luckily you can catch it at Apple’s movie trailer site instead), which appears to be for an as-yet-untitled JJ Abrams-helmed flick. Since he’s the exec producer behind Lost, it’s probably no surprise that there’s already a ‘net-wide hunt-the-wumpus game going on, as fans try to track down additional information on the new film via websites that are assumed to exist.

Is it just me who’s a bit bored by all this? I mean, I’m as much of a fan of ARGs as the next guy – which is to say, I haven’t thought about them much, but in principle I guess they might be OK, so long as they’re not like LARP – but this is a film. It’s been shot. You’re not going to influence the story, you’re just finding bits of back-story they didn’t think were important enough to put in the film itself.

My time is precious. If I’m going to choose to squander it, those who would entertain me had damn well better be doing the hard work themselves. If they expect me to work through their deliberately-obfuscated plotlines for them, then I shall take my custom elsewhere.

Bah, humbug,

Harrumph! Wikipedia already notes that Hyperdrive’s HMS Camden Lock bears the registration XH558, noting:

The set and prop designer, model maker Andrew Glazebrook is quoted that, “Its registration number XH558 is actually that of the Royal Air Force’s ‘Avro Vulcan’ bomber and was suggested by the show’s writers, Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil.”

So much for my eagle eyes.

Also: read this page for details of brake testing procedure during development. Rather than mount cameras on the plane, they strapped a photographer to the front gear strut. Interesting risk assessment exercise.

The second series of Hyperdrive started this week, and I still don’t know what to make of it. I almost gave up the first time around, but the occasional gag had me chuckling into my cocoa. This second series opener was more of the same – some cute observations, but overall somewhat ‘meh.’ Except…

Except the space ship in the series bears the registration ‘XH558,’ which is either cruising at a ludicrous improbability factor, or a clear reference to the last remaining not-quite-airworthy-but-it-will-be-any-day-now Avro Vulcan: see here, pictures here.

My concern: is it geekier of the production team for including these references, or of me for spotting them?

Don’t answer that. You can’t, because comments are still down, but even so — don’t. Humph.

Anyone I host, either at Deletetheweb.com or on their own domain, needs to be aware of this alert from our hosting provider Dreamhost: they’re physically relocating the servers this Friday/Saturday. There’ll be a roughly five-hour outage early Saturday morning, UK-time, affecting web and mail.

You shouldn’t lose mail in the process – it’ll just spool up on their servers waiting to be delivered – but if you see some weirdness, this will be why. Your websites will be down and unavailable. You’ll likely also be unable to send email during the downtime.

Back from Dorset, Cardiff, a storytelling festival, a meeting at the National Media Museum, and storytime with my nephew and nieces, to… consulting on a new Richard Hammond series. Yes, I was surprised, too.

Anyway – expect more posting than the last couple of weeks. And some more films at SciCast soon, too (finally). In the meantime, here, courtesy of Flossie, is the Welsh Space Agency. Rock on, guys.

High time I came straight out and said this:

I’ve made a substantial amount of children’s television, and I’m appalled that the current generation of children aren’t getting the sorts of inspiration enjoyed by their predecessors. Yes, the BBC is still making good stuff, but they’re now the only significant supplier, and their track-record for factual programmes in particular has been patchy for the last decade. Hence: scary times.

However, while I broadly agree with the goals of Save Kids’ TV, I think their focus on high-quality drama is part of what got us into this mess in the first place, and isn’t necessarily a full solution. Heck, I don’t even agree that television is necessarily part of that solution.

So while I’m interested that Jana Bennett’s been suggesting tax breaks (rather than top-slicing the BBC license fee, natch), and I’m delighted for the animation and pre-schools industries that they can integrate the back-end – ie. merchandise the hell out of their properties, and sell internationally by re-dubbing (see comments at that link) – neither of these help me directly.

Much more interesting to me is Tom Loosemore‘s move from the BBC to OFCOM, and the concept of a Public Service Publisher.

See – it might not be obvious from the current website, but SciCast is my first stab at ‘Children’s TV 2.0.’

I’ve spent this week in the Thomas Hardye School in Dorchester, helping groups of kids make short films. We’ll be publishing them soon, via SciCast and Films for Learning. Some of them are terrific.

Some of them are the future, right now.

Sorry, but if it takes us five years to solve all this stuff, we’ll have missed an entire generation of kids. While I should have been at Showcomotion this week, I’d only have been ranting about how it felt like dinosaurs discussing meteorites. Look over the other side of the watering hole, and there’s a bunch of ugly furry things that don’t understand this ‘cold-blooded’ concept you have going on.

But what really drives me up the wall is that I only have another few weeks before the cash runs out, and I have to do something else entirely. For the first time in my career, being a freelancer sucks.

Fascinating article over at gaming and social software blog Wonderland, relating discussion with Jesse Alexander, Executive Producer of Heroes (and Alias, and Lost). The main topic concerns crossover between television and gaming, and not merely the usual ‘how do we exploit this property?’ nonsense. No no, this is bi-directional, with TV learning lessons from the games industry.

Let’s face it, gaming isn’t niche: PWC predicts spending on games in the US will surpass that on music this year – globally, that’s already the case. That there are games that tell fascinating, wonderful, gripping stories is not accidental – that only happens when people know what they’re doing.

While I wouldn’t describe myself as a huge fan of Heroes, it does put its finger on something fresh. Perhaps it’s that it’s fluffy and light – and could feel trivial – but somehow taking itself as seriously as it does invites the viewer to buy in. It doesn’t pretend to be something it isn’t – which is lightweight entertainment – but given that, there’s a sense of buckling the belt and the show saying ‘right, let’s get this party started.’ That conviction is strangely infectious.

The best of the new Doctor Who episodes (Blink) have been similar; the BBC’s Jekyll (by the same writer) ditto; the games I tend to like (BioWare‘s stuff, notably) could be described similarly. But it needs a delicate touch: I’ve always considered Lost to be overblown, in the same sort of way that X-Files always was and, arguably, Battlestar Galactica is, unless you’re American in which case it’s probably about right (discuss, 20 marks).

Read the article; it’s interesting.