Category: Uncategorized

I need to write more. I like writing, but I’ve not done much since Scope and can feel myself getting more workmanlike. The key is probably this blog — I need to get back into the habit of posting. The trouble is, I just don’t like it very much right now.

I need to spend some quality time with Movable Type 4, getting this site design (and crucially the typography) to the stage where it’s sufficiently pretty that I want to write text to show it off. Things like the old swash-italic drop caps used to spur me to pick opening words I knew looked sensational — notably not ‘I,’ which looked rubbish. And I need to re-impose Markdown formatting, because practically everything I type these days is Markdown.

I also need to fix the comment system. It’s working right now, but people seem scared off by the new default ‘isn’t actually a user registration scheme, but sure looks like one’ behaviour. Plus, published comments look like crap.

Finally, I’m taking more pictures with my N95 (it’s a rubbish phone, so I might as well use it as a camera), but uploading pictures is still more hassle than I’d like. I need to sort that — and ideally get to the stage where I can moblog properly.

Oh, and it pisses me off that my Facebook status lines are trapped within Facebook, so I might start doing Twitter -> (Facebook & blog).

Time to sweep everything away and start over, I think.

Ecto 2 has some problems with Leopard (about the only app I have that does, it seems), so I’ve installed this beta of the next version to try it out. Interesting choice between Ecto and MarsEdit.

For the longest time, I desperately wanted to see a total solar eclipse. Eventually I did, albeit for a scant seven seconds — and in those seconds I came to realise that sometime, one day, I will chase after another eclipse in hope of a better view.

I’d like to see Cherenkov Radiation. Just because it exists.

And — perversely? — I’d like to see a nuclear bomb explosion.

A bit tricky, that last one. Perhaps I’ll have to settle for these astonishing pictures.

Matt Gemmell says:

“Leopard isn’t about the Mac desktop; it’s about the Mac platform.”

…which sounds about right. For evidence, consider Core Animation, which allows developers to build fluid interfaces and data views. Which sounds dull, right?

Well, yes. But then you see things like this, and realise that maybe — just maybe — the world might be a little more pleasing in a few months’ time.

One of the aspects of SciCast that’s been done right is the website design — partly because it’s not as simple as ‘just a website design.’ Rather, there’s an entire brand image going on, with the website merely one expression of it. That’s why the posters we’ve had done look so fab — the artwork was designed from the start to work in that sort of way. It’s also why people are willing to give the website a try: it’s a very basic site, technically, but the design expresses a care and professionalism that screams ‘we’re not wasting your time!’

Huge respect, then, to the designers on the project, Tijuana in Bristol. We didn’t ask them for any of this, they just did it anyway. Lovely chaps, and chipping in solutions to problems we didn’t know we had — exactly the sort of people I enjoy working with.

And hey, they’ve done stuff with Banksy.

It’s all very well having a shiny new FireWire 800 RAID drive, but moving 740Gb of video onto it is still going to take… the rest of the day.

Monkeys.

Good job I still have 30 tapes to log and label, then.

I’ve spent a modestly ridiculous amount of time fretting about updating my main editing machine (the new MacBook Pro) to Leopard, browsing around the various forums. Reading through the thread at 2-pop, it sounds like while there are some issues, they’re relatively minor.

At least, they’re minor if you don’t have hardware cards (which will often need updated drivers), and if you’re not reliant on plug-ins.

So… oh, monkeys, I think I’m about to update my MacBook Pro. And, most likely, buy yet another new hard drive so I can back up properly. Yay Time Machine.

<ulp>

On Wednesday I delivered the last of the SciCast seminars (it went well, thanks), then high-tailed it back to Cardiff. Yesterday was spent recuperating (and helping fix taps… long story), and today… today I’m still pooped.

I’ve a mountain of stuff to do, and I should probably be dashing into the university to film some oddball stuff with the Science Made Simple crew, but I’m still pretty wrecked.

And meanwhile, I really really want to install Leopard, only there are a bunch of conflicts with Final Cut Studio and I’m entirely reliant on that at the moment, so I can’t. Harrumph.

Back to Glasgow tomorrow; back in the office — and hence blogging more regularly — on Monday, I guess. Bleurgh.

The Media Guardian today has a story about the BBC’s Natural History Unit in Bristol, which looks like it’s seeing cuts on the same sort of scale as the children’s department.

Anyone know what’s going on in Specialist Factual, or whatever that department is called this month? We know that Horizon is supposedly safe, but what of softer factual ents? Are all slightly-off-mainstream departments seeing ~40% cuts in senior production staff?

I talked last night to a chum within Children’s BBC, and it’s worse than it seems. The total losses are about 20% of jobs, but the cuts are falling disproportionately on middle-senior posts. Which makes sense, since you need support staff to make programmes, but producers and directors you can bring in as freelancers from the external talent pool.

There’s a flaw in the logic, however. They’re reducing producer, director, and associate producer posts by what is looking like 40-50%. What’s left will be a skeleton crew, which would leave basically every series relying on freelance labour for crewing up.

Only, there isn’t going to be a freelance talent pool on which to draw. Not of specialist children’s producers. Remember, the independent sector was effectively shut down three years ago, when Children’s ITV stopped commissioning. There’s nobody left to bring in, because there’s not enough work left to sustain that community.

Thus, the days of children’s TV as a specialism — of senior staff really knowing what they’re doing, and crafting the best programmes they can manage — are numbered. And the numbers are: about 550.

Give it two years, and ‘I make children’s TV’ will not be a phrase anyone utters.

Perversely, this is actually good news for SciCast and the science communication industry, because in that specific field we’re going to be left as the de facto experts. But in general, this is at best the passing of an era. At worst, it’s the abandonment of mass-audience informal learning by the one remaining organisation that could make it work.

I hate to be a doom-monger, but my argument to the science and engineering world that they need to take matters into their own hands is surely bolstered by this. There’s not even a hope of anyone else doing it, now.