August 2004 Archives
August 30, 2004
Operation Londinium at Stratford
One of the highlights of my day out to see the National Maritime Museum's The Adventures of Tintin at Sea exhibition, was a rare chance to travel on the futuristic Docklands Light Railway. It caused one of my friends to remark "This is how the future was sold to me as a kid - travelling through tunnels in a robot-driven train.". On the way home we got caught up in another vision of the future, although this time it was...
August 29, 2004
The Adventures of Tintin at Sea
A week ago I took a day off and travelled to the National Maritime Museum to see their "Les Aventures De Tintin en Mer" exhibition, which closes on September 5th I enjoyed it a lot, although couldn't help thinking that the prominent sponsorship by Ottakar's had turned it into a merchandising opportunity - demonstrated by two of my friends simultaneously clearing out the shop's stock and their bank accounts. To be honest I find the National Maritime Museum itself a...
August 26, 2004
Vote for your favourite EastEnders characters
Last week may have seen the demise of the BBC's Pure Soap site, but we are still trying to attract that elusive young, female, soap-watching internet demographic. This week we launched a vote to find the nation's favourite ever EastEnders character We want your help to select the best characters in EastEnders history. Here's what you need to do: Look through the list of 100 characters below and select your top ten by clicking in the box alongside your favourite...
August 18, 2004
BBC Pure Soap RIP
So whilst BBC Fantasy Football clings on for its final season last knockings, today the Pure Soap site was dismantled - not so much with a bang, but at least with an amusing slice of self-deprecating humour. They offered one of the online vote's generated by a system that I look after. I'm glad that I don't have to handle the editorial side of things though, because my knowledge of soap beyond the Sunday morning Hollyoaks omnibus is zilch -...
August 16, 2004
"BBC web sites are also available" - my worst case search scenario
There are some phrases from the Graf report about search that have kept looping through my head, and the more I think about them, the more concerned I become. They are phrases like: "...a condition of also providing a worldwide web search facility should, however, be that it is reorganised to provide a truly independent capability, i.e. not one that favours BBC sites." and "Submitters to the review also argued that the BBC's current inconsistent approach to linking, the prominence...
August 15, 2004
Rediscovering vinyl
Having purchased a new record deck the other week, I am in a position to play some of my vinyl for the first time in the best part of 18 months. Before I worked at the BBC I managed one of the branches of Reckless Records in Soho - so I've picked up a huge amount of albums and CDs over the years. I'm also taking the opportunity to digitise some of the things I only have on vinyl,...
August 14, 2004
The Olympics have started on the BBC
I've never been a huge fan of the Olympics in the past. When I was growing up the events most likely to make an impact on my consciousness were the politically-driven boycott-stricken years of 1980 and 1984 - which all seemed a bit silly to a 9 year old. For Athens though I have a professional interest - the BBC has invested a huge amount of time in securing and delivering broadband media rights, and we have multi-screen interactivity on...
Television coverage of the new Premiership season
So the Premiership started today apparently ;-) Tonight Match Of The Day returns after an absence of a couple of years whilst ITV had exclusive highlights rights. The BBC has been aggresively promoting it, with TV and Radio trails based around that famous theme tune. Mind you, if you watched the Match Of The Day at 40 documentary the other day, you'd know that the national anthem of football wasn't actually the original signature theme when the show launched on...
August 12, 2004
Caution - Royal Mail genius at work
So I have to send a CD-Rom to a company of a spare hard back-up of their server web space in case the internet disappears in a puff of smoke. Should I waste the environment by buying something to package it in? Of course not, I can re-use the packaging from one of my Amazon Marketplace purchases. On one side it has a franked stamp, and a printed label of my address. I used a felt-pen to additionally obscure...
August 11, 2004
Congestion Charge expansion in West London
The Mayor of London has today published a revision to his Transport Strategy - one which allows for the expansion of the Congestion Charge into West London. The public consultation on this involved over 100,000 people responding to TfL. Predictably you-know-who was not amused, despite the fact that implementation is still two years away, and subject to further consultation....
August 6, 2004
The Making of Doctor Who Webcasts
One great thing about working at the BBC is that sometimes you get to go to really interesting internal events that we are sadly unable to give the public access to. The News 50 exhibition was one such event, and this week I went to another, a hour long presentation on how the online Doctor Who animations had come together. Executive Producers Martin Trickey and James Goss came over to Bush House today to talk about how they happened, show...
Someone else moaning about lazy journalism
"But what really gores my ox is the awareness that, since every news article I read about something I actually know is completely, utterly, absolutely, factually, wrong, I have to assume that all the ones I read about things I don't know are just as wrong." Phil hits the nail worryingly on the head in his post: What Year Is This, Again?....