currybetdotnet Doctor Who archive
Too much David Tennant on TV? More like too many politicians if you ask me...
In response to claims that David Tennant was on BBC television too much over Christmas, a Conservative MP seems to think he appeared on over 200 channels.
Taking A©ID in Cambridge and Covent Garden
It seems that some market stall holders are prepared to try and protect their own intellectual property with A©ID's "No photography" signs - whilst at the same time ripping off other people's copyright and trademarks.
BBC Radiophonic Workshop Q&A at the Camden Roundhouse
On May 17th I went to see an evening with 'The Radiophonic Workshop' at Camden's Roundhouse, which was part of their Short Circuit festival of electronica. Yesterday I posted my review of the gig. Photo by Stickpeople Before the show started there was an hour long Q&A session with 5 members of the Radiophonic Workshop, which I was lucky enough to attend. Here are some of my notes from the event. The conference circuit Thanks to their involvement with Doctor...
BBC Radiophonic Workshop live at the Camden Roundhouse
"BBC Radiophonic Workshop live"
Read my review of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop gig at Camden's Roundhouse, along with my notes from the Q&A session which preceded it.
'Local Newspaper Week' - Being local...
This week has been, according to the Newspaper Society, 'Local Newspaper Week'. It seemed like an opportune moment to blog about some of the things I've noticed about my local newspapers since I moved to Muswell Hill. I've been collecting clippings and pictures of the Muswell Hill Journal and Ham & High Broadway since October, and so far this week I've blogged about advertising, some of the issues around local democracy and the potential impact of the local council's own...
The Ideal TARDIS
I spotted an image of the TARDIS lurking in one of the publicity posters for this year's Ideal Home Show at Highgate Station. It is always nice to see one of the icons from my favourite ever television programme acting as cultural visual shorthand. The BBC is usually fiercely protective of the TARDIS design. Even back in the 1980s it was one of the elements of the series that was copyright to BBC Enterprises, and in 2002 the BBC astonishingly...
Currybet's law - 5 reasons why Doctor Who always crops up in BBC meetings
Currybet's Law
The more BBC staff you put in a meeting room - the more inevitable it becomes that one of them will mention Doctor Who.
London Model Engineering Exhibition at Alexandra Palace
Following my recent trips to the BBC Studios and the old Victorian Theatre, I was back at Alexandra Palace again at the weekend. This time it was for the "London Model Engineering Exhibition". It was an unashamedly niche and geeky event, but I'd invited my young nephew along, which was my excuse anyway. It was a strange mix of a trade show and an exhibition. On one stand, for example, you could by sophisticated engineering equipment that would set you...
Unpacking the TARDIS
When moving countries, like I've just done, one of the most worrying things is packing up all your 'precious things', plonking them in the back of a van, and hoping that after a couple of ferries and a few thousand miles they end up intact at the other side. Amongst the things I moved, one I was anxious about was my Holdcourt Ltd TARDIS telephone box. I bought it second-hand in St. Ives in the late 1990s, but according to...
Insert your own lame "It's the end of the world as we know it" gag here
I've never seen so much global excitement about particle physics as there was yesterday, but I think Al Jazeera must take the prize for playing up the sensational angle of the story on their homepage. For most of the day, the whole complex area of sub-atomic particles was reduced to the following headline and strapline: "Scientists start 'big bang machine' - critics fear the experiment could go wrong and destroy the earth." The alarmism was neatly punctured by the very...
A lifetime of lost playlists: Part 2 - The kids are alright
Yesterday, I began a series of posts looking at how format changes over the last 30 years have shaped the way that I have organised and listened to music. I was also lamenting the fact that there was no digital file recording my music 'attention data' over all those years. My 'most listened to' playlist on iTunes only covers the years since I have had an iPod, rather than including the musical 'highlights' of my youth. My childhood music...
The future of Excel - according to Doctor Who
Spoilers don't respect borders, and so even in Greece I know that tonight's Doctor Who sees the long awaited <SPOILER ALERT!>. It was nice to see something familiar in last week's episode too - although not the landscape of Midnight, which, thanks to the deadly Xtonic rays, had never been seen by human (or Time Lord) eyes before. No, what was reassuringly 21st century was the fact that however far into the future we are in the Whoniverse, it doesn't...
The BBC need a TARDIS to transport their Doctor Who RSS URLs
There was an astonishing message in the official BBC Doctor Who News RSS feed yesterday: Now that we've switched over to our shiny new site, our news stories are being created in a different way. Therefore you'll no longer see news stories added to this page. Instead, you'll find them if you follow the link below. More importantly, if you subscribe to our RSS news feed using the link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/news/syndication/rss091.xml you'll need to update it to: http://feeds.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/rss.xml That way you'll...
Doctor Who and the Fan Who Never Was
I noticed a flurry of referrals from The Pirate Bay and Mininova this week, which is, frankly, a reversal of the normal direction of traffic from me to those sites. My recent interview on currybetdotnet with Paul Wilson about file-sharing - "Doctor Who and the Pirates" - has been cited in the latest round of the saga about Big Finish and the people who upload their work to peer-to-peer networks. An open response to the Big Finish podcasts was posted...
Postcard from Macau #4: Hong Kong's missing TV archive
I recently spent three weeks visiting Macau, the former Portuguese territory on the south coast of China. As a former colony like Hong Kong, it is now a 'Special Administrative Region'. This post is one of a series looking at aspects of information design, user experience, internet use and journalism that interested me when I was there. In the first of my posts about my recent trip to Macau, I mentioned the Sunday Morning Post. This is an English...
The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Doctor Whoniverse
Thirty years ago today, at 10:30pm on a Wednesday night, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a new landmark sci-fi comedy - the first part of Douglas Adam's "The Hitch-Hikers Guide To The Galaxy". I was first introduced to the radio series by a school friend. Staying round his house in the early 80s, we'd stay up as late as we could get away with, listening to some C90 recordings he had of the episodes. He didn't have totally impeccable taste mind...
Doctor Who and The Pirates
In the 1960s, as Patrick Troughton's era drew to a close, Doctor Who faced The Space Pirates. By the 2000s it was Internet pirates who posed a threat to the Doctor's adventures. Audio drama producers Big Finish have found their officially licenced Doctor Who stories leaking onto peer-to-peer file-sharing networks. To help combat this, they've launched their own legal download service. I spoke to Paul Wilson from Big Finish about the 'battlefield' they face. A little while ago I...
Top Gear the second most popular downloaded TV show on BitTorrent
Yesterday TorrentFreak published an end of year round-up of Top 10 Most Pirated Movies and TV Shows of 2007. Nestling in amongst the usual suspect at #2 in the TV chart was the BBC's Top Gear. Top 10 TV downloads - Most popular episode on Mininova 1. Heroes (2,439,154) 2. Top Gear (1,217,923) 3. Battlestar Galactica (706,209) 4. Lost (705,724) 5. Prison Break (608,487) 6. Desperate Housewives (457,805) 7. 24 (524,303) 8. Family Guy (522,839) 9. Dexter (435,670) 10. Scrubs...
Doctor Who against ID cards?
Thanks to the successfully revived show I'm very easy to buy for at Christmas these days - and a good proportion of my presents came branded with the Doctor Who logo in several variations. I also got this card from Paperlink, drawn by Steve Best. At first glance it is just a joke about relative dimensional properties of the TARDIS. A closer inspection, however, seems to reveal a subliminal message from the Doctor about Britain's plans for an ID card...
I'm gonna spend my Christmas with a Dalek
Well, not literally, we'll actually be trying to balance Western European traditions and Greek Orthodox Christmas in Crete, as opposed to last year when we were in Munich, and the year before when we were in Qatar. However, anyone who has been checking out my last.fm profile will realise that I am now only half the Grinch I used to be, and near the top of my Christmas pop charts is The Go Go's "I'm Gonna Spend My Christmas With...
I make Doctor Who news at last
Doctor Who versus the Darleks on BBC Prime
"The Tardis and Multiplatform" - Julie Gardner talks about Doctor Who's multi-media incarnations
Doctor Who and the Vanishing Plaques
National Television Awards vote seems wide open to multiple vote fraud
Why my Doctor Who blog failed: Part 6 - Enlightenment
Why my Doctor Who blog failed: Part 5 - Terminus
Why my Doctor Who blog failed: Part 4 - The Invisible Enemy
Why my Doctor Who blog failed: Part 3 - The New Adventures
Why my Doctor Who blog failed: Part 2 - The Long Game
Why my Doctor Who blog failed: Part 1 - The Greatest Show In The Galaxy
Advert banned for being unfair to corporate football
Doctor Who Cuttings Archive on 'BBC.co.uk - promoting Doctor Who 2005'
Doctor Who exclusive later today?
The Cybus Corporation on the web
Children in Need and Doctor Who - a lot can happen in 12 years
Putting a F__k Off Dalek on the BBC Homepage isn't big or clever - part 4
Putting a F__k Off Dalek on the BBC Homepage isn't big or clever - part 3
Putting a F__k Off Dalek on the BBC Homepage isn't big or clever - part 2
Putting a F__k Off Dalek on the BBC Homepage isn't big or clever - part 1
Points Of View Publishes Dalek Homepage Feedback
Audience Reaction To The BBC's Doctor Who Themed Homepage
Daleks Invade The BBC Homepage
BBC News - Now With Doctor Who Spoiler Protection
BBC.co.uk Message Board Area At Last
United Nations Intelligence Taskforce on the web
Doctorin' the BBC Complaints site*
Complaining about the new Doctor Who
Doctor Who TV Movie on BBC.co.uk
New Doctor Who site(s) on bbc.co.uk
Doctor Who's "Rose" leaked on the internet
Distant Shores with Peter Davidson
BBC.co.uk gets animated over Doctor Who
Doctor Who back on the cover of the Radio Times
The Making of Doctor Who Webcasts
It's Tom Baker's 70th birthday
Lost Doctor Who episode recovered - but how will we 'recover' websites in the future?
Search this site
Talks & presentations
"Journalism in the digital age"
I'll be appearing on a panel with Sarah Hartley and Iain Hepburn at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on Sunday April 11th. More details...
Posts of the moment
Day of the Triffids
If everyone suddenly went blind, how long would the Internet survive, and could you still publish news on it?
With professionals of this quality, who needs 'citizen journalist' enemies?
It is hard to argue that ethics and quality set the 'professional journalist' apart from the amateur blogger, if the 'professional' keeps publishing articles so wrong that they have to be deleted.
Read more about...
- The future of news
- IA and UX events
- Local and hyperlocal news
- Martin Belam talks and presentations
- Media policy and regulation
- New media best practice
- Newspaper website design
- Notes and quotes from media and web events
- 'Old' media relationship with 'new' media
- Site search management and design
- Working at the BBC (2000 - 2005)
- Working at The Guardian (2008 - now)
Also on the site
or any current or former employers or clients.
Contact: martin dot belam at currybet dot net. © Martin Belam where appropriate.
Powered by Movable Type. Hosted by Bytemark. Manufactured in Great Britain.
