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My media this week…

October 28, 2012 By Dan Thornton

A somewhat occasional rundown of what I’ve watched, read, listened to, and played. Ideally at some point a real geek would actually sync up a feed from the various services which track and log what I’ve been enjoying, but it’s being done manually for now to see if anyone cares.

Reading:

Finally catching up on some Cory Doctorow with Context, a collection of essays and articles which has prompted a few new thoughts of my own. Also re-read William Gibson’s Burning Chrome collection of short stories, the autobiography of motorcycle racer John Reynolds, and flicked through The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufmann as a reminder that I run a business now and need to cover all the required areas of management.

I do try to keep my Goodreads profile reasonably well updated.

Watching:

I seem to have pretty much exhausted the films I wanted to stream via Lovefilm, so this week I ended up settling for the first three episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Amazed to realise that it’s now 15 years old. Also strange to think there may be adults of legal drinking and voting age who may have never seen an episode. Without its mainstream popularity, I think the last decade of sci-fi and fantasy films and TV may have struggled a lot more.

Last weekend saw a large amount of motorsport – this weekend I’m with my son, so it’s Finding Nemo today and probably Monsters Inc tomorrow.

We did manage 30 minutes of the original Star Wars yesterday as I previously mentioned. Sadly it was the version doctored by George Lucas to make Han Solo seem guileless and with Jabba The Hut more accurately modeled on a slug posing in front of a badly lit blue screen.

Listening:

Thanks to Last.fm, it appears my most enjoyed artist of the week was Eddie Vedder, which was the brilliant soundtrack to the equally interesting film Into The Wild. I also appear to have done this in a week which included Canadian prog rock from Rush, and the English prog rock of Pink Floyd. Essentially prog rock provides one of three soundtracks to work, alongside classical music from major motion pictures, and ambient electronic music, as it’s pleasant and recognisable enough to block out background noise without actually capturing my attention.

The actual track listing is slightly cooler, beyond playing Crockett’s Theme from Miami Vice 3 times in a week.

Jan Hammer – Crockett’s Theme
Rancid – Time Bomb
Radiohead – Optimistic
RJD2 – Ghostwriter
Guided by Voices – Hold On Hope

Playing:

Forza Horizon: Awesome mix of arcade racing with elements of the more sim-style Forza
Walking Dead: An interactive adventure game serial which is great enough to have trapped me – I don’t like adventure games, didn’t watch the TV show, or read the comic.
Call of Duty Black Ops: Reminding myself how to play before Black Ops 2, and also remembering I never quite made Level 15.
Peggle: I can’t help but dabble in a bit of Peggle to relax at the end of an evening. The gaming equivalent of a crushed valium in a glass of milk. Pretending to aim balls down the screen to eliminate blocks, even if my lack of skill means essentially it’s a random number generator.

A New Hope and how entertainment has changed…

October 27, 2012 By Dan Thornton

I can still remember the first time I ever saw Star Wars Episode 5 – The Empire Strikes Back. I’d been invited to a school friends birthday party at which they brought out a film projector. Just to further date things, it involved a reel of film rather than HDMI and USB connectors.

Today I sat with my son and spent 30 happy minutes watching Star Wars Episode 4 – A New Hope together. For the non-geeks, that’s the original Star Wars with Luke Skywalker escaping a desert with Alec Guinness, and rescuing Leia. The time was cut short when I had a heartfelt request that he’d rather be playing Lego Star Wars than watching a film.

He wanted to be part of the action, not sitting and simply watching it. And viewing it through his eyes, I suddenly realised how slow the film actually moves compared to some of the things he loves – like Pixar’s output. Even then, he provides a Director-style commentary about what’s on the screen, what’s about to happen, and anything else that pops into his somewhat random mind.

It’s a feeling I often get when I attempt to watch television. As much as I can still love a slow-moving, atmospheric film, the examples of something which draws me in on television are few and far between, so I usually manage about 5 minutes before I feel like I’d rather be playing a game and actually achieving something for myself. Or writing, blogging, or doing other work.

It’s tempting to say every TV show should include as much interactivity as possible, but given the fact that I’d rather poke my eyes out than suffer the hugely successful talent shows which take this approach, it’s not the only solution.

The solution for TV and movies for me is that we get an ever increasing range of niche channels and programming which allow me to watch something over than the same episodes of the Big Bang Theory for the umpteenth time, just because it’s the least irritating option available.

Give me a custom channel of motorsport, Swedish crime television and technology/sci-fi and I’m happy – which is almost possible when I pull together about 20 different services myself, but it’s not quite as effortless as it should be by now. Why can’t there be a central hub for all channels from which I can pull what I want, and pay in aggregate, and why should so much be hampered by copyright after being shown years ago in the U.S? I’m happy to pay for legal access or put up with advertising to be able to watch, but so much is simply not available…

For once, I can’t conclude with a simple solution, but it’s definitely an indication to me that despite the brilliant rise of Youtube, iPlayer, Lovefilm etc, there’s still a long way to go before we reach the perfect entertainment solution.

Ceefax and the end of a technology era

October 23, 2012 By Dan Thornton

So the venerable television text service is no more in the UK, as the BBC closes Ceefax. The ITV and Channel 4 alternatives closed back in 2009, so it’s the end of a UK -developed technology that began in the early 1970s.

The end has been coming for a while. I can remember using the BBC service to check the football scores, and also the ITV alternative for video game coverage. But a few years ago I started sitting in front of my laptop reading the scores to my dad before the pages could cycle through.

Obviously between new interactive services, laptops, and particularly the ‘second screen’ duo of smartphones and tablets, there’s probably a very small minority who will be affected by the demise of Ceefax, which increasingly resembled a pixel art vision of the future.

But the news did bring back some happy memories of the Disposable Media project I worked on. Assembled from volunteers either already working in the media or hoping to break into it, the DM online magazine was produced entirely online via a private forum, and was available as a PDF download which managed to reach tens of thousands of people each issue.

And one memorable issue featured a cover by ITV’s teletext video game legend Mr Biffo

The scary thing is that it’s almost 5 years since that issue was produced. Since then some of the Disposable Alumni have gone onto work for a range of companies, with many in the media in some senior positions.

And even this week there has been debate about yet another venerable print title switching to digital distribution only. We knew it was happening years ago!

Nice video to refuel your creativity on Monday morning

October 22, 2012 By Dan Thornton

Mondays can be somewhat unpleasant as you stare down the barrel of a week of work and deadlines. So this two minute video might give you a bit of inspiration to keep working on your creative projects.

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Incidentally, the video appeared in my email thanks to signing up to a weekly newsletter of interesting stuff from Roo Reynolds. I’ve been culling email newsletters for a while to stop emails piling up, but the two I’m definitely keeping are both from individuals. Roo’s is full of fascinating stuff I often haven’t seen before, and Neil Perkin also produces a fine weekly update which is slightly more focused on media/advertising/social media stuff.

I’ve long thought about collecting and curating a weekly email for TheWayoftheWeb – which will be done when I’m sure I can match the standards of that pair! Let me know if you like the idea of an email full of creative, marketing and technology stuff from around the web in your inbox.

Browse 3D printers instore in Manhattan

September 20, 2012 By Dan Thornton

You might have noticed I’m obsessed with the potential of 3D Printers. Back in August 2011, I broke a personal rule about putting times on predictions, and wrote ‘2012 – the year of 3D Printing‘, which proved a popular point of view and has since been echoed by a number of other sites, including some mainstream tech blogs. And I followed it up earlier this year with some examples of progress for 3D Printing, but things have been happening so fast, it’s tricky to cover everything without being able to devote all my time to the subject.

But it’s worth noting another major milestone. In addition to a new Makerbot and a Wired cover story, Makerbot Industries is also opening its first retail location in Manhattan. (via GigaOm).

Massive step for 3D Printing:

If this is handled right, it’s a massive step for 3D Printing. It’s something that’s incredibly hard to explain without someone seeing it for themselves, and now people can actually start going and seeing these amazing devices in action.

And importantly, this is somewhere non-geeks and techies can stumble across 3D printing and it can start reaching a broader audience.

With three months left in 2012, I’m thinking that if my timing was slightly out, it’ll have been by months rather than years!