“We see things as we are, not as they are…” Isaac Asmiov
Three DVDs.
Out-takes.
Extended scenes.
Extra footage.
Stuff.Bliss.
Bliss on toast.
For my recent birthday (you can work out my age if you really want to…) I asked for and received Spaced, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson’s comedy with so many allusions to great sci-fi and horror films. What’s more its very, very funny. How did I miss this when it was on’t tele?
Anyway my thanks to Suw Chapman for pointing me at this (whose blog, Choc and Vodka I have been dipping into since Blogwalk)
BBC NEWS | Technology | Families row over home PC access
Mori apparently have found out that families argue… about PC access. A startling discovery 
Of more interest:
The Mori survey found that 22% of 15 to 24-year-olds bicker with other family members over who gets computer time.
In their survey of UK children and their parents, the LSE team found that 43% of parents of nine to 17-year-olds have set up rules for how much time their child can spend on the net.
The majority, 90%, of young people interviewed for Dr Bober’s research use the net for homework. About 72% of them use it for e-mail and 70% play games on their computers.
“Many families also resort to buying additional computers or laptops to solve this problem. Over a third of nine to 19-year-olds have more than one computer at home,” said Dr Bober.
The Mori survey also revealed that 62% of computer-using over 55s and 20% of 45 to 54-year-olds used e-mail to keep in touch with children who had left the roost.
Further in the article the mention of ONS figures , which interestingly contrast somewhat with Ofcom figures:
According to recent figures from the Office of National Statistics, 35% of people in the UK access the internet from home via a dial-up connection, on a pay-as-you-go basis.
About 29% access the net on unmetered dial-up and 31% have an always-on, broadband connection.
After my previous entry on UK online their PR agency has sent me the Press Release. Some facts I missed before:
London, 15th November 2004 - UK Online launches today an 8Mb consumer broadband service to 4.4 million households. Priced at £39.99 per month, it brings groundbreaking speed at a groundbreaking price and makes the digital home a reality.
The service includes WiFi as standard and users can therefore connect multiple PCs, laptops and game consoles anywhere within the home. The high speed enables home users to download MP3s within seconds, on line gaming can move up a gear, and streamed videos start to look like real TV for the first time.
On the same infrastructure, UK Online is looking to add voice, TV and Video on Demand during 2005.
Also they seem to have been around longer than I thought:
UK Online, established in 1994… The ISP is known for its customer focus, with four out of five of its customers recommending the service to family and friends. Its UK-based customer service centre offers 24-hour support to novices and experienced users alike.
UK Online is the official ISP to Team GB, the UK’s Olympic team and demonstrated its support for the team in Athens in summer 2004. This support will continue throughout the Winter Olympics in Turin in 2006.
So happy to put the record straight! And interested to note that PR companies (well Fuse PR anyway) are paying attention to blogs. Thanks to Tanya and Victoria for the info.
Isn’t it great how explaining yourself outloud to others, allows you to self reflect better then mulling it over in your own mind.
Lilia (via Andy) outlines talking to herself as a great method of Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). I guess I do the same thing. Just not quite as articulately
BBC NEWS | Politics | Howard’s wizard of Oz
Very good article on the Conservatives (UK political party) acquistion of Australia’s successful political strategist Lynton Crosby. The article goes on to compare Crosby with Labour (Uk Political party) Alistair Campbell, which IMHO can only be bad for UK democracy.
On the other hand the man obviously knows what he is doing as this superb quote shows:
The key to winning election campaigns is building a good team, having clear central lines of authority while implementing your campaign in as decentralised away as possible, and having a leader who knows what he’s on about.
Surely a dictum for how to run any organisation?
BBC NEWS | Technology | UK broadband gets speed injection
Local loop unbundling has enabled a new(ish?) player in the UK Broadband market to offer speeds of up to 8Mbps. This huge leap will:
… initially be available to users within 2km radius of 230 telephone exchanges in areas such as London, Birmingham, Glasgow and Cambridge.
at a cost of £39.99 per month.
The BBC is positively brimming with positivity but perhaps the most exciting point is based on South Korea’s experience:
In South Korea, video-on-demand over the net is cheaper than renting a DVD and online gaming is huge.
Compared to this ntl’s recent announcement to go to 3-2-1Mbps tiers seems almost slow. Still, I’m not saying ‘no’ to 2Mbps, as it will do for me for now.
I wonder if UK Online can sustain such a price point or whether it is a penetration strategy?
Johnnie Moore’s Weblog: Keeping conversations inside the room
I often read things that make me go ah and have a little micro-moment when I think ‘yeah I need to do that’ but then I fail to seize the day. Unlike most ‘ah’ moments Johnnie’s post from a while back (30 Sept 04) kept with me, and like most good things has matured with age and thinking.
…I took a different approach, which was something like this. I pointed out that what he’d said was a familiar experience for me in the health service, and talked about shadow conversations and their power. I then said, “We could talk about these difficult people who I’ve not met.. but I imagine you’re asking that question because of some doubt of your own about the process - in which case, I’d prefer to talk about that. Or we could talk about your anxiety about confronting them - that’s something that is here inside the room.” Although he was a bit suprised by this, we did then get into a much more interesting conversation
To illustrate the point further this is Johnnie’s point about Shadow conversations:
Then I thought of the times I’ve worked with bosses and found that, curiously, they do the same thing vis a vis their staff eg
Of course I agree with that, but you try getting my staff to level with me/understand etc,
These are all shadow conversations in which we humans scare ourselves with what often turn out to be untested assumptions about others, instead of focusing on our own heartfelt beliefs. And such conversations are highly infectious; once one person starts the idea, a kind of mass hysteria quickly sets in.
Its about perception and fear. The perception is that the world will naturally disagree with ‘us’ and that our confidence in what we are about to do is lacking and hence fear.
I can relate to this. While I have no fear about exams and my perception is always one of success (not always the truth but close) other actions which would be simple to another person, such as ringing someone I have never met, is a tough thing - not sure why but it is.
I wonder whether this whole topic stems to a kind of belief in society as a whole that failure is bad. In the big picture of course massive failure can be dreadful but the fear to even take part in something because of the possiblity of failure is dreadful.
I watched ITV’s version of the classic Pollyanna yesterday and whilst I can appreciate the ‘there is always something to be glad about’ sentiment can be a bit twee, it certainly has more than a ring of truth in terms of positive mental attitude. Facing up to the fact that there is something blocking us is no bad thing but it is the ability to reach beyond that and find the power to focus on the positive that can bring us back on track.
If you are finding this a bit twee, remember I am writing this for me
And before I forget (as I have for a while) my old colleague Stuart Smith has a page up at the new Woodholmes site. And he complained about my photo :).
He certainly manages to be inquisitive and positive, managing to get his fingers into a number of different pies and undertake a phenomenal amount of work - lecturing at the Chinese Embassy is one of his more interesting gigs! Whilst I am keenly aware the grass isn’t always greener, Stuart certainly gets out and about and gets to do some exciting stuff.
(P.S. Last time I blogged him the site hits went up tremendously - wonder if this is still the case?)
Cory’s latest short story — CC-licensed, on Salon, all about gaming
Cory Doctorow:
…Salon has just published a brand-new short story of mine, called “Anda’s Game,” which is a riff on the way that property-rights are coming to games, and on the bizarre spectacle of sweat-shops in which children are paid to play the game all day in order to generate eBay-able game-wealth. When I was a kid, there were arcade kings who would play up Gauntlet characters to maximum health and weapons and then sell their games to nearby players for a dollar or two — netting them about $0.02 an hour — but this is a very different proposition indeed.
There are a lot of firsts in this story:
- It’s the first story I’ve written since moving to the UK, and the story is told from the point of view of an English girl…
Superb story from the now UK based Doctorow - go read
BBC NEWS | Business | BSkyB subscribers beats forecasts
BSkyB added 62,000 digital satellite customers in the three months to 30 September, beating the forecasts of analysts by up to a third.
Interesting turnaround for Sky considering their last quarter results, although gorwth is lsowing considerably. Of more interest was the 77K increase in Sky Plus (Sky’s PVR product) which is slowly building numbers.
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