“It Just Works”

Yesterday, I was reminded about just how good technology can be when it all works together. This can, of course, be a rare thing and nothing is more frustrating than kit that doesn’t work as it should.

But two things – OK, three – reminded me of how lucky we are these days.

It started with iTunes Match: I updated the iTunes software on my work laptop and then enabled iTunes Match and watched as it increased the number of songs from simply those I’d previously purchased from the iTunes Store (available since a previous release of iTunes) to all of my music collection currently stored on my iMac back at home but now backed up to iCloud.

I was then able to download a track I wanted on my laptop from my music store back home.

I’m working away from home at the moment and saw that there was nothing much worth watching on the telly. So I fired up my iPad, tethered it to my iPhone – thanks to 3’s All You Can Eat data plan – and did a bit of social networking before starting up Sky Go.

I then watched a couple of films from Sky’s Anytime+ feature: new or classic films that are available to you, depending upon your Sky TV package. Streamed over 3’s network at no additional cost to me.

“It Just Works”…

The Apprentice and BBC News Coverage

Dear BBC News,

Is there any particular reason why you have seen fit to inflict so much coverage of your reality TV show “The Apprentice” on your BBC News viewers?

I am not sure that anything that a bunch of wannabe yuppies do whilst fawning over some businessman in a glorified job interview is that newsworthy. Or is the BBC planning to devote similar hours of news coverage to other executive recruitment from here on in? Or maybe BBC Breakfast News will begin covering Channel 4’s “Big Brother” and interview evicted housemates the following day as well, in the name of balance.

No, I don’t think so either…

Yours sincerely,

A Pissed-Off Viewer

The Latest Bandwagon

So the BBC’s Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson is in trouble for calling our glorious leader, Gormless Brown, a “one-eyed, Scottish idiot.”

All sorts of people with their own agendas such as Labour MPs (especially Scottish ones…) and disability activists are hopping onto this latest bandwagon to denounce him and demand that the BBC acts to punish him.

Why?

El Gordo is indeed one-eyed. Fact.

He is Scottish. Fact.

He is an idiot. Opinion.

And?

For what it’s worth, I think Jeremy Clarkson is a twat. That’s my opinion. But frankly the bigger twats are these complete and utter wankers who want political correctness to ruin our society. Fuck the lot of them!

Our Friends in the North

…have let us down. Not like those humourless Filipino bastards.

Whilst Britons from the North of the country have not – as far as I am aware – complained about an Enfield and Whitehouse sketch featuring a family keeping a Northerner as a pet, the Filipinos are up in arms about a Filipina maid “inciting stereotyped racial discrimination, vulgarity and violation of the maid’s human rights”.  And yet they don’t seem to want to stick up for the poor, enslaved Northern bloke, do they?

The Apprentice

…is over for another year. Thank heavens for that: no more hair-gelled, arrogant salesmen alternating between being arrogant yuppie-wannabes and timid lapdogs around Sir Alan Sugar.

In the end, it was good looking but thick sounding salesman Lee McQueen who won this series of The Apprentice. He will now get a job with AMSTRAD in charge of a product selling advertising. Well what a suprise. AMSTRAD are of course famous for … erm … a crappy word-processor thing in the eighties and some sort of hideous phone thing now. Oh and they’re owned by BSkyB now, I think.

Still, at least it means no more people going on and on about the show like it’s some sort of national event. Maybe Chris Moyles will actually play some music on his radio show now? Probably not… (And as if by magic when I went to grab the hyperlink to Chris Moyles’s show, what else was there but a photo of Sir Alan and one of the team. See?)

Anyway, here’s my top tip for next year’s show: don’t bother entering unless you’re a “yes man” salesman with a shiny suit, shiny buckles on your shiny shoes and lots of hair product plastered on your head because that’s all they’re really after. Oh and remember to be obnoxious.

Friday’s TV

I keep meaning to blog about last Friday’s TV viewing highlights.

First up was Transporter 2, the sequel to a film I’d really quite enjoyed which stars one of those blokes who improves with age and hairloss, somewhat like Bruce Willis has, Jason Statham.

Jason Statham
 
Someone once said I reminded them of Jason Statham – bless her! – but then I’ve also been likened to Chuck Norris! Must be the “designer stuble” or something?

The film itself was a disappointment as they usually are when the US studios take over and write films for that market. Lots of wirework, farcical CGI ‘stunts’, etc. Ah well.

I then watched Teenage Kicks  starring and written by Ade Edmondson which could have been dire. I hoped the post-watershed timing might have meant the humour would have been less lame than I feared … and I wasn’t disappointed. The only awkwardness came – as hoped – by some of the jokes hitting too close to home for comfort. It has promise…

E-mail is Ruining My Life!

So runs the headline on the BBC News website today about how e-mail is becoming information overload.

On the BBC’s breakfast news show this morning, they even had voxpops from people saying how they received so many junk e-mails. I bet.

I love this bit too from the BBC News article:

“If I’m out for the day I will receive around 80 e-mails.
Bigjeeze, Bournemouth, UK”

They should be so lucky! My stats for last year showed I received on average 875 definite spam messages every day out of an average 975 e-mails each and every day of the year!