jon – Page 54 – Hello Curns

2003 In Summary

Like Jerry, my final thoughts on 2003.

If I can be allowed to be more self-centred – or inward-looking – than usual, I have found the process of re-reading the year’s worth of entries to be very interesting. Not only have I surprised myself with some of the pieces that I have written, but when viewing them all together, it seems that the site is a lot more coherent than I imagined. There are some key groupings of themes that have emerged – it’s clear I have a fascination with transport – and there are considerably fewer trivial pieces.

Many of the words I have written are, of course, about my life and might be considered to be trivial to some, but I feel I have gained an insight into myself with some of the longer pieces. And, it is those longer pieces which have most startled me on the re-reading: I must make a conscious effort to write more discussion works. Perhaps I should open the comments on the main body of the site to stimulate further thinking.

Of all the other sites I have read across the year, I still come back to my old faithfuls. So, this is the point where I should wish Tom, Jase, Jason, Bart, Meg, Phil, Eric, Chris, Bravo, Nick and Luke a very Happy New Year. Oh, and those are just the top-listed ones in my Bloglines subscriptions.

Bloglines is to be nominated as my tool of the year for 2003, it’s made the whole business of reading other sites so much easier (if only Blogger users would provide nice RSS feeds). Of course, I shouldn’t forget Six Apart who, via Movable Type, make all this possible.

Writing is one of the few creative outlets I have, and I am happy to have it as a hobby – it seems more useful than making a model of St Paul’s Cathedral from matchsticks.

Best wishes for 2004 to all who come across this page.

Love Actually

This is really an inoffensive, somewhat amusing, light-hearted, feel-good British comedy.

Love Actually is not the film I imagined it to be. I guess you can call it a romantic comedy and it seemed like a sensible film to watch on New Year’s Day. The cinema was packed which suggests we wen’t the only ones with that idea.
I should say from the beginning, it’s sentimental and feel-good. If those words put you off then you shouldn’t really see this film. I do think, however, that if you have ever (even once) got a little lovey-dovey then could go and see this movie and get something out of it.

It’s weaves a whole stack of separate stories together about people in love or finding love (and even out of love) with the backdrop of Christmas in London. Richard Curtis (of Four Weddings And A Funeral fame) makes his directorial debut and provides a very well-shot image of 21st Century London at Christmas. There are some really well-done sequences around the city which gives somebody like me – who thinks he’s seen all he wants to of London – something to smile at.

Having said it’s well-shot it is not without problems. Too many stories are intertwined leaving too many questions unanswered. When you leave a cinema questioning some of your understanding about who was who and where things were set you know that at some point this film failed. Why have the whole Wisconsin sequence, for example? And what happened to the Laura Linney parts – I suspect there is something on a cutting room floor that explains all that somewhere.

But don’t let that put you off. Liam Neeson’s storyline is great (even if it stretched believability a little), Emma Thompson is superb (and you will feel for her as she opens a Christmas present) as Alan Rickman‘s wife (he too stands out with a great, typical Rickman performance). Even Hugh Grant is believable as a Prime Minister who falls for his tea lady (Martine McCutcheon).

What I liked, although I have no idea if they will translate to the US, are the really British touches. Ant and Dec are the kid’s TV presenters; Jo Wiley is a DJ and Wes Butters does the chart run down for the Christmas Number One. And there wasn’t an over abundance of red London busses – which must be a first for British films.

This is really an inoffensive, somewhat amusing, light-hearted, feel-good British comedy and I hope it does well. If you read the message boards over at the Internet Movie Database you’ll read about people walking out in shock and disgust – which, if you’ve seen the film, is just as amusing.

It Was A Good Read

While I will miss the disappearances, they are – of course, just blips in the workings of the web. What I find sad is that, in time, it is likely that all this content will disappear from servers as the owners stop paying for the space that houses the sites. It would be like burning every copy of a book you had read – vanished. It’s part of a shared history that disappears.

I always feel it’s a little sad when a blog dies – particularly when all trace of it is removed. If it’s a blog I have been reading for some time then it feels as if a part of my history disappears. It is one of the strange things about the online experience – it’s very easy for things to disappear; things that were once inspirational, useful or entertaining.

One of my earliest online inspirations was Jase Wells. Although I’d been trying out building web pages for the company I worked for, Jase was the inspiration for my first home page (sadly long gone from the servers on which it resided and a great example of what I am talking about). Jase is still alive and well but the focus of his site has changed and, while it’s updated much more often now, the coming out story that was such a useful resource has gone (although it’s still available via archive.org).

Another Jase, now Snoboardr of OutEverywhere, had some personal pages once that were also fairly important in my use of the web.

Then there are the blogs that disappear. Mike of Troubled Diva fame (who I was introduced to via the excellent 40in40) put the blog on indefinite hold at the beginning of December. 8Legs went the same way a few weeks later. And now Chris has packed up. I don’t know Chris nor have I ever mailed or commented his site but I read it almost religiously. Why? Well, he has a talent for writing to the extent that almost everything he wrote was compelling. It was his writing style which was an inspiration because, by the time I discovered his site, I had been writing this blog for a while.

At least Daniel’s said it’s unlikely that he will give up completely.

Diary writers perform an unintentional function as social historians. If you go all the way back to Pepys or think more recently of somebody like Kenneth Williams, their diaries are read today and give us an insight into what the world was like. If Mike or Chris has written their blogs as paper-based diaries there may very well have been something for historians to use in the future. If they don’t keep some kind of record of what they wrote in an accessible form then it will be lost to the future and people trying to understand life in the 21st Century will be poorer.

So, to those who wrote content I enjoyed reading, a plea. Archive your content for future generations. Regardless of how you do it, keep it.

Oh, and thanks for sharing your thoughts. I enjoyed them all.

Hi We’re Your Weather Girls

Humidity is rising – Barometer’s getting low, According to all sources, the street’s the place to go.

The Weather Girls, — The Weather Girls said “It’s Raining Men”

I have been recovering from my trip to the USA by spending a great deal of today asleep and generally caching up on the mail, the christmas cards, the washing and all the other things you need to do when you’ve been away for a week. It’s almost Saturday night and I am going supermarket shopping (you see, dear reader, I have a very exciting life).

While I managed to listen to the radio and some CDs I did, eventually, resort to music television so that there were some pictures to provide an alternative visual while I drank my tea (real tea, not a USA-style tea, is one of the greater comforters in my life).

The Hits is showing some so-called classics this afternoon. The video for It’s Raining Men (The Weather Girls) looked so dated that it made me wonder what those brought-up entirely on the sophistication of the modern day music video would make of these dated images.

Interestingly, it occurred to me to that it’s the video that looks a lot older than the music sounds. Allowing for the fact that It’s Raining Men is part of the soundtrack to my youth, I still think it’s the video technology that has made the noticeable leaps in the last 20 years.

And it’s 20 years next March since It’s Raining Men was a hit for The Weather Girls. Originally charting in the UK in August 1983 it eventually made number 2 in March 1984. It’s one of those songs that I would have sworn topped the charts but, apparently, not. I would imagine that a combination of Nena’s ‘99 Red Ballons‘, Lionel Richie’s ‘Hello‘ and Duran Duran’s ‘The Reflex‘ kept it from the number 1 slot.

Three Hundred Million

Figures from the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and pricewaterhouseCoopers, regarded as the industry’s official count, show that advertisers spent Â£151.6m on Internet advertising in the first half of this year.

According to New Media Zero, UK online ad spend in 2003 could be as high as £350m which is very promising news indeed for those of us involved in the industry. The article doesn’t break down the money and I would be interested to know where it is being spent – I just hope it’s not on more pop-ups!

S.W.A.T.

According to the Internet Movie Database, the basic premise of the movie S.W.A.T. that I saw on the plane is, “An imprisoned drug kingpin offers a huge cash reward to anyone who can break him out of police custody, and only the LAPD’s Special Weapons and Tactics team can prevent it”. It’s about all you need to know, really.

If you read this site a great deal, you will know that I have a strange love of action movies. I think they are, by and large, a huge waste of time, and yet I constantly enjoy them and will watch the same one again and again. This would be no exception. The plot could be passed off as a true story – more or less – but (and correct me if you’re in LA), helicopters being shot out of the sky, and races through the subway tunnels can not be an everyday/week/year occurrence.

Still, Colin Farrell is Jim Street, the cop on the boundaries who makes good, and Samuel L. Jackson is always enjoyable in everything he does. Even LL Cool J was good, and it’s always good to see Josh Charles on the screen.

Go and enjoy this movie, and then see Colin in the Man of the Moment section.

Worthy of Comment

The Radio Authority rules that Midland News Association ARE not be allowed to buy Telford FM

Media Guardian carried a story about Telford FM today:

The authority today ruled that the Midland News Association, the owner of the Shropshire Star and several other papers in the area, would not be allowed to buy Telford FM on public interest grounds [Source]

Sadly, no time to comment.

Snow is Oslo?

I am in Oslo and I am certain I saw snow.

It may be Thanksgiving Day for some of my colleagues but some of us are still working. I am, however, lucky enough to be in Oslo. I flew in last night. It was dark when I arrived but there was an unmistakable hint of snow on the ground at the airport. Considering all the trips I make to this part of the world, I have been a little disappointed that I have never seen a great deal of snow here. I was particularly saddened that there was no snow in Helsinki recently. Alas, by the time I made the centre of Oslo there was nothing to be seen.

Happy Thanksgiving

In some parts of the world, today is a holiday.

I’ve worked for American companies for a few years and never really grasped what the thanksgiving holiday was all about (apart from some very obvious things). This year I actually started to look it up:

The first Thanksgiving was celebrated between the Pilgrims and the Indians in 1621. That first feast was a three day affair. Life for the early settlers was difficult. The fall harvest was time for celebration. It was also a time of prayer, thanking God for a good crop. The Pilgrims and the Indians created a huge feast including a wide variety of animals and fowl, as well as fruits and vegetables from the fall harvest. This early celebration was the start of today’s holiday celebration. Like then, we celebrate with a huge feast. [Source: holidayinsights.com]

I would like to wish anybody passing by a very happy holiday.

Of course there is always an alternative view.

Movable Type Pro, Soon?

Luckily, I don’t get any spam on the pages where I have allowed comments on this site.

Luckily, I don’t get any spam on the pages that I have allowed comments on this site, although Six Log has a nice piece on them. However, buried in that piece is the line, “Movable Type Pro (which we’ll be talking about in more detail very soon)”. Now I am excited indeed. A little sad, huh?

Thoughts on Helsinki

There are six things that I learnt on this trip to Helsinki. Well, six that I want to note right here. And Robbie Williams is one of them!

Thoughts on an November in Helsinki:

They recycle everywhere
The men are gorgeous
It’s not as cold as you would have expected
I missed the snow – it was a couple of weeks ago
I’ve just had the best pasta meal I’ve had outside of Italy
And Robbie Williams in appearing in town. You hear his name “Robbbbbbbbeeeeeeeee” everywhere

Flight Time Thinking

The Finnair flight is usually very good, except for their inability to give me any kind of e-ticket on the London/Helsinki route and, in one easy move, reduce my stress about losing tickets.

I have written before about my business travels to Helsinki, but this is the first time I am going in the winter. I am writing this on board the Finnair flight. I expect darkness and cold air, but it will be interesting for me. I imagine any photographs will be of limited use (since I will be in offices during daylight hours).

The Finnair flight is usually very good, except for their inability to give me any kind of e-ticket on the London/Helsinki route and, in one easy move, reduce my stress about losing tickets. The flight is about three hours long and gives me the chance to stop and think. I generally travel alone, and fellow passengers are not always the best conversationalists, so I can enjoy the relative silence. I tend not to listen to music on flights, and so I read. I read work papers and things I printed from the web; I read books and newspapers, but, above all, I read them and think for a while.

Today, however, is the first time that I think I have been able to appreciate that time. I’m not sure why I have not noticed this feeling before. My brain suddenly seems uncluttered: there is none of the normal chaos to distract me. No television, no radio and no web access to stimulate my thoughts in a hundred million directions. No commuters or people to annoy, frustrate or distract me. No, for this brief period, my brain has wandered in the directions it has wanted to, and it is a strangely liberating experience.

Earlier this year I also mentioned that I find flying a strange experience. I have done it so much for work (and much, much less for pleasure) that it should be like taking a bus. I don’t lie awake at night worrying about a journey, and I’ve discovered that the art of staying relaxed in airports is giving yourself time. I don’t really mind where they sit me – as long as I can stow my bag – and I am used to many of the strange noises a plane makes. Yet this exterior of calm hides an absolute fear every time we hit the tiniest pocket of turbulence. Regardless of how many stray air pockets I have flown through, I know my blood pressure must rise alarmingly when the plane shakes.

And so, despite the relative freedom my mind has to wander and wonder on today’s flight, it is regularly brought back to reality at every minor shake of a plane.

Weather Project

I visited one of my favourite areas of London earlier today, the Thames’ South Bank, where I went to see Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project at The Tate Modern

people in front of the weathe rproject exhibition

I visited one of my favourite areas of London earlier today, the Thames’ South Bank, where I went to see Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project at The Tate Modern. There’s a half circle of the Sun made up of mono-frequency lamps – the kind which provide the orange glow to our streets at night. Running along the ceiling of the vast turbine hall is a mirror which gives the whole image the look of a whole circle, the sun. You can watch yourself in the mirror on the ceiling, and many people do, indeed, lie on the floor looking up at themselves and the other ant-sized people. The lamps really restrict the amount of colour that you can see, and that makes the whole atmosphere and experience quite eerie indeed. In fact, despite the orange glow, it’s very grey.

picture of the turbine hall sign at the tate modern

long shot of the weather project exhibition, tate modern, london

I am not a great fan of museums and galleries, but I really do like the Tate Modern and the Turbine Hall in particular. If you don’t know it, it’s a vast gallery space that once housed the turbines of the Bankside power station. It’s huge and always seems to house interesting works, which is what attracts me back on a regular basis to see them.

Halloween

Trick or Treat?

Well, I bought some sweets from the local shops and waited for the trick-or-treaters. Despite the abundance of small children running around the neighbourhood in fright masks and cloaks (and an alarmingly high number of mothers with push-chairs wearing big pointy witch hats), nobody knocked. I am not sure if I am annoyed or relieved. We had a guest tonight, so I didn’t really want to be disturbed, but not one knock. Perhaps I frighten the locals!

Effect Xmas

I never knew I didn’t know this.

Recently, I may have professed that I knew the difference between affect and effect, and it was confirmed for me today online at Common Errors in English. I did not think that Xmas was a way of removing Christ from Christmas, but rather a lazy person’s way of avoiding writing letters. Turns out, I was wrong, and the X is an abbreviation of the Greek word for Christ [Source]. Just goes to show that I know nothing.