So...there's this book. It's part of BBC Books' Doctor Who range, it's by an author I like, I've got a bit out of the range, but I thought I might pick it up because I rate him. I'd picked it up in the shop a few times, read the blurb, always thought, I'll pick it up one of these days, and never did. I finally bought it from Amazon, and it arrived on Monday. Throughout the shop-browsing, review-reading, amazon-ordering process, I was quite convinced that it was called The Adventures Of Henrietta Street.
So after it's been sitting in my living room for two days, and I've continued to browse it, and after I spent time last night reading the first few chapters, I saw the cover out of the corner of my eye five minutes ago, and realised that it's actually called The Adventuress of Henrietta Street.
POSTSCRIPT - Actually, now I don't feel *quite* so bad, because that Amazon page I ordered from thinks it's called Adventures too.
How well do you think you know me?
Take my FriendTest to find out. Eight questions - shouldn't take even Mike more than 30 seconds 
(Watch out for the 'spam me' checkbox on the email form at the end.)
[Link via SwishCottage]
Good news about cheaper costs for broadband, isn't it?
For people who BT can be bothered to make it available to, that is.
I've decided on a new project for the site. I'll give details when it's ready to go live, but it's something that will get me into a discipline of producing more structured content, and on a regular basis.
Watch this space.
Courtesy of a link on abraxas, I came across Adam Curry's article Blogging: Tune Out and Switch On, and through it, The Zen TV Experiment. I'm about to address some points in those articles, so you may want to read them first - note that they both require a small investment of mental energy.
To start with, I think that The Zen TV Experiment is a great piece of writing, and highlights several points that I've made in discussions over the years with various people I worked with in TV and Radio. It addresses some of the points which always made radio my preferred medium in which to work, most of which stem from the purity of radio's message compared to the way so much TV is caught up with how the message will be presented. Yes, radio, even the most factual programmes, use Technical Events to influence the presentation of the words, but even so, much more than in TV, it remains the words which the audience must deal with and interpret according to their own expectations and assumptions. I always felt much freer making radio than I did TV.
Likewise, the Zen Experiment raises useful questions of the value of time spent watching TV (though to be fair, you could make the same kind of analysis of most forms of mass media - TV just tends to be the one that gets it in the neck). Though I will dispute the claim that "Television is the quintessential short-term medium. Like jugglers, television lives for the split second. Its relationship to viewers is measured in tiny fractions." This might have been the case once upon a time, but increasingly, individuals control their own 'split seconds', because they tape programmes and watch them when they want to, skipping the things they don't want to watch (ads especially), or stopping to watch something else entirely and then coming back (or not, of course....). And increasingly, and I'm a prime example of this kind of viewer, buying whole series on tape or disc and watching them back-to-back, or out of order, or re-watching the key scenes over and over, and analysing, in a way that the here-today-gone-tomorrow TV produced in the medium's early years could never have been. It's a defense regularly applied to the commercial releases of early Doctor Who stories, for instance, which show up the clunky nature of the effects, but were never really meant for repeated viewing. Yet conversely, some late Doctor Who is praised for its complexity and its nature as television "for the video age; a story that can be truly appreciated only after multiple viewings, as the subtleties and nuances it contains are legion"[1].
I also disagree with the claim that Zen TV-watching, and becoming aware of Technical Events instigates a paradigm shift which makes it impossible to do that and also follow plot. I admit that I may be in the minority here, and I'm kind-of arguing the converse, but as I watch TV in a non-Zen way, I *am* aware of many of the Technical Events. I suspect this comes from having worked in the industry though, and knowing the tricks, and is probably not a standard experience. Nevertheless, if my mean brain can dual-process in this way, I'm sure that others' can too.
Moving on to the Blogging and TV article, the thing that most strikes me about it is that I don't think things need to be so either/or as the article reads. I blog, and as of the last couple of months, I also watch quite a bit more TV than I have for a while. But my reasons for doing both are entirely different. I agree that TV can be manipulative. It can lie, and it can steal your time and even energy in ways that should not be countenanced, but, and here's the reason I watch the series that I watch, it can entertain and it can challenge. And I don't think that spending a while being either is wasted. The trick is to be selective in your viewing choices.
Likewise, I keep this journal and the bits of the site around it because it makes me think, and it makes me focus, and it makes me analyse my own opinions and assumptions. And I don't consider that time wasted either. But if I reduced this to an item-by-item listing of everything I saw, did, or thought every day, even if it exercised my mind through the desperate effort of making it interesting, I think I probably would think of it as a waste.
And let's not forget that we write these things to be read, so we have much in common with those TV Producers - we use tricks too: Every link is a Technical Event, as is an image, or a survey, or the comments facility which I hope you'll now make use of to make this all a bit more interactive.
[1] Doctor Who - The Television Companion, David J Howe and Stephen James Walker. BBC Books
More Zimbabwe news - So.... let's see if I've got this right; three weeks before the election, the Leader of the Opposition is being accused of conspiring to assassinate the President last December, and the accusation is being brought by someone who used to work as a lobbyist for the President. The evidence is a video tape of a meeting at which the alleged assassination was discussed, and according to an independent media monitor, the tape has had material edited out and even rearranged. And the Leader of the Opposition is the one who is detained and questioned.
Oh, and meanwhile Presidential supporters have been stoning Opposition supporters, and at the same time, members of a South African election-monitoring group.
Nice to see democracy is alive and well in Zimbabwe.
I've been forgetting to mention that I'm going to Berlin for a few days on Saturday, and I'm hoping to have time to take in some sights while I'm there. I've never been before, so does anyone have any recommendations for must-see stuff?
It's two weeks old, but (as if I needed it), here's one more reason why I'm glad I didn't go to Egypt last year.
Well, I was still wide awake at gone 4.30 this morning, but made it into the office only 10 minutes late, which I suppose is good practice for the Oscars in a month's time....
Judi Dench's performance in Iris seems generally to be regarded as a highlight in a generally somewhat flawed film, so she probably deserved the Best Actress gong - I'm still a bit surprised that Nicole Kidman was nominated for The Others, rather than Moulin Rouge!.
And I'm extraordinarily pleased that The Fellowship Of The Ring got Best Film. I'd have been happy for that one or Moulin Rouge! to win, just so long as Shrek didn't.....
Reflecting on the Roll Call of those who died in the last year, I have to confess that the deaths of Dorothy Tutin, and Joan Sims had passed me by completely. Nice that they made a point of mentioning the death of Chuck Jones.
Full list of winners, including the ones they just summarised at the end of the main programme is here.
And Stephen Fry does a bloody good job presenting these dos - I do love him to bits.