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This is an old page from Rod Begbie's blog.

It only exists in an attempt to prevent linkrot. No new content will be added to this site, and links and images are liable to be broken. Check out begbie.com to find where I'm posting stuff these days.

Filed under 'media'

June 4, 2012

If You're Expecting The TV Industry To Just "Collapse", Keep Dreaming - SplatF

This gels a lot with my expectations for how the television industry is going to evolve over the next few years (ie. Not a great deal, and certainly far less than the folks my age who would love to watch HBO Original Programming without paying $80/month would hope)

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October 29, 2010

The Unsocial Network

Snippet from Bill Carter’s forthcoming book about this year’s Leno/Conan farrago.

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July 27, 2010

eHattip

A moment’s hearty hurrah for the fine, forward-thinking folks of O’Reilly Media

While catching up on a chum’s splendid bloggish-thang, I noticed that the new book by Rands is now available. On the Amazon page, the dead-tree hardcopy was still on pre-order, but the Kindle version was available straight away.

Normally, at this point, I would have hit that tempting, orange, A/B-tested-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life “Buy Now with 1-Click®” button and been on my merry way. But then I noticed that the book was published by O’Reilly.

O’Reilly (and can I just interject here to show off that I’m old-skool-geek enough that I still hit their website by typing ora.com into my browser, because that’s what their domain was when I bought my first animal-woodcut-covered book, dammit. Also: Get off my lawn!) have a smart attitude to eBooks purchased from their own website. You can download your eBooks in various DRM-free formats: PDF is almost always available, but often so too are ePub and mobi, and occasionally something called “Android”. (I believe that’s some sort of Chinese iPhone knockoff)

Because of this, by purchasing eBooks directly from O’Reilly, I can carry them around and read them in a variety of fashions. If it’s a mainly wordy book, then the soothing-to-the-eyes e-ink screen of my Kindle is just dandy. The reflowable ePub format works a treat in iBooks on my always-in-my-pocket iPhone and increasingly-always-in-my-bag iPad. And with Apple’s recent iBooks update, I can quickly switch to and from the designed-and-laid-out-by-a-professional view of the PDF which perfectly mimics the physical original.

Comparison

So thank you O’Reilly and Associates Media for your top-notch splendiferousness. I hope more publishers start taking this approach too.

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January 28, 2010

Charlie Brooker - How To Report The News

Brilliant clip of TV news clichés in action.

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June 10, 2009

The Top 10 Most Absurd Time Covers of The Past

ZOMG Moral Panic! The things that have doomed America over the last 40 years.

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April 2, 2009

Jenny Mccarthy Body Count

Counting the illnesses and deaths that could have been prevented by the MMR vaccines that Jenny McCarthy (and others) advise parents not to give their children.

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February 17, 2009

Amanda Palmer: On Abortion, Rape, and Humor

Amanda Palmer on her song “Oasis” being rejected for airplay by the British music media. While I could understand the “mainstream” (Radio 1, MTV, The Box) knocking it back, it’s sad to see that 6 Music, NME et al are also afeard of perceived offense.

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August 12, 2008

We need a better class of conservative

Taken from a comments thread on Current.com:

I agree, this site is supposed to be in the hands of the people, but it seems to be serving as a liberal propaganda machine. I am liberal but I still think there should be some sort of equality in the way news is reported. I do realize the majority of the people on this site have liberal views and therefore the site would have more liberal stories, but I would still like to see some conservative reporting and then discussed by the rest of the viewers. Also, has anyone noticed the conservatives on this site are borderline retarded?

It’s the last sentence that really gets to the root of the problem, IMO.

August 26, 2007

The London Evening Standard Headline Generator

“QUEEN’S CHICKENS STABBED TO DEATH”, “TV CROCODILE AND CAMILLA TO WED” and other randomly generated news-stands.

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March 7, 2007

TiVo Amazon Unbox service launched | PVRblog

You can buy and/or rent movies or TV shows from Amazon’s Unbox service, and have them show up on your TiVo. Bigger library than Apple’s movie service — Could this help keep TiVo afloat a smidge longer? (Your first $15 hit is free. I just “bought” The Departed)

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February 3, 2007

EW.com : The bell tolls for 'Studio 60'

Studio 60 going off the air in a month, return date “to be announced”. The writer sums up my feelings towards the show pretty well: “I don’t hate it, but I find it incredibly frustrating. All that talent—Sorkin, the blue-chip cast (led by Matthew Perry)—and all those lofty aspirations, marred by weak execution, lazy writing, dramatic issues that are hard to care about, and a lack of verisimilitude”

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February 2, 2007

TC's Ministry of Propaganda: Denouement

TC sums up yesterday pretty well: Police did the right thing, politicians, mainstream media *and* bloggers overreacted all over the shop. Favourite line: “Note: If the MBTA were truly Fascist maybe the damn trains would run on time.”

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November 7, 2006

'Office' Works Overtime Online - 'Producer's cut' will stream after Thursday's episode - Zap2it

NBC will stream an extended version of The Office on their website this week after the normal-length episode airs on TV. Considering how good (and plentiful) the deleted scenes are on the DVDs I’m watching, this’ll be worth checking out.

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October 30, 2006

IGN: New Series from Arrested Development's Creator

Mitch Hurwitz’s new project is a US port of the low-key British political sitcom “The Thick of It”.

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October 24, 2006

News Sniffer - Revisionista

A Winer-Watcher for the BBC — Tracking revisions to BBC News articles.

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Guardian Unlimited | Weekend | Jon Ronson goes behind the scenes of Deal Or No Deal

For all the US version of DoND is bright, brash and loud, the UK version is subdued, complex and, from the sounds of this report, completely fucking barking insane.

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October 8, 2006

YouTube - New BBC One Ident Montage

Montage of the eight new idents for BBC One continuity announcements. The “hippos” one (starts at 3:35) is my favourite by far.

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October 1, 2006

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Hippos help revamp BBC One idents

BBC One’s done a revamp of their Idents, and they’re brill — especially the synchronized hippos. There really seems to be an element of humour about them that was missing from the politically-correct dancers.

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September 18, 2006

Brilliant But Cancelled - DeathWatch - Fall '06

Predict which shows will be canned by the TV networks, and possibly win some goodies.

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May 16, 2006

The Daily Show Effect: Candidate Evaluations, Efficacy, and American Youth

“Overall, the findings … show that for young people, no other news source drives cynicism toward the candidates and the political system more than The Daily Show.”

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January 26, 2006

Forensic criminology, the ZX Spectrum way

Hee! An episode of CSI:Miama had a Big Expensive Computer. The sounds generated by the computer? A ZX Spectrum loading Knight Lore.

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January 25, 2006

Digital Spy: BBC World gears up for US launch

Auntie’s 24-hour international news channel will hopefully start appearing on US TVs soon. Hooray!

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January 23, 2006

Evening Standard Headline Crisis 2005 - a photoset on Flickr

Fear and Loathing on the streets of London.

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January 12, 2006

Mailwatch Vote 2005

Vote for the most outrageous Daily Mail or Daily Express headline of 2005. I’m having trouble deciding between “1 IN 4 TERROR SUSPECTS ARE ASYLUM SEEKERS” and “GIVE MORE LAND TO GYPSIES ORDERS PRESCOTT”

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September 9, 2005

The Grauniad's new look

So farewell then, Garamond Italic and Helvetica Black.

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September 7, 2005

I, Cringely . NerdTV

The first episode of NerdTV — the online-only PBS-funded geek interview show hosted by a Bob Cringely — is now online. There are some really interesting guests lined up, so this definitely has potential.

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About This Site

This is an archive of groovmother.com, the old blog run by Rod Begbie — A Scottish geek who lives in San Francisco, CA.

I'm the co-founder of Sōsh, your handy-dandy guide for things to do in San Francisco this weekend.