meish dot org: life, unfolding

Big Brother started again in the UK last night.

I won’t lie: I think it’s nonsense. I haven’t watched it since the very first series back in 1999 (?) (when it had the feeling of new curious sociological phenomenon, and everyone was genuinely riveted by the Nasty Nick leaving the house development) but since then it’s buzzed away vaguely at the back of my summers, without any particular attention from me, like a tired wasp against a windowpane.

Why would I want to watch the tedious antics of a bunch of people of limited intelligence and entertainment value who I neither know nor care about? I can do that every day on the bus.

Working in media, however, I can’t fail to have some residual awareness of what’s going on, and it’s become clear that in recent years, to try and revive the tired audience and keep users hooked throughout the long stretch of nightly updates throughout the summer, they’ve fiddled with the format, and introduced a series of gimmicks.

16 people in the house
A secret house next door to the real house
Cultural exchange with a contestant from another country’s Big Brother
A rich side and a poor side to the house
A king (or queen) of the house
Tasks which involve endurance
Tasks which involve ridicule
Tasks which involve backstabbing
Tasks which involve nudity
Fake evictions
Double evictions
Surprise evictions
Twins
Couples
Ex couples
“Famous” people

All have which have conspired to mean that

a) the format changes so radically every year that the rules can be somewhat hard to follow (if you bother at all)
b) the show is less reality TV and more prolonged gameshow. It’s a residential version of the generation game, mostly, combined with elements of the infamous Milgram and Stanford prison experiments.

To save you the bother of watching this year, I’ve managed to source a top-secret list of all the gimmicks involving format, tasks and contestants that they’ll be employing this season to try and keep audiences interested:

1. They are all actually horses
2. Half of them are blind and the other half are deaf
3. They are all left handed
4. They can only talk in rhyme for three weeks
5. One of them is a secret Libyan
6. Two extra housemates have been hiding in a secret compartment under a trapdoor beneath the fridge for the first eight weeks, only coming out at night to nibble on leftovers
7. They must all answer to the name Trevor
8. The house is built over a plague pit
9. There’s no toilet
10. They’re not broadcasting it at all this year, so all the housemates are gurning and preening and backstabbing for nothing
11. A 1 ton bomb will go off if anyone mentions J___ G_____
12. All the beds will be replaced by sandwiches for a week
13. They must all follow a macrobiotic diet
14. An additional housemate will be introduced, who will refuse to speak to anyone
15. One housemate must volunteer to die or they will all be killed
16. They must end every sentence with “TWIIIIIIIIING!” on Thursdays

That should keep them watching.

Or not.

(sorry, couldn’t resist pun)

Just spotted (via James Wallis) this New York Times article - one of a series of seven about how people allow themselves to be fooled. This part cites the case of the infamous second world war forger Han Van Meegeren, who managed to fool Nazis, the art world and all sorts of other people with his clever forgeries of Vermeer works in the early part of last century.

The article references two books from last year about the forger and his story: Edward Dolnick’s The Forger’s Spell and Jonathan Lopez’s The Man Who Made Vermeers.

While I’m sure these are both excellent works, it would be remiss of me not to point out that an earlier biography also exists and is well worth a read (as reviewed in the Observer here) - I was Vermeer: the forger who swindled the Nazis by my good friend (and former colleague) Mr Frank Wynne.

Get it from:
Amazon UK (paperback)
Amazon UK (hardback)
Amazon US
Bloomsbury

I promise I don’t write about Twitter all the time, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot (for work and fun) recently.

So, celebrities on Twitter. We’ve all heard about them, and we might even follow one or two. But why?

Some simple reasons:

1. Fan of them/their work generally
2. Like getting updates from them about what they’re doing/thinking (e.g. like a direct fan newsletter)
3. Interested in a particular project they’re currently working on (e.g. filming a movie)
4. Like cutting out the filter of gossip sites, news organisations etc and getting insight or news direct from source
5. Like the potential proximity of creating a relationship/conversation with them (albeit one-sided - but it could be more at some point)

But I’ve got another hypothesis: could it be that (potentially in addition to any of the above) having a celebrity’s updates appear in your twitter consumption stream, along with your friends and other contacts, makes them more real/closer/more human because suddenly you cannot fail to be aware that they are sharing a time-context (which they must have before, but all your consumption of celeb updates had previously been mediated through the temporal displacement of publishing, broadcasting or other media)?

Just thinking.

Additional resources:

• Celebrities on Twitter, and why you shouldn’t follow them
• Are celebrities causing Twitter to evolve or devolve?
• Celebrity Twitter overkill

It’s the Eurovision Song Contest final tonight and, as tradition dictates, we’ll be drinking cocktails and eating ironic snacks with a bunch of other gluttons for punishment enthusiasts in front of the performance.

I’m not a betting person, but if I were, here’s where I’d be putting my money, in no particular order:

Representing Armenia: Inga & Anush - Jan Jan (Nor Par)

This song means “new dance” - you can see people doing the new dance in the video - and as a result, it’s got exactly the kind of catchy melody, beat and repetitive chorus which makes it the very best/worst kind of earworm.

A warning to you: I listened to this a bunch of times earlier in the week and as a result I’m now entering day five of the earworm. Round and round and round it goes in my head. All day and all night. This is either an indication of its sheer cheesy genius, or that I’m a bit stressed and anything could have the same effect.

In any case, I have a special place in my heart for Armenia, after spending so many years frequenting the Deli-from-helli. On further consideration, perhaps “Nor Par” means “You want butter, lady?”

Ethnic influence: medium
General ability to find the country on a map: low
Catchiness: high
Meaningless lyrics: medium/high
Overall Eurovisibility: high

Representing Norway: Alexander Rybak - Fairytale

I think this manboy must be in the Norwegian equivalent of High School Musical, because he’s got exactly that kind of wholesome toothsome quality. Mind you, there’s no denying that he can play the fiddle, and he does so with gusto in this ever-so-slightly shouty ukranian-inspired stomper.

Ethnic influence: medium
General ability to find the country on a map: high
Catchiness: medium
Meaningless lyrics: low
Overall Eurovisibility: medium

Representing Portugal: Flor-de-lis - Todas as ruas do amor

This won’t win, but it’s a sweet song, performed by a group of musicians not using a backing track, who can genuinely play (here’s an acoustic version, just to prove it) which isn’t the point but it’s nice to see anyway.

Ethnic influence: high
General ability to find the country on a map: medium
Catchiness: low
Meaningless lyrics: low
Overall Eurovisibility: low

Representing Iceland: Yohanna - Is it True?

Really quite pedestrian, but it’s got all the makings of a winner because it’s well-written, well performed, not too challenging and memorable. The fact that the singer is hawt won’t go amiss either.

I do wonder whether viewers back home in Iceland will be watching with half a hope that they don’t win, though, because then they’d have to shell out to stage the event next year…

Ethnic influence: low
General ability to find the country on a map: high
Catchiness: medium
Meaningless lyrics: low
Overall Eurovisibility: medium

Representing lots of other countries: A dozen or more songs which sound like below-par eurotechno (Greece, Azerbaijan, Hungary, Finland) or like they’ve been lifted from a musical soundtrack (Malta, UK, Poland)

I wish there were more entries like this, though (from 1979):

Or of course this, the classic:

I’ve just finished reading Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon for the second time.

Phew. Such a fantastic book.

And such a different book from what I remembered, from the first reading.

Thanks to having 9+ years of blog archives on this site (!) I can accurately pinpoint the first reading to December 2000 - I was up in the Hebrides with my family for Christmas and New Year and (true to form, at that time of year) there were loads of powercuts (winter storms) and not much else to do. So I just curled up on the sofa in front of the fire and ploughed through the book in a matter of days, stopping only to sleep and occasionally rummage for another candle to illuminate the pages. As a result, it read like a blockbuster movie - a long, exciting romp of characters and scenes and intermingled plots.

This time around, I didn’t have the luxury of an uninterrupted read. Instead, I had to tackle it a chapter or so at a time on my 80+ minute (each way) commute by bus and train every day. That meant that the experience of reading it was entirely different.

For a start, I didn’t remember great chunks of it, while other bits seemed very familiar. And it was harder to keep track of the various threads of the story (each chapter is focused on one of several characters, taking place across 60 years and many airmiles. I kept picking it up and having to remind myself. Oh yes, this guy was there, and he was just about to do thaaat. Gottit.

But there was something else, too - the fact that I’d read a chapter in the morning meant that all day at the back of my head, behind any other task I was performing, there were a few firing synapses devoted to dandling through the latest turn in the plot. What would happen next? Is this somehow related to that other part of the story? Then I’d read another chapter on the way home, and have another 12 hours of sleepy (and asleepy) consideration of the story.

Despite the fact that my first reading of Cryptonomicon was immersive, this second readthrough has felt infinitely more considered and enveloping. And possibly more enjoyable for it.

Yesterday, though, on my final day of reading it, with only a tiny handful of pages to read, I was sitting on the early morning tube with the book open, when a woman came and sat next to me, glanced over at the page I had open, tutted loudly and then moved elsewhere in the carriage.

It was only after a moment that I realised what she must have glimpsed as she glanced at this wonderful, well-written and intelligent book about cryptanalysis and war and hacking and espionage.

Please see the photo below and see if you can spot it.

I swear, that’s only about the third mention of same in the entire book.

It just goes to show: you can’t judge a book my its cover. Or sometimes, not even by its content.

If you haven’t read it: do.

Dear everyone-I-know and everyone-on-the-Internet and everyone-in-the-media-especially-at-the-place-I-work,

You were right about The Wire.

Mos def, dog.

I watched the entire first season marathon-style* over the last two days of this bank holiday weekend, and am eagerly awaiting the delivery of S2 & 3 so I can spend even more time sitting on the sofa with a cat on my knee and less time thinking about moving house.

I don’t mind saying I was wrong to have previously shunned it for being merely - and I’m quoting myself, here - “people swearing and mumbling poisonously at each other”. That may well have been an accurate description of the first 15 minutes, but obviously there’s more to it than that. Sometimes they shout, too! And there are guns! And beeyatches! And bits which are possibly funny or possibly serious but I can’t quite figure out which! And actors who do brilliantly with accents, with the occasional teeny slip-up. Sorry.

But it’s good! I love it!

Please feel free to tell me you told me so. And no spoilers!

love,

Meg
x

PS The fucked-up dreams full of street slang with a thumping hiphop soundtrack, and the overwhelming temptation to call everyone rude words and to insist that they re-up my tea and move the stash of custard creams before I consume them all - this is normal, yes?

* Meaning “in several long sittings” rather than “with band-aids over my nipples and dressed as a Womble”

I wanted to draw attention to this marvellous article about Twitter by early-era blogger and all round music’n'media maven Tom Ewing.

He’s written the article in a series of tweet-sized chunks, and there’s a lot to ponder on, there. I won’t reproduce the whole thing - you should read it all, in context - but a few of the most brilliant bits (IMO) follow:

There’s a deluge of Twitter hype from media flapmouths. None of them agree on what it’s for, just that it’s wonderful.

Now Twitter’s going mainstream and dipping down the hype curve there’s an equal rush of pieces damning it.

Is it a marketing platform? A news service? A celebrity hangout? A lame Facebook knock-off? A time sink for fools? Yes, yes, yes.

The boring truth is that Twitter is a communications tool, much like blogs or websites. It’s neutral– it simply enables certain effects.

A dip into the “public tweetstream”– the firehosed thoughts of 10 million minds– is indeed a one-way ticket to Moronopolis.

If what you see is idiocy, it’s because you’ve elected to follow idiots. Simple as that.

Depending on how you come at it, Twitter initially seems an idiot’s charter or a deserted echo chamber. The fun is creating your own order.

The good side of Twitter’s license to self-promote: The 140 limit forces you to focus thoughts and directs traffic to where you expand them.

I don’t follow any musicians on Twitter: I prefer my access mediated, ideally by Smash Hits magazine asking what color their socks are.

If musicians are talking about their socks of their own accord it’s not as fun somehow.

But from a musician’s point of view I can see exactly why you’d do it. Aside from being an incorrigible exhibitionist.

Endless disappointment is the cross the early adopter has to bear. As any indie rock fan knows.

Part of the reason I’m addicted is that Twitter reminds me of the internet in the 90s, but in accelerated microcosm.

There’s the same fascination and distrust with mainstream media, the same snobbish defensiveness, the same mix of chaos and excitement.

There’s the same random thrill of stumbling across great content, the same giddy sense that everyone is making it up as they go along.

And just like the old web, in two or three years the way we use Twitter now will seem really gauche and annoying and badly planned.

I think he absolutely nails it. Well said, Tom.

Incidentally, Tom’s Blackbeardblog tumblog is also well worth following if you’re interested in the intersection of social media and market research - full of insight and interesting ideas and links.

(And if you haven’t found it yet, I’ve got a tumblog too - more(ish) which is full of odds and sods and links and pictures and music and stuff)

In early January, two years ago, I wrote a blog post about reading habits and used books (and passing them on) which included an idea about how charities could set up book exchange schemes to rival the free newspapers which people end up reading on the tube because they’re bored and they haven’t got anything else handy.

It might be really interesting for a charity like Oxfam to set up a stall/shop for a limited period in few big stations - Paddington, Waterloo, Victoria, Manchester Piccadilly, Brighton, Watford, and so on - operating a sort of book exchange of commuter-friendly paperbacks only.

They’d have to offer to take old, read books off commuters. Let them browse for a new one and take it away for an (optional) donation of £1 or £2 - it would have to be low, but I think people would bear a cost like that. My guess is, you’d end up with multiple copies of The Book Everyone’s Reading On The Train This Month, which others would be happy to pick up for a small amount, and would probably return anyway. It would also be a good way of cycling through some of the back stock in the shops, too, and a way to get people involved who wouldn’t otherwise go into charity shops.

It works because people don’t really value commuter-type books, but they need to have one anyway, or be at the mercy of one of those free papers made by people who hate London. They might buy their own book, but chances are they’ll be happy to read pretty much anything. Even better if they don’t pay much more than a paper for it.

Anyway, two years on, with a longer commute, I now read more than ever on the tube (currently: Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, for the second time) and I still think this is a good idea - especially now, when people have less money to spend on fripperies like reading matter.

Which is why I’m excited to learn this morning that a not-for-profit organisation called Choose What You Read has been set up and will be handing out free books outside various London (only, for now) stations on May 5

Co-founder Alfie Boyd [...] began the scheme with friend Claire Wilson to give commuters an alternative to the “tonnes of free newspapers dished out and thrown away every day”.

(The books) don’t generally get thrown away by people, they just go back into circulation
Co-founder Alfie Boyd

All the books were donated to the scheme by the pair’s friends.

Once they have finished each commuter is encouraged to add their name to a list of readers inside its cover before returning it.

“They don’t generally get thrown away by people, they just go back into circulation,” said Mr Boyd.

Great idea! Even better if it carries on.

* D’you see what I did there?

The trouble with wildfire is, well, it spreads. Quickly. And uncontrollably. With dangerous consequences.

On the day I arrived in Australia earlier this year, the country was reeling from the loss of whole communities in the state of Victoria which had been decimated by raging bushfires which, kindled by a gruelling midsummer heatwave (which hit 46°C), had swept through townships on the outskirts of Melbourne leaving nothing but the blackened ribs of buildings and cars smouldering in their path.

Scores of people died, along with several million native animals.

As someone from a (thankfully) bushfire-free country, it’s all-too-easy to read about situations like this and wonder why people don’t just run away - until you realise a crucial fact: wildfire runs quicker than you.

In forests and dense undergrowth, the frontline can advance at a rapid walking pace (10-20km/hr) but across open farmland and urged on by a following wind, in some cases it can advance at 80-100km/hour - that’s the length of a football field in a matter of seconds. Twisty turny country roads and raining embers slow down those trying to escape, if they managed to even reach their cars at all.

Hitting temperatures of up to 1000°C, the radiant heat from the racing wall of fire destroys everything before the flames even get close.

The best advice for those who choose to stay and defend their property, is to put out spot fires as long as possible, then find somewhere safe that won’t burn - usually inside a building, and wait until the front passes over - less than ten minutes, in many cases. But that will likely be the longest ten minutes of your life.

So even though they can be survivable, wildfires are dangerous and the fact that they spread so, quickly, virulently and unpredictably makes them worthy of suspicion and careful regard.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to the internet.

This weekend, something happened to the Amazon sales rank infrastructure which meant that lots of (fiction & non fiction) books which it had classified as adult, erotic or about sexuality suddenly had their sales rankings zapped.

Cue mass public suspicious blamestorming, name-calling and moral outrage, fuelled in no small part by Twitter.

Some of the kvetching was justified: certain books were harder (but not impossible) to find - which must be frustrating if you’re an author trying to sell books in those categories - plus the changes seemed to be applied inconsistently across the service (viz. a Playboy centrefold photo book retaining its sales rank, while Stephen Fry’s tender and gently rollicking (but not steamy in the slightest) autobiography lost its statistic. Weird.)

Some was not particularly justified, and just plain knee-jerk overreaction: “This is outright censorship!” people frothed. “Amazon have a homophobic policy!” “Let’s googlebomb them,” cried others, “I can’t wait to see them squirm!” “Boycott them!” “Book nazis!” “Why is Amazon removing the sales rankings from gay. lesbian books?”

That’s a big leap - making an assumption that it was a deliberate and malicious attempt to suppress a particular kind of literary work, or to discriminate against particular authors. And we all know what happens when you assume things.

It’s worth remembering Hanlon’s razor here:

Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

(as mentioned by at least one Twitter user)

Now, it’s still not completely clear what happened, or why - and doubtless there’ll be repercussive rumbling and grumbling about this online for some time to come, until the full story is revealed - if it ever is.

(Though whether it should be Amazon’s responsibility to submit to public interrogation of their software release practices and allow a public hue and cry to take place is another question entirely - but let’s gloss over that for now.)

But for now, it seems to be a cock-up (no pun intended) which has been/is being rectified.

Anyone who’s ever worked in big complex technology organisations knows that stuff like this happens, and that 99.9% of the time, it’s because someone didn’t test something, or didn’t think that X schema would affect Y, or one bit of the business (the bit that handles the doohickeys) failed to consult another bit (the bit that slams the whammer) which meant some small, key issue was overlooked.

That doesn’t mean it’s a good thing, obviously, but it does mean that - as Occam and common sense instruct - the simplest explanation for some phenomenon is more likely to be accurate than more complicated explanations.

Sometimes, stuff fucks up.
Usually, no-one outside of technology knows about it.
Mostly, it gets fixed.

But as explanations go, it’s not as sexy or controversial or worth spreading as an explanation which includes the board of Amazon in a photo line-up for next year’s annual report, all wearing neon comic sans “We hate teh gayz” badges, though, is it?
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Inspired by Dan Meth’s US sitcom map, which places a load of sitcoms on a map of the US, I’ve knocked up a UK-centric version, which covers sitcoms, soap operas, drama and comedy/drama serials and a few children’s TV series.

Now, this list has just been drawn up off the top of my head. It’s not exhaustive, either - I ran out of room in the South East, so I might have to do another one for that area.

In the meantime, if you can think of any others which are set in specific places, then please do share names and locations in the comments below, or as a note on the image on Flickr.

Updated to make it bigger and to include many of your fine suggestions. And Catweazle.