IMS_Blog

During Sunday’s “European” Formula 1 grand prix (at Nürburgring—though not of course the glorious Nordschleife) BBC Radio 5 had a treat for us. Murray Walker commentating once more. And suddenly F1 was racing once more. As the race was made interesting by a typical Nürburgring sudden rain downpour, I could hear in my mind the normal ITV F1 commentators having sober and careful discussions of tyre choice. Meanwhile Murray made it as exciting as it was, with a voice that sounds like an engine speeding round the track. The thing is that while the technical discussion is interesting (if a little patronising for those who understand the sport), and news from the pits always welcome, it’s boring as hell. Murray may get things wrong but you forgive him because his commentary is as much as seat of the pants stuff as the unbelievable reflexes of the drivers he’s watching. We miss him. Please come back again (I’d listen to Radio 5 all the time if they had Murray).

Incidentally, I would have had that race red flagged much earlier, as soon as it became obvious no one could really get round turn 1, and there was a real danger of running into an already off car. That Liuzzi could almost collect the safety car and tap the recovery tractor asks some serious questions for such a safety obsessed sport—that could have easily been a lot worse than it was.

This is basically a post so I can go, hey, I didn’t know Dave Gorman has a blog (for those not following along, Mr Gorman more or less punctuates my entire time in York, including ritual nights with a TV in a kitchen, an insane round trip York–Gateshead–Scarborough–York (pausing to feed a cat)–Gateshead, and a good excuse for a trip to Norwich). Anyway, in one of the bits on that blog Dave uses the word “Mancolgia”.

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Further thoughts on the BBC Archive Trial and an intriguing take on iPlayer

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Sort of tangentially related to the BBC iPlayer stuff, I’m actually a tester for the BBC’s online archive service trial (sorry, that’s basically a closed off page. Here’s a BBC News Article announcing the trial’s launch). I’d sort of forgotten about this until reminded the other day, and I’ve been looking around. My main conclusion is that really, the BBC needs to offer two archives.

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When the BBC reporter Alan Johnson was released the BBC News frontpage predictably enough gave it top billing. Immediately below it, as third story, (sorry, didn’t think to grab a screen shot) the news that Alan Johnson had announced a once in a generation review of the NHS. Now, I’m glad he’s released but this seems a bit of a quick career change, and a pretty damn quick rise in politics ;-)

Sorry, just amused me. Carry on.

So the great laptop saga comes to an end. Basically it’s so falling apart and failing in so many ways that rescue begins to produce diminishing benefits. So, it’s been sort of abandoned, leading to…shiny new toy!

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