iTunes 8.0

Wednesday, 10th September, 2008

So, new iPods were announced by Apple yesterday, which is all very nice. However, I bought an iPhone in November last year (when they were released in the UK) and part of my justification for spending the £269 on that phone was that I also needed a new iPod, and the iPhone provided me with that too.

As well as the new iPods, Apple also released iTunes 8 yesterday. I’ve been using it since yesterday evening, and it’s pretty good. I’ve not yet tried out the new ‘Genius’ feature, but I’ve read some good stuff about it already, and as the data available to help generate these Genius playlists grows, this feature can really only get better and better.

My favourite feature of iTunes 8 has to be the new Visualiser though (they call it Visualizer, but I can’t bring myself to use a ‘z’ when an ‘s’ is the correct choice). I’ve just ‘watched’ about half a dozen songs on my MacBook Pro, and the effects are quite simply stunning.

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6

Sep

I’m too old to like cartoons

Saturday, 6th September, 2008

I watch Family Guy. A lot. It’s a cartoon, and I’m 33 years old.

Growing up (ha!), my favourite cartoon was the Roadrunner, due entirely to the ineptitude of the Wile E. Coyote character, who really should’ve have the title role for this cartoon.

This article http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/2008/09/06/hi_im_a_mac_beep_beep/ is brilliant. The link made between the “I’m a Mac…” adverts and the Roadrunner cartoons is spot on.

So, basically, I’m such a big fan of the Mac (and more generally Apple) because I used to watch Roadrunner cartoons.

I can’t wait to see how my life turns out now that I watch so much Family Guy…

6

Sep

I’m not even trying

Saturday, 6th September, 2008

It probably looks like I’m picking on the BBC at the moment, given that this is my third recent post about how bad their news service is, but they just make it so easy. I’m not spending hours and hours reading their content, looking for things to pull them up on. They are just so inept that you don’t have to look particularly hard to find things that they have fucked up.

Take this little gem:

That’s 17 words. They have managed to make a complete mess of writing 17 words.

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4

Sep

BBC news style

Thursday, 4th September, 2008

I love this stuff. Those that know me will know that I love to spot mistakes and gleefully point them out, especially in the areas of spelling and grammar. I’m not saying that I don’t make mistakes; I know that I do, but I don’t make them often, and I certainly don’t make the types of mistakes that are listed here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7595509.stm

I agree with most of these. I also agree that our language isn’t a fixed structure, and the notes given in the above article that state accepted uses of some of these grammar anomalies are perfectly acceptable to me.

What isn’t acceptable to me is the continual reference to BBC news style guide. It’s almost as if they are using the existence of this ‘style guide’ as justification for all the horrendous mistakes that their journalists make when ‘writing’ their copy. If they can pass off all of the grammatical errors that litter the news content of the BBC by referring to their style guide, then it must be hundreds of thousands of pages in length.