What an awesome site from Reuters, full of lots of great stories and some really useful tools for journalists (even if one of their products has the same name as ours. I wonder which came first?).
This is the reason I was up till 7am last night/this morning...
It's nothing more than Facebook for grown ups, but I'm slightly obsessed with it at the moment. In about two weeks no doubt I, and the rest of the internet population, will have moved onto something else...
Fascinating, if perhaps overlong, article from Bob Woodward about his relationship with former FBI boss Mark Felt who was his key source during the Watergate investigations Woodward and Bernstein did for the Washington Post.
Anyone who loved All The Presidents Men should read this article as it's a great account of how this relationship started (by chance,) and why it took the shape that it ultimately did.
The Post also do a nice summary of both the film and the real life events too, which is well worth a peruse, if only to make you realise how this stuff, seems to belong to a by gone age, even though it was just 30 years ago...
This is a new one on me - a weblog dedicated to commenting and keeping abreast of what the regulator for our industry is doing.
A handy addition to my bookmarks me thinks...
Great idea this - taken from and contributed to on Dina's site. So good I thought I would share it here too.
1. Take five books off your bookshelf (or in my case the coffee table).
2. Book #1 -- first sentence
3. Book #2 -- last sentence on page fifty
4. Book #3 -- second sentence on page one hundred
5. Book #4 -- next to the last sentence on page one hundred fifty
6. Book #5 -- final sentence of the book
7. Make the five sentences into a paragraph:
"Precious Ramotswe was sitting at her desk at the No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency in Gaborone. 'I could make a stew at the start of the week,' the wife was saying, 'and it would keep. Do you like stews?' As you read this book 2.5 million red blood cells are being made every second within your bone marrow, in order to keep your body cells supplied with oxygen. If they are saying this thing, announcing it, then they feel that logically they have to present it in speech marks, because it's all them talking. And if you are wondering why this piece is at the end of the book instead of appearing as the usual foreward, preface or introduction, well, it is called Inside Out..."
The Full Cupboard of Life - Alexander McCall Smith
The Blackpool Highflyer - Andrew Martin
The Optimum Nutrition Bible - Patrick Holford
Eats Shoots & Leaves - Lynne Truss
Inside Out: a personal history of Pink Floyd - Nick Mason
I like this - there's a prison in Channings Wood (Dorset,) which has it's own radio station.
It's name: Con Air.
Nice.
Four and a half months into the year and I’ve been very remiss with a lot of my reviews, so thought I’d give you a quick update on some of the best stuff I have seen and heard in the last 150 days…
Best Book
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon’s book won the Whitbread and is like nothing else I have read – mainly because the narrator is a young boy with autism.
It’s very moving, funny and challenging at the same time. The book falls down a little when the protagonist moves to London, but it’s still worth reading this heart-rendering tale. I can’t say anything more without giving the story away – but if you read anything this year, read this!
Follow Up
Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier - at first this feels like Chevalier is trying to outdo The English Patient with her early, somewhat contrived volume of description, but this soon passes and we settle into the tale of Griet the young daughter of a tile-maker who obtains her first job as a servant in the household of the well-known painter, Vermeer.
It’s a charming tale of unrequited love, household politics and life in 17th century Holland – beautifully written and very charming. If you want something with decent character development, heavy description and lots of subtext, then this is for you…
Best TV Show
24 continues to win hands down with great twists and turns as well as truly terrific acting – when you consider how quickly the show is put together the quality week in week out of production, writing and on screen talent is second to none.
On a smaller scale, the only other things I’ve consistently watched have been the grifting drama Hustle (all style and no substance, but what style!) and Alias (Buffy meets Bond) – the show remind me of Saturday night teatime watching Bugs.
Whereas 24 has a huge volume of OB and location work (or rather great studio sets which despite the cost are often only used for a few minutes of screen time,) Alias “features” different European cities every week in its plot line. I say features, because you get an archive shot and a caption for the city e.g. Budapest, Moscow etc. and then everything thereafter is shot indoors. It’s a clever trick and makes it look more expensive than it is (which is not to say that even for a non-peak US drama it still costs more than almost anything made in the UK!)
Finally, The OC serves to remind me how unfeasiably attractive people in American TV typically are, and hits all the Beverly Hills 90210 nostalgia buttons and Queer Eye remains great watching too…
Best New Album
I love Air, (great URL) or to be fair I used to, until their penultimate album 10,000hz Legend which I thought was pretty dire. So the question with their new album – Talkie Walkie was would they be able to return to the past glories of Moon Safari and the Virgin Suicides?
In short yes – and then some. It’s an eerily catchy album – the best tracks being Cherry Blossom Girl and Alpha Beta Gaga – both already featuring in adverts left right and centre – with more no doubt to follow. My only criticism of this album is that it’s too short – one song blends effortlessly into the other and before you know it the 45 mins are gone and it’s finished – double album next time please boys!
(There’s also some great remixes knocking around too – The Blue Room on Radio One have played lots of them in recent months.)
What have been your favourites?
Nice story from The Guardian concerning the Doctoring of a billboard ad for the new Jonny Vaughan breakfast show on Capital. At present the boards and Morecombe and Wise TV style ads are everywhere, so a spoof / rip-off was only a matter of time...
Quote from the Media Guardian's Daily Digest...
DAILY MIRROR
The cook given a roasting by Gordon Ramsay on Channel 4 has been
picked for Big Brother. P7
Not a mental image I particularly wanted on a wet Tuesday morning...
If I ate less pies, didn't have cyclicists legs and spent more time on the sunbed - apparantly I would look like this....
You can design your own virtual model at http://www.mvm.com/
Nice.
