Posts by AlfieGoodrich

Bleep out Chris Moyles

If the BBC decided to edit Chris Moyles out of the radio I would be happy. Odd that the corporation chooses to take out one word from a song to apparently appease one group of people, let they leave Moyles' offensive personality intact for the duration of his show, citing the reasons as his popularity and his almost single-handed saving of Radio 1 every time people complain about him.

I havent listened to him or Radio 1 since about December 2000, when I heard him throw a cheap, racist, curry-related gag at a young Indian lady who had phoned in to his show.

My complaint to Matthew Bannister, controller of R1 at the time, was returned with the usual: "Chris has a big listener base and is liked by his public".

If someone as irritating as him is untouchable, why touch a perfectly decent song like "Fairy Tale.."? Sorry, "Homosexual Tale of New York".....

Facebook might be ubiquitous, but it sure is dull....

Given that I am, one, in the internet business and, two, someone who like networking, I thought I would set up a Facebook page.

Having given MySpace a wide berth because of its horrendous design, I tried Virb first and have left a profile there in the hope that it gets busy soon as it is a great design, easy to re-skin and works great.

Facebook was next and I was really encouraged by what I saw; nice clean design. loads of apps so that I could plug my Flickr pics in, my Last.fm account and stacks more.

I joined a few groups [just half a dozen related to photography, the other part of my work] and that's where the wheels fell off Facebook for me.

One week later, even in one group with over 4000 members, there is not a single response to my helpful and engaging postings, not a single comment on any of the really cool pics that I uploaded [i always leave comments on other people's] and the 'wall', where people post notes, is populated entirely by people saying 'Hi, just joined....'.

In seven days on Flickr I could expect a raft of responses to material posted and would engage typically in any number of good conversations with people.

My conclusion: having a Facebook profile seems to be the latest fad. But, as for actually using it, well that seems to be another thing entirely.

Money for old rope

I agree that maybe its flat representation on paper does nothing compared to it in its full, multi-media flow. But come on, even if something is designed for our modern online world and not just paper, polo shirts or the sides of a London bus, shouldnt it at least be a little more inspiring and creative than a multicoloured splodge?

400K for this seems to be nicely in line with Wolf Ollins' usual 're-invention' costs and at least, unlike the BT debacle where an old granny who did design back in the 1940s turned out to be the original designer of BT's trumpet man, at least the money hasn't been wasted on making something 'new' when it already existed.

Having seen people in senior positions at my county council swooning over a bunch of clip-art when deciding upon a new logo for something it is no surprise that we have ended up with this new Olympic logo. My company ended up designing the logo for almost no fee to save the council from wasting any more of our council tax. The public sector [and despite any commercial bent the Olympics is basically being steered by the public sector] in my experience is full of people with no taste, little idea of design, little idea of reality, no idea of how to wisely spend taxpayers money and is addicted to consultants. No surprise then that a bunch of jargon-talking 're-inventors' with swanky offices in New York and London managed to convince people that this pink pile of puke was 'modern, innovative, dynamic blah blah blah'

Compressing not deleting

Why does it take so long to delete 23GB of data? Cos it ain't deleting it.

I imagine MS has done a deal with the FBI or DHS, MI5 etc etc so that a Vista machine never deletes anything.

From what I can tell so far about Vista, its DRM, its ability to delete software it doesn't like and from the terms & conditions of the licence, every Vista machine is owned by Microsoft with a written-in backdoor for all those agencies who signed up and probably help make MS so rich.

So, why so long to delete 23GB? Ever tried zipping up 23GB of data? It takes a long time.

I rest my case.

I dont blame Bill Gates. I blame George Orwell. This was all his stupid, brilliant, amazing, frightening idea and the human race has to go through it all, I think, to be able to sift out from the ashes a better way of how to run this planet. But, before it gets better it usually always gets worse. That's just the way it goes.