tv – Page 10 – Stilgherrian

14 August 200909 September 2009

Episode 52 is online, Senator Steve Fielding!

Episode 52 of Stilgherrian Live, the Extended Tentacle Edition, is now online for your viewing pleasure.

We had some great nominations for “Cnut of the Week”, as always. From the selected shortlist, Graeme Hoy came in fourth place (0 votes) for being at the centre of one of Australia’s biggest Ponzi schemes, the $50 million Chartwell Enterprises collapse.

Footballer Greg Inglis, who for some reason I was calling Glen Inglis, was 3rd (14%) for the alleged assault on his girlfriend — though there’s news today that he may have been trying to help.

Who cares? He’s just a goddam footballer!

In second place (41%), all the idiots criticising US plans to actually have a health system. I particularly like, but did not mention on the program, the editorial from Investor’s Business Daily:

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldnâ€™t have a chance in the UK, where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Except that Hawking was born in and has always lived in the UK. Hat-tip to Daring Fireball, though Investor’s Business Daily has amended their editorial.

The winner of “Cnut of the Week” was Senator Steve Fielding (45%) for his continued arsehattery and climate change denialism. Congratulations, Senator.

“Arsehattery” is such an excellent word.

Congratulations also to deanlk, who won another t-shirt from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing he’s won before, you see — via his nomination for me! apparently he didn’t like my recent piece in Crikey about the potential risk of geotagging photos.

Stilgherrian Live will return next Thursday 20 August at 9.30pm Sydney time.

13 August 2009

I will indeed attempt a Stilgherrian Live tonight

Cnut of the Week graphic

There will be an edition of Stilgherrian Live tonight from 9.30pm Sydney time, so you’d better start nominating people and things for “Cnut of the Week”.

“Cnut of the Week” is where we remember the example set by King Cnut the Great, who proved to his sycophantic courtiers that trying to hold back the tide is pointless.

We’re looking for people, organisations or other entities who are futilely trying to hold back the tide of change — especially the changes being wrought by the Big Bad Digital Hyperconnected Internet. It has to be something in the news in the last week, and you have to explain yourself. Nominees have to be not merely doing bad things, but failing to notice or adapt to the change around them. And you have to nominate here, in a comment on this post, for your entry to count.

We’ll have our usual offer of a t-shirt of your choice from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing. Just nominate a “Cnut of the Week” and be watching the program when we draw a name from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity.

(Of course, neither me nor King Cnut Ethical Clothing are as lame and unethical as to share your email address with anyone else. I for one have site policies about this sort of thing, and so do they.)

Who do you nominate, and why?

10 August 2009

Links for 10 August 2009

Here are the web links I’ve found for 10 August 2009 and some days beforehand, posted automatically, kinda.

Teens Don’t Tweet… Or Do They? | apophenia: Mashable reported some new statistics on Twitter usage with the headline “Teens Don’t Tweet”;. This article debunks that idiocy.
Why I believe in the link economy | MediaFile: Chris Ahearn, who’s President, Media at Thomson Reuters, provides an interesting counterpoint to Associated Press’ aggressive anti-linking views.
What’s a Big City Without a Newspaper? | NYTimes.com: This feature starts off with a long nostalgic waffle about newspapers, but towards the end it has some excellent points about how journalism may adapt to the new world.
Hunter S Thompson Motivational Posters | Sloshspot Blog: Yes, the world needs Hunter S Thompson motivational posters. It truly does.
The Communications Market 2009 (August) | Ofcom: The UK communications regulatory authority’s latest industry statistics.
TVS – Television Sydney: Community TV station TVS has a website — which is nothing new, except that I just discovered that their program are streamed live as well as being broadcast on UHF analog.
eCrime Symposium panel discussion | Risky Business: One of the panel discussions from last week’s eCrime Symposium in Sydney, featuring: Rachel Dixon, who’s a technology executive for online media group Viocorp, as well as being the deputy chair of consumer group CHOICE; Phil Argy, head of the Technology Dispute Centre, and Sean Richmond from Sophos. The panel was hosted by Nigel Phair, and there’s a question from me.
Mission control | SomaFM: Apollo mission radio feeds from NASA mixed with ambient electronica. Suitably excellent listening.
Rupert and the death of hubris – Alan Kohler | Business Spectator: A solid analysis of Rupert Murdoch’s announcement that News Corporation will pull its content behind paywalls.
Watch the Ebb and Flow of Melbourne Trains | FlowingData: From Australian data visualisation team Flink Labs, a fascinating overview of Melbourne’s railway network in action.
Internet Filter Plan From Stephen Conroy Won’t Work: DPP | theage.com.au: Earlier this week, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, Nicholas Cowdery QC, was rather sceptical of the Rudd government’s plans to “filter” the Internet.
Canberra Players League’s All Star Game 2009 | Dnosauria: Not bookmarked because I’m interested in basketball, but because Dean trialled using Livestream.com to put the video online. Live. Seems it’s a batter choice than Ustream, which is what I’d been using until now. I may check it out.

03 August 200903 August 2009

Links for 27 July 2009 through 03 August 2009

Here are the web links I’ve found for 27 July 2009 through 03 August 2009, posted not-quite automatically, and very late.

Viral Wedding Video’s 10M Views Drive Chris Brown Buzz and Sales | Nielsen Wire: That “viral” (by which they just mean “popular”) video of a wedding party dancing into the church [was it a church?] reminded everyone of Chris Brown’s tedious autotune’d song again, with the result that it ended up in iTunes’ Top 10. Yet another example of how something being given away increases its sales.
Who needs newspapers when you have Twitter? | Salon News: A massive troll by Wired editor Chris Anderson, seeking attention for his new book Free, which is not free. He starts by saying he doesn’t use the words “media” or “news” or “journalism”, but doesn’t offer any alternatives. Wanker.
Techfest 2009 | NICTA: On 12 August 2009, NICTA showcases some of the new ICT research and development they’ree working on at this most-of-the-day event in Sydney. Let me know if you’d like to join me.
Women In Film | YouTube: A morph-montage of some of the most famous female faces in film. Note how the eyes are so similar.
Men In Film | YouTube: A morph-montage of some of film’s most famous male faces. It’s a challenge to spot all of them. Note how similar most of the noses are.
Ashes 09: Hughes’ Twitter drop – Gen Y meets the Baggy Green | Crikey: Twitter, Criket Australia style: “We get the Twitter from Phillip and I feed them into our IT guy.” Somehow I don’t think they get this “personal” and “spontaneous” stuff.
æ ç›®ï¼ˆç›®å½•): China’s PLA Daily offers free downloads of (military) music, plus some cheesy animated GIFs.
Real Black Hats Hack Security Experts on Eve of Conference | Wired.com: Infosec “expert” Dan Kaminsky has been pwn3d, and his lame choice for passwords exposed.
Tesla_Downunder: Some amazing photos of electrical effects from an Australian who’s been building large Tesla coils.
AdViews: A digital archive of thousands of vintage TV commercials from the 1950s to 1980s, created or collected by ad agency Benton & Bowles or its successor, D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B).
Profile: Gary McKinnon | guardian.co.uk: 43yo Gary McKinnon, diagnosed last August with Asperger’s syndrome, admits to hacking US military computers to fuel his UFO obsession.
Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments | UK Cabinet Office: The UK has developed a standard 20-page template which departments can use for their own Twitter strategy. I can’t help think that it’ll kill spontaneity before it starts. “All other tweets will be cleared by staff at Information Officer grade and above in the digital media team, consulting relevant colleagues in comms and private offices as necessary.” Gawd.
The Mind Of A US Army Sniper | newmatilda.com: A fine article on what it means for a soldier, particularly a sniper, to kill a person. And then do it again. Not an easy read, but an important read.
Reconceptualising “time” and “space” in the era of electronic media and communications | Australian Policy Online: “This paper examines to what extent electronic media and communications have contributed to currently changing concepts of time and space and how crucial their role is in experiencing temporality, spatiality and mobility.”
Cutthroat Capitalism: An Economic Analysis of the Somali Pirate Business Model | Wired: “Like any business, Somali piracy can be explained in purely economic terms. It flourishes by exploiting the incentives that drive international maritime trade. The other parties involved — shippers, insurers, private security contractors, and numerous national navies — stand to gain more (or at least lose less) by tolerating it than by putting up a serious fight. As for the pirates, their escalating demands are a method of price discovery, a way of gauging how much the market will bear.”
Mark Thomas Info: I first encountered Mark Thomas by reading his book As Used on the Famous Nelson Mandala: underground adventures in the arms & torture trade. The stand-up comedian and activist for human rights is worth paying attention to.
The Arms Trade | A Stubborn Mule’s Perspective: Sean Carmody turns his data analysis skills to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfer Database, which I mentioned the other day. This initial foray generates some nice maps.
The Coming Upstream Revolution. And We Need It | Gigaom: Just as I thought, increasingly two-way communication on the web leads to increased demand for fast uplinks as well as downlinks.
Metadata for news | BuzzMachine: Jeff Jarvis’ write-up of Associated Press and the Media Standards Trust proposal for a new standard for metadata for news, plus his own thoughts.
SIPRI Arms Transfers Database | Stockholm International Peace Research Institute: A searchable database of all international transfers in seven categories of major conventional weapons from 1950 to the most recent full calendar year.

30 July 200912 March 2011

“Stilgherrian Live” rehearsals have gone well

Putting together the Stilgherrian Live (Metro Screen) Special Edition in a proper multi-camera TV studio is very different from a regular Stilgherrian Live.

For a start, there’s all these other people around. Then there’s the waiting. And the presenter gets to wait the most, as everyone else is working on camera angles and movement, lighting design, cues… ah, but this is the magic of television!

Supposedly.

Anyway, I hope you’re all busy nominating people for “Cnut of the Week” over at that other blog post, ‘cos nominations close at 8pm Sydney time. That’s in about three hours.

Oh, and the photo was taken by Trinn (’Pong) Suwannapha.

29 July 200930 July 2009

Stilgherrian Live (Metro Screen) Special, with Cnuts

There’s a very special edition of Stilgherrian Live this Friday afternoon at 2pm Sydney time. ’Pong and his classmates at Metro Screen are producing a full multi-camera episode with a quiz and interviews and other entertainments.

The program is the end result of their full-week course, Produce live-streamed multi-cam television. ’Pong pitched doing Stilgherrian Live as his segment — as if he wasn’t busy enough doing his Masters of Digital Media at COFA and being DOP for some SEKRIT soap opera — and somehow that’s morphed into me presenting the whole program.

The program will be streamed live from Metro Screen’s page at Viocorp.

Now, I know 2pm Friday is when many people are meant to be working, but it’d be great to have a few of you watching, commenting back, and even providing the students with some feedback.

So to encourage your participation, we’ll have our usual offer of a t-shirt of your choice from our friends at King Cnut Ethical Clothing. Just nominate a “Cnut of the Week” and be watching the program when we draw a name from the Cocktail Shaker of Integrity.

Continue reading “Stilgherrian Live (Metro Screen) Special, with Cnuts”