Yet again I have managed to find something that I would like to do more of, and managed to find a port if it to iPhone. This usually means that I’ll be doing it a lot more and although that doesn’t currently matter with this blog, considering the fact that it has an active readership of approximately 0, it’s always good to get some practice in at writing.
Thus far, I quite like the iPhone WordPress app. I’m not sure how you do anything more complex than just send text blogs, (or if it is even possible to do any more than that), but that’s good enough for me for the moment. It’s possible that some more features will come out for it later, although I think that trying to port the entire admin panel to the iPhone would probably be a mistake. Luckily I think that the developers feel this way too, and so we should hopefully keep with a reasonably basic app, that uses it’s limited range of tools very well. All iPhone owning WP bloggers should give it a try (it’s free, what’ve you got to lose?) http://iphone.wordpress.org
Edit: the app has a few more whizz-bangs than I first though, such as a link editor that pops up if it thinks you’re editing a link (although it would be nice if it didn’t try and auto-correct the addresses), and an attempt at a preview in the theme of your blog (it didn’t seem to get on with mine, possibly it’s a bit complex). I’d really still like a more fully-fledged text editor though, as the only way that i’ve found to do any kind of text decoration is with HTML, which is a little too complex on the iPhone keypad.
More Edit: Also installed WPtouch, which is a skin for iPhones/Android making the blog easier to navigte. I’m not completely convinced yet, although parts of it are growing on me. If I actually had any readers, this might actually be a problem, but for now, all is okay.
I watch far too many television programmes. currently I’m watching LOST, Smallville, Harper’s Island, Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, Dexter and the Simpsons, and that’s just shows that air in the US before they do in the UK. Aside from the fact that this takes up far too much of my time, and the fact that I need to get out more, I’ve noticed something about most of these, the movement from a singular episode format, with a kind of mild overarching storyline, to a format where the main story arc takes precedence. Obviously some shows still manage to stay away from this, The Simpsons being a prime example, however most shows seem to be adopting this, and generally to their detriment.
Take Smallville as an example. Once upon a time, at the genesis of the show, it followed a strict monster-of-the-week format. Clark arrives, something has been transformed by kryptonite(“meteor rocks”) , Clark hits it a bit and emerges victorious. I can see why people disapproved of this format, and indeed, why it would have been unsustainable in the long run (although Buffy seemed to manage well enough for six years), the system they worked out in the later few series where Clark has to stop Lex findingout something for an entire series, whilst things get in his way, I found to be much preferable to the current approach. Nowadays, gritty and unhappy characters march onto our screens, demand some kind of resolution to their problems, and then run around in circles until the episode ends. This season, for example, they’ve been trying to track down and catch Davies Bloome, i.e. Doomsday, however every time that they catch him, he either runs away, or is saved by Chloe. This week we were in formed that [spoiler] he has dug himself up from a grave into which he was placed last week, and is on the rampage AGAIN.[/spoiler] If it were not for the fact that something similar to this, involving the same characters, has happened in EVERY episode this season, that would be a good storyline. I much preferred it in it’s happy days, when everything was more brightly coloured, and there was more “plot advancement” every week (as in, things happened during the episodes).
I will admit that Smallville is particularly bad for this change, most of the other shows started off with mildly overarching storylines (bar Scrubs and, of course, The Simpsons), however I think some of them have managed to change their storytelling perspectives better than others. Grey’s Anatomy has gone for a strange and eclectic system in which scenes from random characters are fired at you through the episodes in the hope that you will somehow piece it all together and manage to keep up with the story as a whole. LOST started off that way, although they too seem to have been favouring the “throw random bits of story at the audience and hope that they stick” method, which has improved in later episodes, but is still nowhere near as good as it was previously.
Scrubs is just a sorry corpse, sadly held animated by Bill Lawrence and dancing worryingly as you see limbs fall off from age. Whilst they are obviously trying to keep the show going by going back to its roots, it’s just been on for too long now, and all of the character’s eccentricities, which were the main reasons that the show was funny in the first place, have been played out to their full, so that now, we really just wait until JD and Elliot get married and we learn that the Janitor’s name really IS Jan Itor.
What I’m really saying is that all of these (apart from Harper’s Island obviously) have just got too old. They can’t conform to the new and gritty television standards that we expect nowadays, and that, rather than continuing on forever, the writers/producers should really have seen this coming and ended their shows gracefully, rather than continuing until they die, shedding actors and quality until all that they leave us with are poor imitations of their former brilliant selves.
Last week, one of the choirs I sing in (the University of Liverpool Singers) recorded themselves singing a couple of tracks.
For an amatuer choir, they’re not bad all! You can listen using the flash player, or download from the links below (please not too much, as some of us have to foot the bill for the bandwidth). If anyone wants lossless copies of these, I have them.
Yes, that time of year has come again, fake-happy-card-day! I wish everyone a Happy Saturday! Luckily my family are coming up to Liverpool to visit, which is awesome! It’s nice to have something to do on my weekends, and my cousins are really cute! Luckily, fake-happy-card-day actually has a very small effect on my life nowadays, as I now have the option to opt out of most public holidays (except Christmas obviously, no-one can escape the evil of Christmas).
Happy Saturday!
I’m not entirely sure what it is about public holidays that I so detest. I realise that part of my dislike of Valentines day (or, as the Catholic Church now tells us, St. Raphael’s Day) is merely the fact that I am not part of the hoards of lovey-dovey couples for whom Valentines day is a time to go out to a restaurant/cinema/club and say just how much they wuv each other. Were this the only public holiday that irritated me, I think that this would probably suffice, but that’s not the case.
All holidays basically share one thing in common, people look to them to be a time when they feel happy about something, whether that be relationships, family, chocolate or whatever that holiday happens to represent, and it can generally be counted on that most of the the time surrounding said holiday, or quite often, during the holiday itself, one finds that they are the least happy about said celebration. Holidays create a form of expectation of greatness, Valentines day can often bring expectations of grand romantic gestures, with these exprectations reciprocated bya great range of expressions of love, from simple flowers and chocolates, to a strange and insatiable need to go to the heart shaped island their partner just discovered on Google maps (would that I were joking). People seem to expect a great deal from one special day, and I’m sure that they really enjoy it if everything goes to plan, however, were but one thing to go wrong, all hell may break loose. You have ruined Valentines day and obviously don’t love him/her as much as they love you.
This, as I said before is not a trait true only for Valentines day. All large holidays suffer from a period of expectation that can usually never be fulfilled in one simple day. Christmas is probably the best example of a holiday overblown to galactic proportions. Everyone has a tale of a ruined Christmas, or how terrible Christmasses always are, how uncle Ted always gets drunk, and how Grandpa always tells rather embarassing and innapproptiate stories to the small children, and yet we continue to hype up this strange festival of presents and sparkly things as if it were a period that we actually enjoy every year. Why would you continue to meet up with these people and exchange gifts they don’t really want or need when you don’t really want to?
The problem again is the fact that, in our media driven culture, we are driven to expect things from these festivals. The television becomes filled with over-joyous people celebrating whatever season in special “holiday” episodes, the newspapers write special articles telling us how to have perfect festivities, and condemn those who have publicly spoken out against them as grumpy kill-joys. All of this fervour merely adds to our expectations of the holiday, creating a bigger let-down when the day actually arrives.
It’s not that I don’t believe that the things that these holidays represent aren’t important or nice, it’s just that I feel that consigning them to a single day has robbed each thing of its specialness. Why should you be resigned to showing affection for your partner on Valentines day, surely any other day of the year is equally important for informing them of your feelings, why must we gather together at Christmas, when so many people do not believe or care about the reasons, and why must we eat chocolate at Easter, when new life springs around us for most of the year, were we not too closed-minded to see it. People should celebrate these things, but the requirements of each individual day has created expectations far beyond those that anyone could fulfil, and has robbed the sanctity of those emotions. I really wish that people could see that these days aren’t important, and show their feelings of joy whenever they appear, rather than funnelling them all into the media-fueled frenzy of these arbitrary days.
I want you to look back on everything you’ve ever read, and I want you to pick one that you feel is the most influential, the most powerful, and just simply the most impressive. For me, it’s difficult to pick a book. I can see several different reasons for picking any of a number of simply awesome books. To make my point, however, I’m going to pick Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”.
The Divine Comedy is the story of the author’s imagined journey through the the three realms of the afterlife, Hell (inferno), Limbo (purgatorio) and Heaven (paradiso). Guided through these rather foreboding realms by people important to him and (at least in his feeling) history, The Divine Comedy represents both a huge religious statement, a significant political commentary of the time and one of the most significant works in literature ever. Despite having no religious feelings myself, I still find the Divine Comedy and awe-inspiring piece of work, something that should be treated with great reverence and care. This is why I am appalled to discover that “Inferno” is being made into a videogame.
I understand that consumers are forever asking for deeper and more meaningful stories, and this is possibly why they’ve decided to make this, but unfortunately the likelihood of this is extremely slim. From my previous knowledge of video game conversion (and from viewing the trailer) Dante appears to have been removed from his role as worried observer and been given a new role: to go through the levels of hell and hit as many things as he can.
This new level of depravity in marketing disturbs me. This is obviously not a game for those who have read the book, the large majority of such people are unlikely to play video-games, and I do not believe that those who do are likely to wish to play it. Who could possibly believe that the story could be converted into a pop-culture friendly video-game? Who then is the game for? The only option conceivable to me is that it for those who have heard of the book, and are interested only in the concept, not achieving knowledge of the real thing, after all, how likely is it that the game will convey the meaning, or realistically, any of the content of Dante’s book?
EA have released several press statements stating their excitement for this opportunity to “fuse great gameplay with great story”, but I remain unconvinced. There is no need for a video game of Inferno, and there never will be. Please just leave the classics alone.
@littlehux I love tea. I may have to make another pot. Still addicted to brew, even if they didn't give me a job. 18 hrs ago
@littlehux What I want is a card that eschews all other offers in favour of free tea and coffee wherever I go :(. No-one has yet made this:( 18 hrs ago
![[del.icio.us]](http://www.pbrohan.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Digg]](http://www.pbrohan.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/digg.png)
![[Facebook]](http://www.pbrohan.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[Reddit]](http://www.pbrohan.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/reddit.png)
![[Squidoo]](http://www.pbrohan.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/squidoo.png)
![[StumbleUpon]](http://www.pbrohan.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/stumbleupon.png)
![[Twitter]](http://www.pbrohan.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Email]](http://www.pbrohan.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
