The Maya were right!

I believe in the Mayan prophesy for 2012!

Now, that might come as a surprise to some, considering it's utter bullshit, but of all the compelling arguments against any kind of Mayan based 2012 doomsday predictions (their calendar is wrong, it's bullshit, the Maya weren't aware of precession, it's bullshit, our calendar has changed numerous times, it's bullshit and it's utter bullshit) my favourite has to be that absolutely nowhere in ancient Maya text does it make any mention whatsoever of anything happening when their calendar ends, other than a new one beginning. As far as they were concerned it had already happened thirteen times. All they were worried about was having to pop down W.H.Smiths' for a new diary.

All this apocalyptic nonsense is purely a modern invention to sell books to feebs. The 70's was a great time for cult leaders and mojo book sellers.

And then there's the New Age fucknuts who nicely sit on their fences by saying it will be a time of 'spiritual transformation'. Again, there is nothing in Mayan or Aztec culture to suggest that any kind of change, physical or spiritual (whatever that vagueness is) whatsoever will take place in 2012.

The Maya were dead chill about it!

So, insofar as the Maya, Aztecs and ancient Mesoamericans predicted that nothing whatsoever would occur on December 21st 2012, I totally agree with them.

Update: I'm going to a party Dec 21st, things might get a little rowdy!

Warning over ‘journalists’ and ‘researchers’ producing meaningless articles

If there’s two things that wind me up it’s shoddy ‘scientific’ research and shoddy journalism.

This article, from this morning’s BBC news site, is a prime example of both and has irritated the hell out of me. It leads in with the headline ‘Warning’ yet makes no reference in the article to whatever it is we are being warned about. In fact the whole article seems to just be a description of a situation and a couple of sentences from one researcher who doesn’t like it much, although even he fails to say what the problem is in any way.

This ‘warning’ from ‘researchers’ is also littered with hearsay and anecdotal evidence. If they had titled the piece ‘study suggests’ or ‘possible concern’ I don’t think I would have been so annoyed, it’s just the combination of ‘warning’ and no facts whatsoever that pisses me off.

I have reproduced the article in it’s entirety (it’s short, given little actual content), intercut with my comments, for the purposes of criticism. All copyright to the text remains with the author.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14387637

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Warning over children's multi-screen viewing

3 August 2011 Last updated at 12:04

Parents are being warned of a trend among children of watching television while using other interactive devices.


Researchers found children were often "multi-screen viewing" - watching TV while simultaneously using smartphones, laptops or hand-held gaming devices.

---OK, fine, you found they do that. Why is that bad? Why does it need a warning?


In a paper - I'm on it 24/7 at the moment - academics at Loughborough and Bristol universities said children enjoyed viewing more than one screen.

---Good for them! Why is that bad?


But researchers say families need help to limit multi-screen viewing.

----Now we’re getting somewhere. So tell us, why does it need to be limited?


The study questioned 63 10-to-11-year-olds.

---Oh, I thought you were about to make a point?


The researchers found the children often used a second device to fill in breaks during their entertainment - for example, texting or talking to their friends during advertisements or while they were waiting for computer games to load.

---And this is bad why? I still feel like you’re not telling us something.


They also found television was used to provide background entertainment while they were doing something else - especially if the programme chosen by their family was considered boring.

One of the study's respondents said: "I'm on my DSi and my laptop. On my DSi I'm on MSN and on my laptop I'm on Facebook and then the TV is on."

--Yes, you’ve already told us this. Kids use multiple screens, we get it. Why is that bad again?


Technological advances


Dr Russ Jago, from Bristol University's Centre for Exercise, Nutrition and Health Sciences, said: "There is a shortage of information about the nature of contemporary screen viewing amongst children, especially given the rapid advances in screen-viewing equipment technology and their widespread availability.

---Oh right. By saying "There is a shortage of information about the nature of contemporary screen viewing amongst children” surely you’ve have nullified most of your points as anecdotal and made yourself look a bit of a cock for issuing a ‘Warning’ about something there is a shortage if information about? Way to remain impartial and not try to spread panic. BTW, still waiting to find out why it’s a bad thing exactly.


"For example, TV programmes are watched on computers, games consoles can be used to surf the internet, smartphones, tablet computers and hand-held games play music, video games provide internet access, and laptop computers can do all of the above."

---Yes, yes they can. I think the point had already been made. The point about WHY it’s bad, however, hasn’t been made at all yet.


Dr Jago said health campaigns recommended reducing the amount of time children spend watching TV.

---Ahhhhhhh, is this it? Is this why you felt the need to issue a ‘warning’? Unnamed ‘health campaigns’ recommended reducing the amount of time children spend watching TV (and join their subscription based programs presumably). Well of course they did, it’s common sense. Kids need to get out and play more, I think we can all probably agree on that. But where’s the evidence this isn’t just down to shitty, lazy, parenting? Where’s the evidence that multiple screens mean kids sit around for longer? Kids sat around watching only one screen for years, I’m sure they just like sitting around regardless of how many screens are distracting them. Would you mind taking your warning and fucking off until you can come back with some actual evidence and not what is, at best, a well thought about opinion.


"However, the children in this study often had access to at least five different devices at any one time, and many of these devices were portable.

---That’s it? One sentence of hinting possible negatives and we’re back to reiterating the same useless point again?


"This meant that children were able to move the equipment between their bedrooms and family rooms, depending on whether they wanted privacy or company.

---Nice bit of exercise for them then init?


"This suggests that we need to work with families to develop strategies to limit the overall time spent multi-screen viewing wherever it occurs within the home."

---Why??? If you're ‘developing strategies’ to ‘limit’' stuff at least fucking tell me what the problem is!!!


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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14387637

See! Here we have a ‘researcher’ and a ‘journalist’ issuing warnings about stuff with nothing to say.

I know this is a pretty trivial point. Kids need to do more, whatever. But this is the same mentality that, when it hits upon something actually important (say, the entirely fictional link between Autism and the MMR vaccine), can do real damage. Cost lives.

Also, multi-screens are awesome! Get with the 21st century daddy-o!

Alternative? Narrow minded more like.

Today Amy Winehouse died. Most of my friends on Facebook and followers on Twitter paid their respects in messages and, regardless of opinion of her personally, all agreed it was a terrible waste of life and talent.

There was a certain section of my online acquaintances that reacted in a disappointing, but predictable way. those who identify themselves as ‘Alternative’.

Most (but not, I should add, all) of the Goth/Industrial/Alternative types on my various friends lists reaction to Winehouse's death was nothing short of unsurprising.

Smug and self-important.

Well done there, the moral high-ground they so desperately insist is yours (all the time) is, once again, very much not. Those elitist, holier-than-thou pricks.

I'm not even a massive Winehouse fan but she definitely had an incredible voice and was a character that will be missed. There’s aren’t enough characters any more. When you watched her on TV or whatever you got the impression that, although appearances were that she was being mocked, she was pretty canny to her public persona. Her stints on Never Mind The Buzzcocks were amongst the funniest episodes.

But, as I said, I'm not a massive fan, it just winds me up that 'Alternative' types always claim the open minded, right thinking, position in any situation. But are in fact, almost exclusively, closed minded, isolationist, bitter and venomous idiots who fear and hate anything outside of their tiny little 'Alternative' world.

I'm proud to no longer be one of them.

Yes, 91 had died in Oslo today, yes 10 had died in China, and those of us with any decency had already expressed out shock and horror and bewilderment at these situations, that’s no reason to feel superior enough to mock the death of someone else, for whatever reason.

The ‘Alternative’ scene thinks it’s so different, so non-conformist, but never had I come across more blinkered prejudicial and, in certain respects, bigoted group of people in my life. The fact that they are mostly so deluded that they think they are the good guy, due to some perceived intellectually superiority, just make me madder.

Hence the rant.

It’s been a hell of a day for bad news and tragedy. That’s never a good time to act smug.

Bye bye Space Shuttle, bye bye manned space flight

I think I first saw the Space Shuttle in Moonraker in 1980, I must have been about five and went to see the film with my family (I think maybe for my brother’s birthday or something). Up until then, to me, real spaceships were long and pretty boring looking rockets and spaceships in movies were pretty damn cool,  I remember thinking the spaceship in Moonraker was pretty damn cool. It must have been a couple of years later that I found out it was real. This excited the hell out of me.

Even then I was into Sci-Fi and space movies (I was a Star Wars kid after all) but here was real space flight in something that looked like some kind of space fighter compared to the Apollos and Soyuzs on the news. For a long time after that I wanted to be an astronaut.

I’m not an astronaut, by the way.

So, today saw the last ever Space Shuttle mission lift off from Cape Canaveral. Shuttle Atlantis departed on a twelve day mission taking with it bunch of supplies for the ISS and seemingly humanity’s hopes for space exploration. Although NASA have been talking some damage control about the future of human space flight looking bright, this is essentially the US government starving NASA of funding and brining the hammer down on the US space program. Barack Obama himself has proposed the agency's budget be frozen right through to the Fiscal Year 2016.

This is pretty awful, and considering the amount of money America has spent waging war on the middle east for no other reason than to steal their oil, pretty repugnant too.

Manned space flight is so important for so many reasons. For a start, without exploration mankind will stagnate. I’m sure conservative America thinks it knows all it needs to know and loves the status quo but humanity will fester, wither and die without exploration, curiosity and discovery. The need to know, to understand and to learn is what makes us human. To financially favour war over curiosity and intrepidity is just an insult to the human race.

If analysed the NASA space program makes more (real) money than war ever will, I won’t bore myself with figures but so much of what you take for granted in your everyday life came from, or was for, NASA. Not just the hi-tech gadgetry that dominates our lives these days but stull like Teflon, air cushioned trainers, scratch resistant shades, ready meals, brakes in cars, satellite TV, rape alarms, the microwave and almost any piece of 'green' technology, from silicon crystal solar panels to water recycling. All NASA!!!

Without a manned space flight program so much innovation stands still.

NASA’s space program, which cost $2 billion less a year than the Iraq war does a month yielded a nine times return.

Seriously, the American treasury need to come back to the boardroom and one of them should get fired. ;P.

Budget freezing has also meant either a full stop, or severe, years, delays to the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope too. You know how much we know about our universe because of the Hubble telescope? The James Webb Space Telescope would (or will) have made Hubble look like a child’s toy.

Do some Americans, in positions of power really like remaining ignorant? Yes there is a global economic crisis afoot, I know, it’s affected me more than a lot of people, but did you read the bit about ‘nine times return’ and staggeringly cheaper than some ridiculous war the American government seems quite happy to perpetuate?

So maybe we can look to Russia or China for the future of space exploration, or maybe we’ll have to wait ten or fifteen years for the US government to sort it’s priorities out.

Whatever, it’s a fucking shame is all.

Lack of a Google profile is doing my head in!

I use Google products A LOT. Apart from not being too fond of Apple, I’m not really brand loyal when it comes to IT, I use whatever’s best. But if I could be considered to be an extreme user for a particular brand it would be Google.

I know people have privacy issues with Google, but all that shit, all their information gathering, is opt-outable. Which I have…It’s fine…Really.

I’m a Google Apps user, as in I use Google Apps For Your Domain (as it used to be called). That’s where you can use Google’s products and apps with your own domain address, in my case electronicrumors.com. So if you send me an email to my electronicrumors.com email address it essentially goes to Google’s mail servers and I get it through the Gmail interface. It’s the same with Contacts, Calendar, Docs etc…, all tied to my electronicrumors.com domain (rather than gmail.com). It works brilliantly, everything is integrated seamlessly and is instantly available on an Android phone. Google even recently opened almost all the rest of their products to Apps users, Picasa (which I used anyway), YouTube (which I used anyway), Reader (which I used anyway), Blogger (hello!), all under my domain address. Almost all of them.

The one thing Google Apps users still don’t have access too is a Google Profile. Oh well, until the start of this week that meant I couldn’t use Buzz, an app which looked interesting but nothing I lost sleep over. Then Google announced Google+.

I hate Facebook. Not in the emo “I hate Facebook and I’m gonna’ delete my account” way but in the way where I love social networking, I just hate using Facebook’s interface. The Facebook user experience has rapidly gone downhill over the last couple of years. It’s buggy, clunky and depressing to use and the more Facebook heap on new features (movie streaming? news aggregation?) the more Facebook starts to resemble AOL, only more frustrating to use. Also, the fact that Facebook won’t allow the exporting of your own user and contact data is just plain insulting.

So I welcome Google+ with open arms, a social network that looks well thought out and somewhat innovative, that ties in with my existing Google functionality? Yes please!

Denied!

Unfortunately you need a Google Profile to use Google+ so all the Google Apps users, arguably Google’s most loyal and enthusiastic customers (there are many tiers of paid access to Google Apps too), are, so far, unable to sign up for Google+, regardless of invite. We are side-lined to reading reviews of how awesome Google+ is on blogs and tech sites (who are, everyday, enthusing about new features and plug-ins that extend functionality) and quietly, frustratingly, sobbing at our screens.

Google have said the are working on getting Google Apps working with Google+ as a priority…but we’ve been told Profiles for Google Apps users have been on their way “in the coming weeks” for over a year now.

I like tech stuff, hardware, software, web apps. I like social networking, both as a tool and for fun.I like to try out new stuff. I am a geek. That I can’t get involved in a web app that look pretty tailor made for me is so frustrating.

Childish, maybe, but frustrating nonetheless.

If Google want a Facebook killer I am more than willing to help them.

I’m knocking, let me in!

What should a music blogger do with clips of tracks?

I’m a music blogger. Somehow I’ve been able to spent the last three years successfully writing about electronic music I love at electronic rumors and people have listened. By some fluke I appear to be actually getting away with running a music website that has a little bit of respect. Weird, I know!

So I get sent a lot of music, on average I’ll receive 70-100 emails a day with music clamouring for my attention, and I listen to them all (as long as the email doesn’t contain the words ‘Folk’ or ‘Alternative Rock’) and write about those that grab me.

Recently, in the last year or so, I’ve noticed a trend in the way music is presented promotionally, particularly amongst PR companies.

For some reason, the music industry appears to think it is the movie industry.

I’m talking about ‘teasers’, ‘promo clips’ or ‘trailers’ for songs. Which as a...er…I’m not going to say journalist…um…critic? OK. Which, as a critic I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with.

Songs aren’t stories, there’s no spoilers, there’s no harm in me knowing what happens in the end of a song. I’m sure the music PR industry thinks the trailer model can generate excitement for a release, in the same way it works in the film world, but they are totally different mediums. Trailers work for movies because they are a narrative. A film trailer can get you intrigued as to where the elements of plot you have been shown are going to go, and hence make you want to see the film. But a song isn’t a yarn that you have to know the conclusion of, it’s a different beast altogether.

Personally, if I hear a 30 second clip of a song I like it doesn’t make me want to buy the song, it just makes me want to hear all the song (which then makes me want to buy it, rendering the 30 second clip redundant), I don’t think I would buy a song (unless it was from an artist I trusted) based on a 30 second clip, for all I know the rest of it is shit. But that’s me talking as a consumer, from a consumer point of view I can accept that a clip of a track might be a way to hook people in, I think it’s a poor way, but if you want to do it I suppose I see the point.

From a blogger’s point of view, however, I don’t see the point whatsoever. I would never post a clip or teaser on electronic rumors. It’s hard to define what a music blog is, everyone has different opinions. I definitely don’t see myself as a journalist, or even a reviewer, more an ‘enthuser’. The closest other media job I relate what I do to is a radio DJ, only in written form. I choose the tracks I like and present them with some info on the band and my opinion of the track, just like a radio show, only more wordy and with less crank calls. So, just as you wouldn’t get a radio show playing a 30 second clip of a track, I wouldn’t ‘play’ a 30 second clip of a track on my blog. My blog’s purpose is to introduce new songs to people who might now otherwise hear them. New songs. Not new snippets. It's the same for videos. Got a trailer for your new music video? No thanks, if it’s any good I will post about it when the whole thing comes out, thanks.

It’s when we receive trailers, clips, snippets or teasers for music from PR companies that blogs stop feeling like trusted, valued media partners and start feeling like a source of free advertising. It’s a little insulting.

There’s only one thing worse than a short clip of a song or video. A short clip of a song or video from a brand new artist. Honestly, this is where music marketing really disappears up it’s own arse. Question; am I supposed to get excited (and subsequently try to get my readers excited) about thirty seconds from an artist I have never heard of and who has never released anything? It’s not going to happen! Let me hear a whole song, if I like it I will get excited more than you can possible imagine, but I’m not such a sheep that I will-enthuse just on your say-so.

Let me just point out, I’m not saying I have to give away your music for free. I call electronic rumors a ‘music blog’, not an ‘MP3 blog’. MP3s do help draw in the readers, but I couldn’t give a toss if I am giving away a 320kbps MP3, a 128kbps MP3 or just presenting a non-downloadable steam of a song, or even a music video. As long as my readers can listen to the track, the whole track, that’s all that matters.

To ask me to devote a whole post to a song I have heard less than two minutes of is kinda’ arrogant and presumptuous.

Still, thankfully it’s only a small number of labels and PR companies that do this, most labels and PR companies are awesome with an amazing grasp of digital promotion and fun to work with.

Digital promotion of music seems like its been around forever, but really it’s still a new frontier and we are all still learning what works and what doesn’t.

I suppose it’s all trial and error really. Maybe they have reason to think teasers work. I’ve never seen it working really, I rarely see blogs post clips, but maybe it works for some.

It’s just not the way I consume, or talk about on electronic rumors, new music.

Maybe it’s just me?