a new years resolution, portal style
Welcome to Catch
a story of coffee, music and football
this years favourite xmas coffee
Is Starbucks Crème Brûlée Latte, I had one this morning and they’re brilliant, plus it reminded me of the milkshake cocktails we used to make at uni, but without the after effects of the alcohol…
free to browse your own way
So, Opera wants Microsoft to not bundle Internet Explorer with Windows. Good plan, but how would you get a web browser installed on your new pc if IE wasn’t there already? Installing from CDs is so last century.
they might not all be evil but
Being just a couple of weeks before Christmas it’s the end of what I call the dull period for music, the period where new releases fear to tread and a hundred random compilation albums (who would have thought the compilation album would still be around with the rise of the download?) taking their place. Which is why it’s even the more strange that with little real music news for cover, a bunch of managers chose last week to launch the Resale Rights Society.
The idea is simple. People are making money by selling on gig tickets that they bought and the music industry would like a slice of the pie. This post is a rant from now on, so don’t tell me I didn’t warn you.
Maybe it’s the way it’s portrayed or maybe it’s justified, but the music industry (and I’m going to say for arguments sake that this doesn’t include the artists) just continues to get on my nerves. Every story just seems to be the industry trying to extract more money from the consumer. If I bought a PS3 when they were new and sold it on ebay at a profit, would Sony expect a cut? No. If I bought a house and sold it on at a higher price, do I have to pass some of the profit to the previous owner? No. So why should the music industry get more money if a ticket for a gig is resold? What makes this all the more stupid is that I don’t in any way support the idea of reselling tickets for profit (except in exceptional circumstances) because it takes these events away from the ‘average’ fans. I firmly believe that gig tickets are too expensive as it is.
Here’s my major gripe, I’ve not even read any defense as to why the music industry believes it should have this extra money. Without one there is only one conclusion, that they just don’t like seeing anyone making money out of them. It’s their racket and they don’t like people muscling in on their territory. That’s why they’re doing this, that’s why they’re prosecuting file sharers (yes this one is technically against the law, but it’s how this is handled that gets me, ie not by the police), that’s why they’re trying to get download prices hiked.
Dear music industry, face it, the days of your dominance are over. This is the 21st century, it’s all changed. If you want to do something useful, stop people reselling their tickets unnecessarily. Just stop making yourself look like Scrooge McDuck protecting your vault of money.
a post ’bout language
I’d love to use a time machine, just for an afternoon, in order to go back in time and see whether people in the past really did talk in the way we portray them now. Did Shakespeare really talk in the same way that he wrote, or was it a cruel joke on future generations? Was Dick Van Dyke even remotely close with his Mary Poppins chimney sweep impression? And was the Oliver Twist street urchin accent that affected every forth word of half the characters in The Golden Compass (good film, shame it doesn’t have an ending!) ever a real accent or is it just a device to make American audiences remember that this really is jolly old england!
Imagine if instead of the chronic shortening and joining of words (which I’m totally guilty of) that will in 20 years serve to identify the start of the 21st century, the populous of today starting throwing in the odd historical word instead. Now that would be a world, a world where I probably couldn’t keep a straight face, but a world none the less.
every slope is different
If for some reason I could only remember the previous 24 hours, I’d be able to tell when I’d been snowboarding by the fact that various parts of me would ache.
Today’s ache was caused by my first attempt to remember everything from the boarding basics to the clever (but totally accidental) stuff I managed last year. This seasons first mistake was to use properly dry (to the point of sticky) slope for the first time. The second mistake was to attempt to start turning again on anything but the softest of snow in order to protect me during the inevitable collapse. The result, some part of the surface putting a small tear in both the outer and inner surfaces of my new trousers and into my knee.
Whether my wrists ache right now because of the wrist guards I had to wear or whether this is just a taste of the damage I should have suffered is the subject of another discussion.