Am the only person who would misinterpret the journalist’s story, when reading that headline? Although the article itself has the word elected inserted between Bury and Mayor, the RSS feed last week definitely had it missing. Perhaps a deliberate ploy to get people to view the page. Maybe I should try the same 😉
Oh before I forget, Natalya is back home, my brother Nick has managed to get a job (congratulations) and Alex is leaving on holiday soon.
Jul 10 2008
Bury Mayor Plan Rejected!
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Feb 20 2008
Impartial BBC? My Arse…
Sometimes the articles found on the BBC News website shock me. Often with the facts they impart, and the horrors that are occurring everyday in this strange world.
Other times, it is simply the apparent lack of journalistic ability. Often you read an article, and you’d swear all the ‘journalist’ had done was read a press release from a company, and dress it up a little. Lack of investigation before publishing has led to some dubious articles. This is one such example; they appear to have swallowed up Nokia’s guff whole, and gone on to relay the claim that Nokia has launched the first pedestrian navigation system. Never mind that such setups were entirely viable for years now; if a PR person states something, it must be true, right 
…
Then we have the following truly shocking choice of photos for an article on the impending extradition of Abu Hamza.
This even outdoes the American magazines that were caught publishing a ‘blackened’ photo of OJ Simpson a few years back.
Lets be honest, with his eye, hook, attire and usual choice of thuggish company, you don’t have to try hard to create pre-conceptions with a photo of him, before reading an article. Did the BBC really need to use a photo with him lit like that? I’m hoping the original photo looks like that, and it wasn’t a Photoshop session that made him look like that. Anyway, head on over here for more details on the extradition process the nuttah cleric is facing.
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Dec 22 2007
Arrrrgh, No Time…
Scratch the original plans, here are the links I mentioned, not enough time left after having got everything ready for our trip to actually create proper posts. Now the DVD burner is fubared, and I wanted to burn another 3 discs of MP3s for driving to. Hey ho.
Kyrgyzstan elections not fair either – see this article and this one for more details. For those not familiar with the country, no that isn’t where we live (we’re in KAZAKHstan), however international monitors similarly do not think that the elections were free, fair and transparent there either…
Discounting apparently rife in stores – BBC article – Actually I’d call it pretty piss poor ‘professional’ journalism. They trot out the same rubbish each year, closely followed by an article in January saying how shoppers actually spent a lot more than expected. I especially loved the headline – attention grabbing, discounts sound significant, then followed in the main body of the text that this year’s reductions average at 36% off, not 35% ! Yep, 1% difference…
Wives Tales or Valid Medical Info? – Article here. If you don’t drink 8 glasses of water per day, you will use less than 10% of your brain, meaning you won’t be able to read in the dark, turkey will make you drowsy and your hair will continue to grow after death, no matter whether you shaved it or not. Or something like that 🙂 I have heard before that the ban on mobile phone usage within hospitals is rubbish, espcially when you consider the power of the transmitters they need to use for their own internal walkie-talkies etc.
Eco-friendly consoles requested – BBC article – I know that some PC component manufacturers are already trying, but apparently the big three gaming giants (Sony, Nintendo & Microsoft) are being pressured to lower the amount of toxic chemicals used to produce their consoles, amongst other things.
Take care when you google – info here – My thanks to Irina for noticing this report, and also on the shoddy workmanship of the journalist once again. The article reads in parts as though they did no investigation, and simply read from Google’s press release, with contradictions in places. Anyway, bad people had been setting up sites to try and hack unprotected PCs, and were trying to drive traffic by optimizing for popular keywords.
Dynamic advert placement within PDF files – article – the title says it all here…
Info on Amazon’s ‘Kindle” – here and here – Amazon’s e-book reader, an attempt by another company to crack the market. Once again, the aims have been praised, the actual product is not so popular in some circles.
Terry Pratchett has Alzheimers – check here – A long time favourite author of mine, Mr Pratchett has revealed he has the condition, though is doing OK so far. Whilst I selfishly hope he will be able to continue to write such well crafter novels, I do hope that if/when the time comes that the balance between personal well being and writing output tips the wrong way, his fans will let him retire with grace.
One for Alex – here – Poorly kangaroo goes for a swim, and gets snapped up by a shark! (As you may have guessed, based in Australia)
W00t – BBC article – Like ‘all your base are belong to us ‘ from a few years back, but certainly a lot snappier, w00t appears to have started its life in the gaming world, and is used as an exclamation, normally positive.
Not an article, but Wikileaks may interest you. Has a small section for Kazakhstan. Not going to discuss that sort of thing right now, no time.
Excuse me whilst I don’t cry – boo-hoo – with any luck the BNP will eventually go the same way as the old National Front did. I just hope any splinter groups don’t survive, and aren’t too radical whilst they are around. Don’t have much time for racist, lying, Lowest Common Denominator politics and politicians, as you may have guessed.
Misbehaving pupils shocked into towing the line – article here – I can never imagine Mr Owen having given this sort of punishment in his lessons…
Right thats it, I’m off to bed, and won’t be posting for a couple of days probably. Hope all who read this do so in good health…
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Aug 17 2007
Ion Cooling
Although the title (Tiny Wind Engines Cool Computers) of the BBC article is a little mis-leading, the contents certainly made for interesting reading. The basic premise is that by making charged ions flow over a chip’s surface area, no air molecules become stuck to the silicon, thereby making cooling by a fan more efficient. From what I can tell in the article, this only applies to chips that are air cooled, without heat sinks. I feel that the journalist was either constrained by the length of the article requested, or that full research was not carried out before publishing.
Whether this technology could be applied to the surface of a heat sink, and if so, whether similar improvements in efficiency could be expected was not made clear.
Just to clarify, the article refers to fans blowing air over a chip’s surface, though often the hottest chips have a heat sink, with some thermal paste between them, and then a fan stuck on top of all that. Another point not raised is whether a stream of charged ions would adversely effect the transistors operation, and whether this would cause any sort of electro magnetic interference… I don’t know if ions rapidly moving create an EM field, but if they do, this could cause engineers headaches.
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Jun 01 2007
Avoiding Bad Puns
Wednesday night, Ira and I met up with a journalist (socially) who is based in London. She found this blog from the posts on our kittens and the fact it mentions Kazakhstan, and as she was over here again for a story (I’ll post more when I know she has had it published) decided to meet up.
We went to the Chelsea pub (yep, that bastion of traditional Kazak cuisine, lmao), and had a nice evening eating, drinking and talking a fair amount. The temptation of seeing Karra and Muska proved irresistible, so we all came back to the flat afterwards. It was really interesting to meet her, and I hope should she come out here again, we’ll meet once more. Oh, and her husband is cordially invited too, so lets just hope she succeeds in her mission to persuade him to visit Kazakhstan.
Oh and the post title? Her name is Elizabeth Mistry, so I had to fight the urge to create a corny title…
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Jun 01 2007
Borat Used Inappropriately
Registran has a post (Deep Breathing) reviewing an article by a British journalist, and they seem spot on in their critical analysis of the journo’s weaknesses. Lazy writing seems to have ruined the introduction to the article.
As if to prove the point, the 7th comment at the Registran post is by a Jonny The Monkey ignores the article linked to, the issue of corruption in Central Asia, and makes some Borat influenced comedy comments regarding Uzbekistan. At least they are original, rather than verbatim movie quotes. I have to admit when I launched this blog, I did comment at quite a few places that mentioned the film, but only those that were not serious pieces on Kazakhstan itself.
May 18 2007
Google Changes Search Method
At least according to a BBC journalist. However, the main difference actually seems to be that the ‘Web Images News’ etc. is no longer placed above the search box, but has been moved to above the results.
Perhaps I’m being too cynical, but it seems to me that the journo simply took a Press Release at face value, and lapped up Google’s proclamations of the next iteration of their search engine results.
Decide for yourself, headover to the .com version of google, make a search and then read the article.
May 07 2007
Windows XP On A PDA!!!
When I first read the description accompanying a link to the Register’s story, I though it was just another case of a lazy journalist (unlike my highly efficient journalist brother, Nick; more on that to come later…) not bothering to do any research before posting.
It initially sounded as though there was another remote connection application being launched, with some vague claims for industry firsts.
However, if you check the article in question, you’ll discover that this is quite different. Apparently, there will be real remote desktops available (for a fee of course), accessible through either a Java applet or ActiveX control, on a web page. This means that ANY technology capable of interacting with a web site, through the aforementioned methods, should be able to ‘use’ a Windows XP machine. The ramifications of this are quite wide spread, for example people can work on their documents where ever they happen to be at the time, if they can get an internet connection there.
Although I still regularly use various VNC clients, I can see this sort of technology becoming more popular in the future, as the uses of it are realised by people in different sectors.
This post is NOT sponsored, once more I found the information interesting, and hope some of you may do so also…
May 01 2007
The World According To Clarkson
The World According To Clarkson – Jeremy Clarkson
Although this book may at first seem quite like the other Clarkson books I’ve reviewed here, if you like his style, you probably won’t regret buying this book, as not many ideas are repeated. If you don’t like his style of writing, I’m assuming you wouldn’t buy this book in the first place, so I’ll not worry about that section of my readers too much ;>
Some of the style of writing is carried over from ‘Clarkson on Cars’, but this is hardly surprising, as Jeremy started his life as a newspaper (Motoring) journalist, HOWEVER, this books mainly concentrates on the world at large, not so much on the motors.
The World According… is a much more recent book, so if you found the Clarkson oon Cars to be a little dated, fear not, you won’t find many things to dislike here. Jeremy takes a look at all things in life that either annoy him, or simply hold his attention a little longer than most. Althought he format is slightly constricted, due to the book basically being a collection of articles he wrote for the Sunday Times, as I didn’t read that paper in Britain, I didn’t find myself frustrated at having read anything before.
Subjects covered vary from the sad ending to Concorde’s career to why you shouldn’t trust a man with a beard. As the majority of subjects covered are from newspaper articles, each is only a couple of pages long, so you can easily read this in little sections, so ideal for a plane journey, toilet reading or just something by the bedside table.
To summarize, if you like Jeremy Clarkson, and DON’T read the Sunday Times, yes, I’d recommend this book.
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Apr 12 2007
Alan Johnston Appeal
If you’ve watched almost any news channels in the last month, you’ll have been hard pressed to have missed seeing reports on the abduction of Alan Johnston. He is the BBC’s journalist in Palestine , and in what looks to be a world first, BBC World (BBC 24 for UK viewers), Sky News and Al Jazeera English will simultaneously be broadcasting a program to raise awareness of Alan’s plight, and will apparently feature Mark Thompson (BBC’s Director-General) directly appealing for Alan’s release.
It is due to be simulcast at 14:30 BST (13:30 GMT) today.
[update] Just heard CNN are taking part as well