The Spirit of the Stairwell

Now we know where Apple got the name from …

Take a look at this picture.

It’s a pretty rubbish picture, isn’t it? It’s grainy and someone has taken chunks out of it. It’s low resolution and you can’t see much of anything.

Well it may interest you to know, gentle reader, that this unassuming picture is currently making the internet geek out in a fairly major way. Because this might very well be the first public photo of the iTablet – the new Apple product Steve Jobs is set to present to the world at 6.00pm GMT today.

Rumours of the iTablet have been rife since 2002 when everyone thought it was basically going to be an iPod with a keyboard. Since there it’s gone through many rumoured iterations, everything from a flat MacBook to a giant iPhone. But the really funny thing is, all of this furious product development is in our heads. Apple has kept completely silent about the thing, it won’t officially confirm it exists at all. Even the invitation for today just says:

So what we’re talking about here is a fictional product that the public has seemingly willed into existence just by dint of WANTING it so badly. At some point in the past, someone presumably thought ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if Apple made a tablet device?’ and from that inauspicious starting point we’ve collectively worked ourselves up into a frothing mess. Without Apple lifting a finger. It’s a wonder they bother doing any advertising at all. (Especially when it’s this smug and irritating)

So if Steve Jobs does present the technological equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster today, there’s a good chance it’ll look like the photo above. There have been many a photoshopped hoax before, ranging from the plausible:

To the slightly silly:

… but nothing as realistic as the above. It’s bolted down, it doesn’t give anything away. It has the whiff of authenticity.

The other thing is that we’re not really even sure what we want the device to do. “Tablet” is a form factor, it’s the body the clever stuff is housed in, it doesn’t give any clue as to what the gizmo would actually do. Is it a slightly more portable laptop, an ebook reader, a PDA writ large, an entertainment and games system? Knowing Apple it’ll probably be a lot of these things but there are still a myriad ways to implement those functions. Do you go for a traditional OS X set up with files and folders and a simulated desktop environment or something more like the multi-function iPhone OS which basically transforms the entire user interface on the fly depending on the function you select? We may firmly believe that this thing is going to revolutionise portable computing forever (like the iPhone arguably has for the mobile phone industry) but as it stands we just have no conception of what it actually is or what it’ll do for us.

Until now.

Because that picture above gives away more than it seems to. If it’s genuine (and I think it is) then we’ve finally got some answers to at least some of our questions. For a start that’s undeniably a massive version of an iPhone application, so we now know it’ll be running something at least closely related to the iPhone OS. Also notice the wifi icon at the top of the page and the “no service” mobile phone signal indicator. So it’ll probably have wireless and a (persistent?) 3G connection – something akin to Amazon’s Kindle – allowing the user to download books, newspapers, movies, albums and browse the web. The iTunes store will become the iGeneral store and Apple begins to take on Amazon on it’s home ground. You can also see a home button at the bottom, identical to that on an iPhone so we know something about the styling. Other rumours suggest a 10.1 inch screen and an aluminium back to fit in with the new iMacs and MacBook Pros.

So there we are, it’s the day of the launch and we’ve finally been able to define the device pretty well. What surprises haveApple managed to preserve?

Well for a start we just made up the name iTablet …

Something that made me laugh out loud from the mighty xkcd.com.

A hearty, and slightly world-weary welcome to you.

Think back to Christmas Day 2008. The evening.

There you are – on the sofa – feeling a bit bloated because your nan insisted that you had that third helping of turkey and at least two goes at the Christmas pud.  You’re becoming steadily more pickled as the afternoon draws on, and your eyes are feeling a bit heavy.

Then something lovely hits your screen.  You hear some familiar music.  You haven’t been paying attention to the first couple of minutes because you saw that a few weeks before on Children In Need night.  But now you’re a bit more interested.

You start searching your mind for what it is like a brain surgeon wearing boxing gloves…

And then you see him.  A skinny man with an unmistakable pin-stripe suit, spiky hair and glasses.  You know what this is…

You yawn.  Then your eyes start to flutter as you desperately try not to fall asleep.  But you can’t combat such a force…  Just before you do, you see a blurry thing that looks a little like a creature made from a milk bottle top and strips of crepe paper (a la early 1980s Blue Peter).

And the rest is darkness.

Wonder what you missed?  Well, let us discuss it in your ear.  For in this installment of the podcast, The Ood Cast Episode Two, we will be discussing The Next Doctor… because it started off the year of specials.

So come and join us.

Please.

We miss you when you don’t let us talk at you.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:49 — 26.5MB)

The Tories are going to get into power. It’ll be like the 80s all over again. We’re in a fix.

But until then there’s this …

To see more (and to make your own), go here - http://mydavidcameron.com.

Let’s make the most of it while we can. The guy is going to be our leader soon.

Our leader.

It’s like a horrible dystopian nightmare.

Chris Fosten writes:

It’s here. The Ood Cast: Episood 1. (That’s right, we’re busting out puns right from the get go – that’s just how we roll.)

The most important thing we want everyone to know before we start (and we say it on the podcast too) is that we love the show. Utterly. Even when we are disappointed by what we see, we love it.

Even, it seems, when we have quite large, uber-geeky reasons for never wanting to see that hour of TV again, we still do. And we still go and buy the DVDs.

Because, to us, Doctor Who isn’t something we can take or leave. It’s almost the thing that has been with us since we were wee bairns in the highlands. Or small children from the south of England (delete according to the way you wish to think of us).

In the words of countless Mitchell characters in Eastenders (so I’m told), “It’s family”. And it is.

Chris has said on this very blog that the Doctor has had a massive effect on the way he chose to do things (I’m still a little unsure about the blazer and the celery in the lapel, although I’m sure we’ll all get used to it), but for the three of us who make up the male contingent of the podcast, it’s something that rings a – cloister – bell. (Ha! See what I did there?! Oh, never mind)

Laura brings a fresh and sharp view to proceedings to prove that we are just old school idiots sometimes. And that sometimes we do have a point. But not all the time.

We would readily admit that we are sometimes critical. But it’s simply, and only, because we love the show and like to sit around daydreaming about what we’d like to see happen next, or how something should be done.

That could be just me.

And sometimes, life really doesn’t come to any harm if you ask a few questions about things.

Join us for our little journeys through (limited) Time and (cramped) Space. We’d all love you to.

This song is ending, but the story never ends … I’m kidding, that was a terrible line.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:29 — 34.4MB)

David Tennant has left Dr Who. He was a brilliant Doctor and this piece he wrote for the 2009 Specials Box Set has warmed me to him even more.

In a suburban house in Paisley a wee boy was sticky-taping the leg of his oft-snapped spectacles back together. He couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t been augmented with at least one area of peeling sellotape. Suddenly and quite without warning there was a rupture in the fabric of space and time and a tall, skinny man tumbled through a wormhole in the middle of the living room and landed in a puddle of brown coat at the boy’s feet.

“Who are you?” asked the boy. Confused and a little scared, but mostly loving it.

“Oh- ah, hello. It’s you! I’m you…You’re ..me”

“Eh? the boy asked. (Try as she might the boy’s mother could not get him to say “Pardon”)

“I’m you. In the future. I’m thirty-eight years old”

Because he was eight the boy accepted this quite quickly. “Is that my coat then? Can I try it on?”

“No, no, no -” Interrupted the skinny man slightly disappointed his time travelling was being greeted with so little wonderment. “This is my costume. These clothes are The Doctor’s. In thirty years time you get to play The Doctor. What do you think of that?!”

“Tom Baker leaves!” the boy boggled.

“Well.. Yes, eventually..”

“And then I take over?”

“Not quite, no, there’s a bit of time in between but..”

“And that’s what The Doctor wears?”

“Yes. Yes it is”

The boy took a moment to give his full attention. “I prefer the scarf”

The skinny man looked a little crushed. “But this is really cool. People write about this outfit in newspapers and style magazines. This is geek chic!.. But actually you’re right; people never really get over the scarf.”

“Are the monsters good?” The boy asked.

“Oh there are some great ones. And you get to fight the Daleks, and the Cyberman -”

“- and the Zygons?!!”

“Erm, no, no not the Zygons. But loads of other ones that you’ll love. And guess what.. Sarah comes back! and K-9!”

“K-9 leaves too!! ” the boy groaned.

“Well, yes but he comes back – with you. And there are loads of great companions. Some of them aren’t even born yet – but they’re just brilliant! And you won’t belive this, but you know Bernard Cribbins from ‘The Wombles?”

“- and ‘Jackanory’ -”

“- and ‘Jackanory’, yes. Well he’s in it too. You get to do all sorts of scenes with him.”

“That’s amazing!”

“It is.”

“Why do I have to wait so long?” asked the boy.

“Eh? I mean, pardon?”

“You’re really old.”

“I don’t think — well – not so – it’s all relative.” The skinny man protested.

“And how come your hair’s all dark?” the wee boy asked.

“That just happens..round about twelve I think.”

The skinny man regarded his younger self. “Look there’s quite a bit of stuff to get through first but hang in there. It’s worth it. I promise. I can’t tell you how much you’ll love it.”

“Really? Do I really get to be The Doctor?”

“You do. And listen – you are going to have: the best time of your life”

And with that the skinny man disappeared in a swirl of pulsing temporal vortex. The wee boy held his damaged glasses in front of his face as the wormhole blinked out of existence. That was unexpected, he thought. And pretty unlikely. Then he turned his attention back to the sellotape and the glasses. “The Creature from the Pit” Part Two was on later. He needed to be ready.

- David John McDonald, 3rd November 1979/2009

Bless him!

But onwards and upwards to the new series, which looks awesome.

(also watch out for the first episode of The Oodcast in the next few days)

I was introduced to Damien Walters last night.

By which I mean I watched the video below.

I think he was bitten by a radioactive gymnast.

Film Club #1 – 6th February 2010

“You Can’t Kiss Away A Murder!”

Join me for the inaugural Film Club this February and a whole day’s worth of shadowy figures, femme fatales, plot twists, heavy drinking and hard knocks. Also there will be films to watch. Ahahaha – see what I did there? I pretended that the words that described the films were actually the things we were going to do on the day. It’s an old comedic device but, I think we can all agree, a hilarious one. Especially now I’ve explained it fully to you.

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood’s classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

Don’t worry, I have suddenly got really intelligent or anything, I just copied it from Wikipedia. Film noir will be the theme of our first club day and I’ve chosen 4 of the best films of the genre to show you and also a silly Steve Martin pastiche to round off the day. You’re welcome to come for as much or as little of the day as you want.

Anyway, here’s how it should all pan out:

Schedule

10.00am – We all start drinking whiskey early in the morning.

10.30am - Asphalt Jungle Kick off with John Huston’s original heist movie, made the same year he introduced America to film noir with The Maltese Falcon. We wouldn’t have Reservoir Dogs without it.

12.30pm - Gilda Why did Tim Robbin’s character want a poster of Rita Hayworth on his cell wall during the Shawshank Redemption? This film is why (also the tunnel thing).

2.15pm – Stakeout Food. Lunch will be a selection of things you could consume while on a stakeout. Binoculars will be provided to spy on the neighbours.

2.30pm - Touch of Evil Orson Welles’ masterpiece and one of the best film noir ever made. The version we’ll be showing is the 1998 recut that attempted to reassemble Welles’ original vision from a 58 page memo the director wrote after viewing the studio’s original theatrical release. It’s the best version basically.

5.30pm – A selection of detective-themed games – cluedo and scotland yard among them. Also more shots of whiskey and maybe a fist fight.

7.00pm – DOUBLE BILL: Double Indemnity/ Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid – Played back to back, the most twisted, dark, OTT classic the genre has ever produced and a silly Steve Martin comedy that makes fun of it. Dress code is film noir, let’s all dress up as femme fatales and private dicks.

And it should all be over by 10.15pm.

Click here to be taken to the facebook event to register your interest in attending and find out location details.

“She liked me. I could feel that. The way you feel when the cards are falling right for you, with a nice little pile of blue and yellow chips in the middle of the table. Only what I didn’t know then was that I wasn’t playing her. She was playing me, with a deck of marked cards and the stakes weren’t any blue and yellow chips. They were dynamite.”

I colleague of mine had his leaving party today. He’s an amazing guy – clever and inappropriate and very, very funny. I made this little video as a tribute to his rebellious nature. It’s silly and slightly puerile and makes insulting phrases out of anagrams of people’s names.

You probably need to work where I work to get the most out of it but nevertheless – my gift to you. Good luck, Nigel.