Home AboutGiveawaysRecipesOur Town SeriesReviewsShop

The tech of my youth; and sounds to make you cringe

1
Thursday, October 18, 2012
/
Labels: , ,
It's the perfect marriage of old and new technology...no, wait...no, it's just stupid.
Apologies for the long time between runs...Mrs Speech spent the weekend away with girlfriends, leaving me with all the chores. I wasn't blogging because I had laundry to do. That's why. That's totally my excuse.

Anyway, I was having such an awesome time last week, remembering the TV of my youth for my TV is dying post...I thought I might reminisce (in ascending chronological order) some more on the tech of my day and what I grew up with.

And of course, which is now cream-coloured plastic obselete junk clogging up a landfill somewhere.

Dovetailing with this...check out these guys, cataloguing soon-to-be extinct tech sounds.

Rotary Dial Phones

Ours was a light olive colour.
What I remember most about these was the weight. Maybe it was just that I was a little kid when these were around - I mean, I can't test the theory since they haven't been in use for more than twenty years - but they always seemed like a house brick.

And of course, the receiver itself was connected to the brick with a wire. A WIRE! If you wanted to go chop some carrotts while talking on the phone (not a good idea regardless), you had to carry the whole thing over to the kitchen benchtop. That's not a phone, that's an ordeal. And possibly a missing finger.

But they just had this funky go-slow thing about them, didn't they? As though tech back then was less about clogging your life up with worry and rushing, and more about taking your time.

clickclickclickclickclickclick...whirrrrrrrrrr...clickclickclickclickclickclick...whirrrrrrrrrr...



80's computers

The only thing stopping me from making fun is the sentimentality which comes flooding back when I see this ugly dog again.
We got ours in...ooh...I think it was '86.

It was this mortar-coloured monstrosity which I eagerly unveiled Christmas morning with massive raised keys that made a soft thunk sound when you typed the syntax to load your favourite game:

load,"airwolf",8,1[return]

That thing was awesome. The royal-blue-surrounded-by-light blue default screen, the disk drive that was the size of a shoe box but weighed eight kilos or something, the cool midi sounds that were completely unreplicatable...priceless.

In 1993, when I started in grade 9 here in Brisbane, for accounting we used these boxy apple computers, all in one deal, y'know where the screen is connected to the machine itself? Like one of the newer all-in-ones only...nothing like. The screen was deeper than it was wide and the duochromatic picture it showed seemed completely acceptable. Almost space-age, even.



Floppy Disks

The last one of these I owned had Sim City 2000 on it.
These things were awesome.

Remember what it was like to actually hold physical media? A book? A tape? A CD?

Floppies were the ultimate in portable information. With a whopping 1.44mb of space, they could hold your school assignment, a game and STILL have room left over for a couple ones and zeroes.

I used to love the metallic part which you could pull over and it would snap back into place like vicious jaws if you tried to get too close to the precious, precious information inside.



Overhead Projectors

Yes, they were preindustrial, basically.
OHPs exemplified obselete technology: big, cumbersome, clunky, disproportionately high inconvenience-benefit ratio.

When I was in school, not every class had one. So if our teacher needed to show us all a map of pre-World War II Europe, she had to go next door.

'Sorry Rhonda...can I just borrow your OHP for a moment?'

Then she had to bring it to our class, an exercise which because of its weight, today would qualify as a workplace health and safety issue. Then she had to plug it in. Then she had to turn off the lights. Then she had to place the slide on it, which had to have been written/printed on special clear plastic paper. Then she had to flip it over so the letters were the right way.

The mind boggles.



Nokia 3315 and its ilk

Had this colour. Loved that thing.
Loved, loved, loved this thing. This was my first mobile phone. Got it in 2003.

I think it was like, $30 a month, on a phone plan that included x dollars' worth of calls included.

Obviously that's a crime these days but back then it was a different age. It was 1 P.F. (Pre-Facebook).

I loved its simplicity; its shallow colours, its smooth, perfectly-sized buttons which made a delightful soft clicking sound when pressed. Its two-tone screen. The blocky little picture you could set as the background.

Even the semi-coarse texture of the casing, which made it a tiny bit easier to hold when your palm was sweaty. The beautiful curvature of the casing.

I texted with this thing till I could do it in my sleep. Why does it take twice as long to do a text on our smartphone?



Dial-up internet

My earliest external modem. A wonder of teal and silver.
beep boop beep beep boop beep boop beep...

ner ner neee...brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr...

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...

brrr brrrr brrr dun der DUN der...

SSSSSSSSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...

...exactly.



The world wide web/information superhighway/early internet

Personally, I quite like it.
Remember when the internet began to totally take off? Wasn't it fun? All these ephemeral names for it kept popping up as if no-one truly knew what to make of a new social protocol for sharing information.

What would it be? What would it become? Would it take over our lives like Skynet and cause the Russians to obliterate Madagascar? Hey 01011000101, I thought that was supposed to be Tucson...

When people build a new paradigm they do it for function and not so much form, which makes sense; the Wright Brothers wouldn't have been THE WRIGHT BROTHERS, if the plane didn't fly. Who cares if the colour was so 1901.

But what the early internet unleashed on us...egads. My eyeballs. They is hurtin'.

TV is dying (at least, in Australia)

1
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
/
Labels: , , ,


When I grew up we had a clacky TV. I Can still see it now: a brown wood-panelled ugly dog of a machine, with a bubble screen that made it look bloated from endless Happy days reruns.

And there was no remote. My goodness, no. Might as well ask for a smartphone back then. This was the mid-eighties. You had to actually get up off the chocolate brown cotton weave couch and change the channel yourself.

The buttons made a clack sound. Clack. Josie and the Pussycats. Clack. He-Man. Clack. Scooby Doo. Saturday Morning was clacks and Coco Pops.

I grew up in that era, where TV was the gathering point for our house, the watering hole of outside interaction and how many questions could we get right on Sale of the Century?

I was a fan of Tony Barber, but he always seemed a bit smirky.


Say it ain't so!

We have five main channels here: ABC, Seven, SBS, Nine and Ten. Each station owns one or more other stations which seem to be primarily for showing endless repeats of 'classic' shows (The Love Boat, anyone? Charmed? Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman?), bizarre guy shows (Coal, Ice Road Truckers, Megastructure Demolition) or in the case of Channel Nine and the Olympics, the exact same content on both channels.

Listen buddy...put some quality locally-produced shows on TV. NOW. Got it?
Channel Ten owns Eleven and One. One was created for the very valid purpose of providing sports content all day, every day. Its content was however last year 'rededicated' to shows like Bondi Rescue, Get Smart and M*A*S*H.

There are also infomercial stations broadcasting 'shows' like Oreck Air Purifier (my favourite!) and Ninja Knife Cutter (ooooh...Mrs Speech could use that for Christmas. All sewn up).

Channels Nine and Ten are in huge financial difficulties. The private equity firm, CVC, which bought Nine a while back, handed over almost $1.5bn for it, also purchasing $3.6bn in debt. The further two billion dollars they pumped into it is also gone.

Channel Ten's ratings are so poor they might as well start showing the Ninja Knife Cutter. After all, it slices and dices.


I'd rather watch grass grow

The main problem, at least on the surface, is the turgid lineup of prime-time programming, which of course is the time-slot where the numbers come from - both ratings and ratings' cousin, advertising dollars.

I haven't witnessed a disinterest quotient this high since Brisbane City Council introduced bikes for rent in the city.

All the star power in the world wasn't able to save this tired format.
The problem - and I know Mrs Speech will want to weigh in on this - is that prime-time content seems to be either a) US shows 'fast-tracked' (more on that later) ie Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men, that odd new self-serving Matt LeBlanc show, etc...or locally-produced shows which utilise trends discarded years ago.

People will think what they will about the American shows; most of them aren't to my taste. I've been meaning to delve into Breaking Bad and Mad Men, though.

But the Aussie ones are worse. They're mainly reality TV shows which draw on an ever-descending spiral of the concept of derivation.

That is, each year they're paler and paler copies of shows from the year before.

These are Channel Nine and Channel Ten's major locally-produced shows for this year:

  • Being Lara Bingle (let's follow around a third-tier celebrity!)
  • Can of Worms (panel discussion - things like, 'if you could have one superpower, what would it be?'...I kid you not)
  • The Shire (compared by many to Jersey Shore)
  • Everybody Dance Now (post-Olympic dance competition which, though massively hyped, failed spectacularly)
  • Don't Tell The Bride (what would happen if the groom was allowed to plan the wedding?)
  • Big Brother (grinding my teeth)

People refuse to watch these tv shows. Personally I'd watch...well, anything really. SBS shows the news from various countries. I'd listen to the Cyrillic intonations of Macedonian news before causing my brain to contract by tuning in to Can of Worms.


The Chicken had to have come first

Aussie programming has always been reasonably derivative. The Price is Right, Jeopardy, Wheel of Fortune...Seven shamelessly copied Neighbours with its summer lovin' Home and Away. Those kids and their surf-related angst issues.

But the lack of originality alone is not imploding the major networks. A funny thing happened to Australian TV over the last five years.

It really, got lost in a back alley off a dark city street one night with rain falling heavy upon the well-worn concrete...and was mugged by the internet.

Let's face it...TV wandered down here after a night at the pub and really got what it deserved at the hands of the internet.
People wanted what they considered (and read, was) quality programming and stopped waiting for it from the US. Ten may fast-track Homeland within a week or two, but it's available on the internet within hours of being shown in the States.

A recent case involving the second largest internet provider in the country, highlighted this problem.

In 2008 iiNet was sued by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT, on behalf of Channel Seven and many major international film distributors) alleging that iiNet had a responsibility to ensure its customers did not download content via BitTorrent. A judge in 2010 ruled in favour of iiNet and then earlier this year the High Court threw the case out.

The point is, people want their content NOW. And will watch it on a laptop, instead of a 42 inch screen if they have to. This is happening a lot.

Fewer people watching their favourite shows on television means less advertising money.

Poor local content means fewer people watching television too.

Both issues affect TV's bottom line. Ironically, the lack of advertising money is probably significantly affecting Aussie stations' capital outlay on new shows. Which then tend to be poor. And which people don't watch. It's like the chicken and the egg.


I refuse to watch the telly on my wristwatch

So what now? Who knows.

Seems reasonably clear that content is moving online. Smart TVs now can access the internet, albeit under the constraints of the manufacturer's frontend software. I can plug my laptop into our TV if I feel like buying a long HDMI cable.

The crossover is really, taking shape. Don your silver jumpsuits, and all that. Tron will soon be here.

No. No. No.
You can also watch on your phone too. You already knew that. Seriously, when the programming on your digital TV is so...analogue...why would you bother? The market has already proved itself aggressive enough to choose what it wants, when it wants. If the networks don't actively seek to catch up, they'll become about as relevant as CDs, which were essentialy relegated to the status of artifacts as soon as the internet realised that a four megabyte file could be downloaded in anyone's bedroom.

There's a blog post somewhere in the deintegration of the Australian home. Dinner in the fifties was around the table. Dinner in the eighties was in front of the TV. Dinner now can be wherever your laptop is; families have more than one computer.

The gathering point for your house, the watering hole of outside interaction, can be wherever you want it to be. It's fluid. It's not stationary. Don't try to fight it. The tube as we know it is dying, in this country.

Some days I bloody miss that clacky television.

The Newsroom Season One: A Review

0
Saturday, September 08, 2012
/
Labels: , ,
"Hmmm...chocolate sounds good right about now. Who can I threaten with their job to get me a Mars Bar..."
"Were you listening when I was speaking or were you distracted by a bumblebee?"

We came late to this party, not so much fashionably as we just picked up the scent of fried food and the sound of a mariachi band and followed our senses.

Maybe five weeks in we caught this new show, created by Aaron Sorkin, he of Sports Night, The West Wing and The Social Network and the long-glaring view into the soul of America by the pessimistic optimist.

Beginning with the Deepwater Horizon disaster, Newsroom takes a sweeping, retroactive look at some of the events that shaped America and the world, through the eyes of the fictional Atlantis Cable News and its anchor, Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels).

Will's life becomes immeasurably more complicated when his staff quits and his boss (played by Sam Waterston) hires Will's ex-girlfriend Mackenzie MacHale (Emily Mortimer) fresh from the desert wars, to reform the punchless and lazy nature of the show and turn it into something which has a good, hard look at things.

Which as it turns out, Will also needs to do.

"Hey look, Glenn Beck's taking his pants off on live TV!"
This is ably helped along by the perpetually-frittered cast of fifteen year olds who it seems, can easily get jobs on staff at major news shows. Jim Harper (John Gallagher Jr), Maggie Jordan (Alison Pill) and Neal Sampat (Dev Patel) all play solid parts in the deconstruction/reconstruction effort that is the show and also Will's life.

Don Keefer (Thomas Sadowski), producing the late news, is an antagonist who occasionally is blurred into the good guy and who by the end of the season needs a hug. Olivia Munn plays Sloan Sabbith, an economics guru with no ability whatsoever to handle social situations.

The characters are well-formed. There are occasionals who do an outstanding job, such as the hilarious Terry Crews, who plays Will's bodyguard Lonny, and David Krumholtz in the role of Will's therapist.

If this review makes it seem like much of the show is about Will...well, it is. His life is a reflection of the chaos engulfing his show and the show engulfs his life, so I suppose it all works out if you twist your mind and tilt your head sideways.

Daniels is very, very good in this role. He brings a fractured persona to the character, with a frailty only offset by his callous and seemingly unfeeling attitude towards...everyone, really.

Mortimer is his counterbalance and the show surely needs her. Her frenetic, enthusiastic, almost psychotically upbeat energy ticks him off no end and needling Will is when the show is at its best.

The Newsroom is an incredibly polarising TV show. Focussing as it does on real-world events which actually happened, it brings a unique - perhaps easy - analysis which sits firmly and unashamedly on the liberal side of the fence. McAvoy plays a Republican but has wearied of the nonsense sometimes uttered by the conservative extreme flank. I dealt with some of that in my post on the internet weirdos.

The hardcore Republicans will not appreciate this show. Independents may cautiously appreciate the content and the way McAvoy rips apart some of the key principles and players of the Tea Party mythology and fraternity. Liberals will be more likely to enjoy this show.

However they're going to have to get past the one main hurdle: the overt Sorkinism.

I (Mr Speech) liked Sports Night and I loved The West Wing. But the dialogue, mainly can grate after a while.

Imagine a world in which everyone speaks incredibly quickly, in long unbroken chains of syllables which blend together to form what might be considered words. Imagine that their perfect witticisms always hit the mark in the most derisive and humiliating way possible. And imagine that ordinary people walk around with the ability to recite the driest, most inane statistics imaginable, without needing to check.

In 1952 the Sasquatawmee county school district had an overall adjusted graduation rate of 63.5%.

I made that up. But it would sound a bit bizarre if I could pull trivia like that out of my pocket and place it on the table in any conversation, wouldn't it? Maybe I'd need to step away from the computer thing for a while and breathe a bit?

The other major Sorkinism is the disparity in common courtesy that exists between the senior members of the ACN staff, and the underlings. Maggie, Neal and some of the other minor cast members are so horribly beat up by casually cruel people - starting but not ending with McAvoy - that surely in real life they'd be curled up in the corner singing old songs by My Chemical Romance and swigging from the nearest bottle of turpentine while applying beaucoup eyeliner.

That they take it in stride is either a testament to their fortitude or more likely, dodgy writing.

The only thing you ever have to do to make me happy is come up with original material.
Aaron Sorkin has a thing with repeating himself. His reputation is built on recycling the same zingy bromides, some of which aren't necessarily all that zingy anymore. I'm not sure why he needs to repeat his material when he obviously has a fairly deep well of conversational creativity from which to draw, but nonetheless the bumblebee quote. When the fall's all that's left...you turn right I suppose.

However there's something as strange going on with the character construction in Sorkin's shows: the characters are all alike. Seriously, each character comes from a mould somewhere in Sorkin's parietal lobe, a cast which churns out Donnas and Macs and Charlies and Leos, then adding a different colour hair or better fashion accessories.

The result is a very deja vu approach and one which brands each Sorkin show with an inimitably familiar quality.

On the plus side, for those already familiar, you don't exactly have to bring a notepad and pen when you tune in.

But when the characters click and the situation brings them together, The Newsroom produces some memorable moments. The ending of episode 4 ("I'll try to fix you"), Neal going all WWE on a computer monitor because of another abhorrent Rush Limbaugh quote, Will being taken to the cleaners by a (fictional) gay black member of Rick Santorum's campaign.

And while they're not real moments, and while they sometimes drip with soft-focus emotion, the negatives do not outweigh the positives.

Season one of The Newsroom has some fantastic episodes, one or two mediocre episodes and one turgid account of ACN's response to the death of Osama Bin Laden. But there's enough there to pull me in.

I'll watch season two.
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)