Work: Have 3D films had their day?

Probably... A simple link to an interesting BBC News piece on the subject. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21465628 I shall refrain from saying I told you so....but I did.

Life: or iLife to be more accurate

I think my daughter was three months old when I first got an iPad. In other words, she's grown up with the device.

She's only rising two at the moment, but it's fascinating to see her interact with the device. The UI seems completely natural to her, and she's already starting to find areas in her software that I haven't found yet, unlocking as she explores and learns.

Of course, being of an advanced age myself, I believe I came across my first computer at school when I was 14. The school had a computer club too, but you could only join computer club if you had a computer at home, which seemed a little bit counterintuitive even at the time.

Now there are reports in the press that Apple is working on the iWatch and that wearable computing is finally going to come of age (as opposed to simply strapping huge hulking great hard drives to your body as the MIT Media Lab chaps did back in the 90s). Makes me wonder slightly what iLife is going to be like for Freya. Hopefully it will be a good thing, but for that to happen perhaps we need to do more with 24/ connectivity than start flame wars on Twitter and feel compelled to overshare on Facebook. All this technology has to be good for something more than making Californian start-ups money...

Life: Marking time

Strange to think that my mother died 30 years ago today - that's a whole lifetime ago. And sad that I'll be heading off later in the week to help bury my Aunt in the most tragic of circumstances. But I type this with my daughter standing beside me, drinking milk, crayoning on the table (ooops, #parentingfail) and burbling about planets with her ginger hair flying in many directions. Even if the Buddhists are wrong and life is not a cycle of death and rebirth for us individually, it is for us as a species. I see my mum's face in my daughter's sometimes, and that makes me happy. Life goes on in all it's wonderful, chocolate-demanding, crazy cacophony.

Work/Life: Zzub words

Huge respect to Twelve Thirty Eight which has released the latest edition of its annual Buzzword Report - the phrases and slogans used by PRs that annoy us journalistic types the most. Hell, annoy anyone with a brain and a rudimentary grasp of the English language if you ask me.

Here's the Top 20 (oh and I was cheered by its special singling out of the phrase 'reaching out' elsewhere in the piece. Really worth a read)


1. Brits / Hard-working Brits / Hard-up Brits (an attempt to be ‘accessible’)
2. Dynamic (likely not to be)
3. Paradigm (a ‘silk purse’ word)
4. Elite (i.e. the best thing in Scunthorpe on a Thursday at 3pm)
5. Hotly anticipated (i.e. never heard of it)
6. End-user (‘customer’)
7. Influencer (probably not)
8. Evangelist (a tendency to tweet with loads of hashtags)
9. Deliverables (‘tasks’)
10. Icon/iconic (‘use before 01.01.01 or never’)
11. Rocketed (‘made modest progress’)
12. "An astonishing x per cent" (it rarely is astonishing)
13. Marquee event/marquee client (probably ‘very local’)
14. Going forward (‘in the future’)
15. Ongoing (‘a bit behind schedule’)
16. Optimised (‘changed by consultants then changed back’)
17. Horizontal, vertical, etc (two words in lieu of a strategy)
18. Phygital (easy to press or swipe we guess)
19. SoLoMo (no idea)
20. Well-positioned (‘hopeful but a bit scared’)

Work: D = decreasing; K = inKreasing

You probably won't be doing much of this in the future...

Or less D more K as one correspondent from NAB last year put it.

It really does seem that the momentum behind 4k is becoming unstoppable. I've written two stories about it so far this week (here's one of 'em) and it's only Wednesday. There seems to be approximately one significant one a day hoving into view down the newspipe too.

Latest one is about the BBC filming meerkats in the format for its new all-singing all-dancing natural history doc Survival, due next year.

No, it's not, sorry...the latest one is about China leading the way into the 4k future.

Oh, hang on, no wait...here's another one.

You get the picture.

Meanwhile, poor old stereo 3D seems down and out. One of the most significant parts about the arrival of 4k in Japan story linked to above is that it will in turn be linked to coverage of the World Cup in 2014. Last time round, in South Africa, Sony paid for 25 matches to be captured in 3D for 'future-proofing in the format of the future' type purposes. Really difficult to imagine them doing that now. Stereo 3D just looks so...so...2011*.

It looks like it's going to be an either/or decision, with 4k being the probable winner. Unless, that is, auto-stereoscopic displays suddenly take off at an affordable price in the next 18 months...(which is a tad unlikely to say the least).

*To which I have to add a) told you so and b) shame in many ways because some of the nicest people I've met in the industry were amongst those driving it forward.

Work: Here's one I made earlier

Seem to have spent most of the winter subbing and editing so far (the pre show sections of the ISE Daily were down to me, though, of course, I'll blame any errors on people working downstream ;-) ) all of which means there's no vast amount of writing to share. Here are a couple of pieces published online from recent months, however, that prove I can still string a sentence together when I put my mind to it.

To paraphrase Eric Morecombe, it's something to do with using the right words in the right order...

Extreme Sports feature (InBroadcast)

4K lenses. What does that even mean? (Red Shark)

Looking to the second screen future (SVG Europe)

Life: Random acts of photographic happiness

A lucky one from last month taken with the iPhone's panoramic feature (in other words you have to click on it to see the whole thing). What seems to have made the difference was that the sun was not quite up at the time, allowing for an exposure that didn't simply bleach out the sky.

Come out of our gate, cross the road, and this is the view. Very fortunate to live here methinks...despite the occasional pre-dawn dog and baby walking...