Using a route planner for Google Maps, and a screen capture app to capture the screen. This is sort of what it would look like to drive from King’s Heath towards the town centre — the route was going further, but there were gaps in which roads were covered by Street View.
This is the back end of my car on Google Streetview – notice how the “privacy” of my car has been maintained by the blurring out of the number plate (waste of time if you ask me, especially as next door’s number plate is viewable).
The back of my car is adorned with adornments, you can see the Flying Spaghetti Monster but on the bumper is a Cute Overload sticker – which google have blurred. Why in the name of all that is furry?
I thought I’d got myself on the the Google Streetview, but they must have taken photos going both ways up our road. They did capture young Felix from next door. I’m loving going round spotting things, more soon.
I’m not a journalist: I did a little bit of journalism training, I have been paid to write for a living, I blog a lot (which requires some of the same sort of skills, some of the time), I read a lot of “news”. I know a lot of journalists work very hard, write good stuff, care about what they do and care deeply about their profession.
But, you know why newspapers are failing? They’re mostly rubbish. So here’s a radical idea — have any of the people that are boring the rest of the Internet “searching for a new model” thought of this — why don’t they just “be any good”?
Steps a newspaper can take to “be any good”, first some things they can stop doing:
Stop reprinting press releases without adding anything or checking facts.
It’s lazy, but also these days we can see them on the ‘net and in all other papers too — and you look foolish.
Stop being fooled by “bad statistics” or “surveys” that are unreliable and presented in order to get column inches.
You know the sort, “people with brummie accents are thought of as most stupid” based on asking 50 people in London the question ‘do you think people with brummie accents are stupid?’ on behalf of a voice-recognition software company.
Stop being selective with the truth in order to promote an agenda.
Yes, Daily Mail, you’re one of the worst. But all papers do it. How about you tried straight reporting again, you might like it.
Stop bickering with each other, and claiming “exclusives”.
We’ll know when something is unique to your publication — your publication will be the only one to feature it.
Stop browbeating TV, Radio (BBC especially) because you feel threatened.
Radio didn’t kill you, TV didn’t kill you, the Internet might (what with it being mostly text based) but making media duller by being ready to leap on and scream blue murder about anything remotely edgy isn’t helping anyone. It is making your publication’s hypocrisies more obvious.
Stop hyping things up and artificially creating controversy.
The Internet won’t cause cancer, nor will apples, fish, or paragliding. Correlation and cause are different things, and hating everything you don’t understand is boring us.
And to continue, some more advice on the road to “be any good”.
Write just as much on any subject as it needs.
That’s right, if something is uninteresting it probably only merits a nib. A boring football match or boring U2 album is a passing sentence, not a pull-out supplement. Important things need deep analysis and explanation, that can take pages. Take a tip from the best bloggers who only write when there’s something to say.
Try new stuff.
Try not doing the “Jon Bounds, 33,” thing for once, for example. Just ‘cos everyone else does this stupid rhythmic device doesn’t make it the law.
Write well, and intelligently. Pick the best photographs, get the best graphics.
Avoid clichés, obvious or poor photoshopping. As a journalist, editor or photo editor you know what’s good. Don’t let shit into the paper or on to the website.
Find stuff out and write about it.
Stop moaning about how the web breaks all the new stories, your pace of work allows an extra bit of time for research — find a new angle or something else.
Glib nonsense, but if a newpaper offered something wonderful I genuinely couldn’t get elsewhere then I’d buy it. Being easy to read on the bus/train aint going to be enough soon…
And enough with Bono, have I mentioned that?
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It’s a box-ticking, event-telly-by-numbers mentality, and it made for the most tedious and unsatisfying Comic Relief Night since…the last one. These jamborees are not getting any better as they get older. They’re not getting any better as you get older either. The silliness of their – and your – early years is long gone. Likewise the easy ideals and the casual pursuit of cash.
“Wehn is a German fella that’s looks like a cross between a scrotal sack and a sock puppet made by an abusive uncle, and his entire act rests on his nationality, and our own racist perceptions of it. Now some of you are thinking “Wow, his act must be a post-modern critique of nationalist perceptions, he must be subverting racial stereotypes by cleverly pointing out the flaws”, well… no he’s just a bit shit.” Who’s Laughing Now? » Blog Archive » Review: Jongleurs 19th Feb
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I don’t think I’ve been into British Home Stores since I was dragged there to get some forgotten item of school uniform, probably a shirt or a grey V-necked jumper. Is it possible to by grey V-necked jumpers anywhere else?
Maybe the grey V-necked jumper and cream chino market has fallen into fast decline. I blame those bloody schools that sell sweatshirts with logos on, and men over 40 who think they have any right to wear anything other than cream chinos and lightly-checked shirts under their car coats. Sweatshirts for small children? Children who — at least used to — run around all day in states of high excitement, think of the olfactory organ headmasters and governors. Maybe that’s the reason kids aren’t as energetic these days, they’re too afraid of wet patches under the arms of their grubby blue jerkin things.
So, no I’ve not been into British Home Stores. I have, however, been past the outlet on New Street in Birmingham this week. At first I thought the shop had closed and been taken over by one of those ‘anything for £5’ shops, those boils on retail that blast awful chart ‘rnb’ at you as you hurry past (and who said they could use ‘rnb’ as a genre? R’n’B is early Stones, early Who…). But no, the management of the venerable BHS have decided to employ the lowest market tactics available. They’re not competing on price, quality, ambience, or heaven forbid ‘cool’. No.
They’ve employed someone to shout “come here, come get your luveryly V-necked school jumpers and cream chinos”, and not in a chirpy cockerny market stall way either. A dull monotone hawker skulks out of sight, drawling about “store credit cards” — the mating call of the terminally feckless shopper — through a PA too small to do the job in anything more than buzzing compression.
Brekkies is a once mighty brand fallen to the odd appearances in Wilko, and this tabby has felt the sting of every rung of that ladder on the way down. He’s landed on his feet, but you can see the upward glance to the heights of Wiskas or Felix the longing look in his eyes.
The saddest cat I’ve yet seen, however, is this morose tom. I know advertising wilko’s own brand cat litter isn’t the carear he dreamt of, but he’s a litle podgy and you know that if the litter works for him it’ll be good quality. He looks a little eggbound here.
Cat ‘eat’ crunch three
In my continting series of photos on the packets of cat-food:
Brekkies is a once mighty brand fallen to the odd appearances in Wilko, and this tabby has felt the sting of every rung of that ladder on the way down. He’s landed on his feet, but you can see the upward glance to the heights of Wiskas or Felix the longing look in his eyes.
The saddest cat I’ve yet seen, however, is this morose tom. I know advertising wilko’s own brand cat litter isn’t the carear he dreamt of, but he’s a litle podgy and you know that if the litter works for him it’ll be good quality. He looks a little eggbound here.