• Serial, Podcasts, and the end of BBC Radio

    The new hotness in the podcasting world is Serial, made by the people behind This American Life. After only a few weeks, it’s already attracting 850,000 downloads per episode. It’s a fantastic show, perfectly suited to a format that allows people to follow along week-by-week but listen at a time of their own choosing. The…

  • 26 Interview

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    Questions and answers for 26, an organisation for writers: What is your day job? I’m CEO and co-founder of Six to Start. We make story-like games and game-like stories, and our most popular game is Zombies, Run!, a running game and audio adventure with over one million sales, co-created with novelist Naomi Alderman. What are…

  • Kickstarter Report: November 2014

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    Here are the eight most recent projects I’ve backed on Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1748303376/radiotopia-a-storytelling-revolution/widget/video.html Radiotopia: A Storytelling Revolution Radiotopia is a podcast network by Roman Mars, the guy responsible for one of my favorite shows, 99% Invisible. I’ve met him in person and he is a lovely, generous guy who has made it his life’s work to…

  • Pride and High-Definition Prejudice

    Pride and High-Definition Prejudice

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    Here’s the sort of TV I watched in 1995: Red Dwarf, Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Voyager, Babylon 5, The X-Files – and Pride and Prejudice. I can’t recall how I was convinced to watch a costume drama based on a book genre that I had never previously shown an iota of interest in, but…

  • The British Museum: Ming and Germany

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    The British Museum has a couple of big exhibitions on at the moment, about China’s Ming dynasty and Germany. The bigger one is undeniably Ming: 50 years that changed China, being held in the museum’s shiny new gallery. It did a solid job at contextualising what the Ming dynasty was and why 1400-1450 was so…

  • Dystopian Shopping Malls of the Future

    Dystopian Shopping Malls of the Future

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    Walking around Westfield Stratford yesterday reminded me of the dystopian shopping malls of the future, most memorably from Minority Report: Glass, steel, floating displays, and not a speck of dust to be seen. Dominated by the same shops, the same clothes, and the same food you’ll see in a thousand different malls. All of your…

  • Capital Ring Walk

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    Completed sections 12, 13, and most of 14 along the Capital Ring Walk today. While it was very warm and sunny, sunset was 4:30pm so it was impossible to press onward to the Thames and beyond. Clearly a project for next summer. Also, got distracted by the iMac 5K display at the Apple Store in…

  • London, Chronological Ethnocentrism, Zero

    Some interesting excerpts: London: all that glisters… by David Goodhart: But if London is such a wonderful place to live why do so many people want to get out? One reason for wanting to leave is the scale of churn itself which makes stable communities increasingly rare. According to the UCL publication London 2062 (edited…

  • Gamergate is Bullshit

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    Gamergate is bullshit, and it’s certainly not about ethics in journalism. Threats and harassment against women in gaming is reprehensible for any reason whatsoever, and it’s astonishing that the very people who are pushing the boundaries of what gaming can do and express are the ones being attacked. Now, I had hoped it would go…

  • Interstellar: Two Movies in One

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    I was fortunate enough to catch a screening of Interstellar tonight, courtesy of BAFTA. Christopher Nolan surprised the audience by introducing the movie with a few words, comparing-but-not-comparing it with 2001. It’s not as good as 2001 – but you could say that about almost any movie. Is it a great movie, though? No. Is…