Month: June 2004

From the BBC Becks on the spot.

Beckham’s spot-kick miss against France cost England dear and Gary Tuhill (coach of under-15 side Beecholme Colts) reckons his players could show the national skipper how it’s done – after putting away 46 in one game.

I pity the poor kids in that match it sounds like the penalty shootout was a huge ordeal that would have seemed like it would never end.

Barthez out-thought Beckham and it cost England the match so perhaps he does need a bit of practice at not aiming for the same spot whenever he takes one. Unfortunately now he’ll have the dilemma if another penalty opportunity arises. He has confirmed that he will carry on taking them so will he change his spot like people may expect or will he bluff and hit it exactly the same again.

Tags: sport

In this age of European integration and friendly competition on the field of play why not learn some offensive terms for your neighbours through the Wikipedia.

I’m just about recovered from the disappointment of England’s defeat by France in the last couple of minutes of play, but I’m optimistic of the team’s chances against the Swiss and Croatians.

Meanwhile as per usual the drunkenness of football fans has descended into violence.

Football violence descends upon Bath.

FRUSTRATION at England’s heartbreaking last-minute defeat to France spilled over into violence in Bath last night. Pubs across the city centre were packed for the opening game of England’s Euro 2004 campaign.

By 10.45pm the violence had shifted Bath’s railway station as people tried to make their way home by train. At one point, crowds were stopping others getting on to the platform and then a fight involving 15 people broke out on platform two.

Five youths clad in football shirts caused trouble by throwing pint glasses in the car park of the McDonald’s restaurant in Lower Bristol Road at about 11.05pm. At the same time, a woman was reported to be lying unconscious in London Road.

I was actually driving down London Road just about then and it was a lot more than just an unconscious woman I can tell you. It was a full on drunken brawl that spilled into one of the busiest roads in Bath and nearly caused a couple of crashes.

Tags: sport

There are no lions or tigers in Norway.

http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/29/

Tags: humour

With the improvements in processing power of modern graphics cards the characters in video games are appearing increasingly lifelike but have now possibly hit a wall. Human beings have over the millions of years of evolution developed an amazing ability to recognize other human beings and are able to discern the difference between real people and fakes. No matter how good the waxworks are at Madame Tussauds they could never be mistaken for a real person because they lack the ‘spark of life’ that humans are somehow able to recognize. The same is true of video game characters and computer generated animations no matter how close to realistic they are they will probably always lack that je ne se quais. The characters appear like dead people that are moving, puppets made of human flesh.

This phenomenon has been termed the ‘Uncanny Valley’ by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori and is written about in the article The Undead Zone: Why realistic graphics make humans look creepy by Clive Thompson. Mori used the term in relation to robotics but it is equally applicable to any situation where a representation of life is produced.

The comic book writer and artist Scott McCloud tackles this same problem in his book Understanding Comics. People prefer art in comics where the characters are detailed enough that you can distinguish between the various people but also lacking sufficient detail so that the reader can fill in the blanks and imbue it with life in their minds. But when something is too realistic the reader has less work to do to add life and so focuses on the minor details that detract from the realism.

Tags: comics, games

Last August, Greg Dyke, the former director general of the BBC, announced that the BBC would soon launch its “Creative Archive” — a project to put much of the Beeb’s programs on the Internet, so that the licence-paying British public could have access to it.

This is the most ambitious project of its type ever conceived. A fully realized Creative Archive could transform the BBC’s precious, deep archive into a springboard for a new century of participatory creation by Britons. This project stands to make the BBC the banner-carrier for public service broadcasting in the information age, but if the BBC bends to pressure to scale back its ambition, the Creative Archive could amount to little more than brochureware and failed promise.

You can help: if you’re a license payer, you can join the Friends,, and there will be lots of opportunities in the near future to petition the Beeb, the Governors, the DCMS and Parliament for this — there’s an open letter now that you can sign onto.

Here are some of the elements critical to the creation of a real, useful, relevant Creative Archive:

* It must be broad: drawing from all areas of the BBC’s broadcasting from factual to light entertainment, from drama to sport, and everything in between.

* It must be accessible: files must be made available in open, standards-defined formats without “digital rights management” or other technology locks that will keep Britons from creatively re-using the BBC’s offerings.

* It must be free: Material should be licensed under conditions that do not restrict any licence payer from accessing, storing, modifying or sharing archive material for non-commercial use.

* It must be whole: Material should be provided in its entirety for non-commercial use, not only in excerpted form.

* It must be soon: the BBC’s own internally produced material should be released into the Archive as soon as possible, to prove to the world that the sky won’t fall if you relax your copyright stance.

* It must be complete: the BBC should take steps to clear the rights to the independently produced material in its archive.

* It must be sustainable: the BBC’s new licensing agreements with independents should all include the right for the BBC to make the works available in the Creative Archive for full non-commercial use.

Link

Tags: BBC, copyright, creative_commons, TV