As you’ll no doubt already know, it’s traditional to give generous gifts to New Zealanders on Waitangi Day*. New Zealander Taika Waititi is trying to get his film BOY screened in the United States. February 6th is Waitangi Day. I’ve just put those two things together and made a connection. BOY is a fantastic film, [...]
Categories: culture,New Zealand
Tagged: films
All in all, I’ve had an pretty good year that’s taken me to a lot of interesting places – both literally and metaphorically. I thought that rather than go over it here (there’s really rather a lot) I thought I’d talk a bit about where the process of reflection has brought me to. My motto [...]
Categories: culture
Tagged: 2011
I’ve been seeing a lot about Pay A Blogger Day bouncing around the internet today. It’s on November 29th, and it’s a campaign to promote Flattr – a service that allows you to donate small amounts to websites and services you like. I won’t be putting a Flattr button on my site and I do [...]
Categories: culture
I saw the trailer for Marvel’s The Avengers this week, and I said on Twitter something to the effect that this film (due out May next year) is the point that the whole of the history of cinema has been leading up to. Of course, it was treated as hyperbole, and those who bothered to [...]
Categories: culture
Panic on the streets of London Panic on the streets of Birmingham I wonder to myself Could life ever be sane again? Panic – The Smiths (1986) There’s a lot being said on the internet about last night’s escalation of riots in London and Birmingham (and spreading). So much so that blogging about it feels [...]
Categories: Birmingham,culture,Politics,Technology
After getting my turntable repaired at 2007 Sound and Light on the Moseley Road in Balsall Heath (thoroughly recommended – Lonnie and his team are superb and my Technics 1210 has never sounded so good), I thought I’d follow the advice of a comment on this blog made recently by a man named Huw, and [...]
Categories: culture
I first met Nancy Baym on Twitter, and now we’re also friends on Facebook. We’ve talked via email about a couple of things as well. She’s a professor in the US and we have some mutual friends in common, many of whom one or both of us have never actually met in person. She’s written [...]
Categories: culture,Education,Technology,University
Tagged: Academic, Internet, Interview, Music, Social media
There’s a piece in the Guardian in which DJ and film-maker Don Letts dispenses a few observations about culture and society. There’s one line in it that some friends of mine on Twitter (professional musicians and DJs, as it happens) have seized upon and retweeted as a bit of a ‘hell yeah!’ to the bumper [...]
Categories: culture
Tagged: Art, Creativity, culture, Film, Music
I’ve been having conversations over the past 24 hours about the ‘value’ of social media. The social transparency and personal profile that this kind of medium affords is one of those things that crops up from time to time in articles such as this one in Techcrunch and this one in Music Think Tank – [...]
Categories: culture,Family,Music,Technology
