Eurovision 2009.

Another year another Eurovision but this year was different.  Graham Norton stepped into Sir Terry of Wogan’s shoes and did a sterling job, the Russians spend a whopping thirty three million Euros using apparently the worlds supply of LED panels to create the stage.

As is the tradition here’s a brief overview of the runners and riders.

01	Lithuania	Bloke in hat sings Will Young album filler. Instantly forgettable which is why you can’t remember it can you? Deserved all of its 23 points. 23rd.
02	Israel	The Middle East problem sorted by girl on girl action and biscuit tins. As everything else has been tried why not Sappho and digestives? 53 points. 16th.
03	France	As Mr Norton commented French song done by the numbers. Very angst, very minimal, very average, very thin. Apparently a big star in Russia which probably accounts for the 107 points. 8th.
04	Sweden	Trained opera voice that can’t cope with pop. Almost looked like a drag act despite the failure to find the makeup department. Vocal gymnastics in an expensive dress which wasn’t saved by the Scandinavian block vote. 33 points. 21st.
05	Croatia	Smooth chap in black. Backing singing hunnies braving a wind machine without shoes. Worked right up to the point the blonde started howling. If he’d been on his own he’d have got more than 45 points. 18th.
06	Portugal	Portuguese Adele that wasn’t half bad. Sunny. Lots of smiling from the band. Big plus as one of the guys had a ukulele too. Best up to this point. Deserved far better than 57 points. 15th.
07	Iceland	Very pretty although not sure about the frock. Not a bad ballad either and she has a great voice. Very Swiftain (Taylor not Jonathon). Better than the Norwegian entry. 218 points. 2nd.
08	Greece	Greeks always take Eurovision seriously, this time with a Euro beat John Barrowman clone, catchy. Remix club fodder for sure. 120 points. 7th.
09	Armenia	Sisters. Song clashed with the set and costumes. Oddly melodic though. Mid table is about right with 92 points. 10th.
10	Russia	If her father is a billionaire surely they could have done better than a shower curtain for a dress. Aging video very clever but song wasn’t up to much. Over produced and shouty. Locals of course loved it. KGB might have something to say about the 91 points. 11th.
11	Azerbaijan	Typical big Eurovision number with eye candy. Camera stuck to her not him…wonder why? Although he has the voice. More wind machine based shenanigans which garnered a staggering 207 points. 3rd.
12	Bosnia & Herzegovina	The lost cast of Les Mis. Lots of posing making up for a rather so-so song. Overly generous 106 points. 9th.
13	Moldova	Silly dancing. Shouting and general running about in native costume. Or I assume it was native costume otherwise what was the point? Not sure how it managed 69 points. 14th.
14	Malta	Good singer given a rather bland song. Poor girl deserved far better than this particularly as she has competed before although it might be for the last time with 31 points. 22nd.
15	Estonia	Interesting song. Great looking girls including a very good looking singer. Lots of men across Europe ensured they got 129 points. 6th.
16	Denmark	Rowan Keating wrote this and it shows even down to the guy sounding like him. He can sing too although he stood like he had rickets, maybe he does and I shouldn’t have pointed it out. Not sure how Rowan feels about 74 points. 13th.
17	Germany	Lederhosen meets Rickie Martin with odd silver trousers. Annoying slightly catchy number trying to find a 007 vibe. Dita Von Teese made this for me but alas her undoubted charms can’t manage more than 35 points. 20th.
18	Turkey	Usual Turkish fusion Euro entry. Shakira copy with plenty of belly dancing and drum beats. How it managed such a high placing has to be down to the amount of flesh on display. A travesty it managed 177 points. 4th.
19	Albania	Barbie meets Abe Sapien with two guys going to fancy dress as the Joker. Song was cookie cutter Euro pap. Upon reflection rather creepy staging considering the age of the singer. 48 points. 17th.
20	Norway	No idea why this was the bookies fav. Caterpillars for eyebrows. Where did the walk on blondes come from? Musically paper thin and tried hint of country avec the fiddle. An unworthy winner with an even more unworthy high score of 387 points. 1st.
21	Ukraine	What Eurovision is all about. Tasteless, disco wannabe, Gladiator meets porn…almost, hint of bondage, pyrotechnics and silicon enhanced. Not sure why but they got value for money with 76 points. 12th
22	Romania	Aztec Amazonian blend came over rather bland. Singers costume held together by double sided tape but not enough it seems to get more than 40 points. 19th.
23	United Kingdom	Andrew Lloyd Webber written and accompanied. Jade has a great voice but ALW had knocked together a rather safe by the numbers musical filler. The Spanish loved it as did the Greeks. Well deserved 173 points. 5th.
24	Finland	Not Lordi. Thankfully. Upbeat and the girls look great although vocally they were a mixed bunch. Too confusing with the rapping, flame jugglers and braziers from picket lines. No Scandinavian solidarity with 22 points. 25th.
25	Spain	Sarah Harding’s sister goes Iberian. Even though it was a by stock Euro friendly song it didn’t warrant the lamentable 23 points. 23rd.

How much energy do we need or can we make a star on earth?

If you haven’t watched Professor Brian Cox’s Horizon episode on Nuclear Fusion you should, it’s a fascinating look at the subject in it’s own right but the best bit is when he talks to Saul Griffiths a serial entrepreneur and inventor, about energy production and consumption.  Griffith’s view is about as pragmatic and uncluttered as it gets. 

Here we are on this finite little ball that’s spinning through the universe, if there is a limit to how much power per square metre we can get, we shouldn’t be afraid of that limit but we should certainly try to operate within it. Let’s as quickly as possible get the debate about energy away from the emotional, qualitative, polar bear issues and to a very rational, “what do we have to do”?, “how do we get this done”?

Griffith’s thinking came from examining his own energy consumption.  He assumed as he commutes by bike, uses public transport and owns a wind energy company he be a “good human”.  The devil is of course in the details, he worked out for example how much energy is consumed having the New York Times delivered to his house, 507 watts if you’re interested, how much to take a how shower everyday, drive, fly etc etc.  Griffiths was shocked by the results. 

The two then went through a calculation to establish what energy needs might be based on on a number of  premises. 

• Energy equity. The average American currently consumes 11.4KW of energy per year whereas the world average is 2.2KW making a world total of 13TW or 13 million million watts.  So if we pick a number somewhere in between 11 and 2 that’s equitable for all of us on planet earth that would be fair wouldn’t it? 5KW per annum making a total of 30TW. 
• No fossil fuels.
• Target date of 2035.

In the West we’d need to consume a whole lot less even with more than doubling world total , but those not as fortunate than us could enjoy a live style approximating our own.  Again sounds fair doesn’t it?

• If we choose then to generate a modest 5TW of our needs from Nuclear Fission Reactors we’d need to build 5000 of these in 25 years or two and half full size reactor every week.
• Every 3 minutes for the next 25 years we’d need to install a full size 3MW Wind Turbine and cover about 2% of the land mass with such turbines for another 5TW.
• 10TW from Solar.  250  squared metres of Solar Panels would need to be installed every second for the next 25 years.
• Bio fuels.  2TW.  We’d need to produce 4 Olympic sized swimming pools of genetically engineered bacteria every second for the next 25 years.

They didn’t get to include tide, geothermal or hydro as the numbers were probably equally as mind boggling.  As Cox ten points out they didn’t factor in population growth and every minute or second we do nothing the numbers above just keep climbing.

He then asks if we can get over our ‘addiction’ to fossil fuels?  Even if we bend and twist the calculations above you’d have to conclude things don’t look good.  Now of course this was a programme about the possibility of Nuclear Fusion and we just don’t know if it works or could ever work on an industrial scale, but it might be the ‘get out of jail free’ card. 

Humanity then has a couple of choices.

• Assume Fusion is too far away and increase the use of fossil alternatives until we get it to work.
• Take a gamble with Fusion and spend 100 times what we do on R&D at the moment.  In the UK we currently spend more on ringtones than Fusion research.

I came away from the programme both encouraged and disappointed by our progress, on one hand there is some amazing research going on the field of Fusion power all around the world but it’s painfully slow progress.  The problem of course as much about money and politics as it is scientific but if we were to take Fusion power as seriously as we take Fusion bombs we could be on to something. 

A Manhattan Project for energy anyone?

Pandemics can be fun

I think I might have already confessed before that I’m a fan of board games.  Now if you think that just means games like Cludeo and Monopoly you’d be wrong, a quick look at BoardGameGeek proves that and they also scratch the gaming itch in a way button mashing can’t.  Being an aficionado of Z-Man Games’ rather brilliant Shadowfist, if only it wasn’t a CCG, I recently picked up a copy of Pandemic one of a growing number of co-operative games like Shadows Over Camelot and Lord of the Rings where the challenge is to beat the game not each other.

The premise is you’ll not be surprised to found out is about saving the world from deadly diseases, four of them in fact, by finding cures before there are too many ‘outbreaks’.  Not overly complex or bogged down with an encyclopaedic rulebook it’s a seemingly straightforward game that is in fact crammed with subtlety and tons of choices.

Recommended.  But don’t just take my word for it.

I saw Seth Godin in London.

As someone who has seen a fair few business speakers over the years some stand out.  Charles Handy and Dave Snowden are two of my favourites and now I need to add another; Seth Godin…thanks to Steve Clayton who furnished me with a ticket.  It was a fairly high octane performance from Seth as by his own admission he squeezed seven hours of material into only one plus an impressive two hour Q&A.  There was as a result a lot to assimilate so here’s a list of what I remember or more accurately scribbled down in no particular order .  I hope at least some of it makes sense.

- Personality in large organisations is found at the fringes
- Large organisations feel they need to hit a home run every time but the world now doesn’t allow that to happen
- The future is about doing small things really well and growing from there
- Authenticity is all important
- The CD hid the fact the music industry was dying
- With less money about there is less noise
- We are in a new Industrial Revolution
- In organisations the middle is about the status quo
- For serious change you need to ignore the middle
- Ideas that spread win
- Marketing is normally about interrupting
- The TV Industrial Complex’s days are numbered
- Harrods in empty not because of the economy but because it’s boring
- We deal with clutter with more clutter
- When you get to the edge everything gets easier
- The Scion xB out sold the xA three to one
- We are all in the fashion business
- The internet doesn’t care about you
- The internet directly connects you to consumers
- The internet means individuals have more power
- The internet says ‘I want it now’
- Be internet friendly
- Remember the ‘Long tail’
- Everyone has their own channel
- Connect people
- It’s not about how many but who?
- Gatekeepers are less important than they’ve ever been
- Talk to people who want to listen
- Remember the ‘Seinfield Curve’, be scarce or ubiquitous
- People like people who like the things they like
- Only 1 in 50,000 heretics get burnt at the stake
- Find people who want to follow
- Always be clear and honest about what you do
- Seth doesn’t watch TV, go to meetings or Twitter?
- Tribes are people with the same mission
- Tribes will split when the mission is over and create new missions
- Marketing is not evil but there are evil marketers
- Most organisations aren’t as stuck as they think
- What story can you create that’s true and scarce?

Sometimes the Americans just do it better…

If you’ve ever been to the US and switched on the TV you’ll how completely and utterly awful it is.  So why then are they so much better at making drama series than we are?  Casualty vs ER, no contest.  The Wire vs The Bill, ditto.  Then of course there is the mashup of sci-fi and horror where we again offer little in the way of resistance to the invaders…only a certain Doctor able to keep the British end up.   Which brings me to the end of the first, and as it turns out probably only season of Demons, the guys at Digital Spy, have already written an end of season report so I don’t have to.  It’s sad really as there was buried in the middle of this TV equivalent of hastily made trifle was some nice ideas and Philip Glenister.  So where did it all go wrong?  It’s simple and is the reason the Americans are consistently better at this kind of TV than we are.   The writing…pure and simple.

Hat tip to Andrew for the link.

Podcast kit upgrade or how to get another gadget fix

One of the reasons I originally started to podcast apart from trying to mimic Radio 4 was, and I’m not sure I should confess to this, the opportunity to get hold of some new ‘tech’.  A childhood obsession with a reel to reel tape recorder made digital if you will. 

My current podcasting ‘rig’ is the same one I used when I first started and follows the time honoured tradition of not splashing too much cash just in case we didn’t get along.  In retrospect it hasn’t been the easiest to live with, whilst all three major hardware  components, Tapco Mix 100, Griffin iMic, and Behringer B1 mic are all individually great they don’t always play well together, the iMic and Mix 100 being the main culprits.  I always spend an inordinate amount of time getting the levels right, monitoring via headphones never seems to work predictably and for some reason there is always some line noise to deal with in the edit. 

         

I’ve been pondering for sometime about swapping the mixer and iMic for a dedicated USB audio interface, something along the lines of the M-Box 2.  My hope is that it will eliminate the need for endlessly playing around

until the levels are right plus it’ll plumb directly into the PC without the need for extra cables.  It also means my current DAW Magix Music Maker might end up in retirement as most USB interfaces come with some kind of bundled software, in the case of the M-Box it’s Pro Tools LE.  The question though is do I go through this process whilst in the middle if the current BTHP series on the Royal Navy or wait until it’s finished?

Recession or Recalibration?

I heard someone quote Tom Peters the other day that we’re not in a ‘recession’ but a ‘recalibration’ and this intrigued me.  After a quick search on t’interweb it wasn’t Peters but Steve Yastrow, a like minded thinker who regularly posts on Peters site.  Either way it’s an intelligent, relevant and thought provoking post.

 

The way your business generates results is different, now.

Your customers think differently, now.

Your customers care about different things, now.

Your customers act differently, now.

Your customers may actually be different people, now.

Customers aren’t disposable anymore; more than ever, you have to create sustainable customer relationships.

Everything is different now.

 

It also made me wonder if business expectations in general are in need of recalibration too.

Sandwiched between Jupitus and Day

The podcast has found it’s way onto the ‘Podcasts’ front page on iTunes.  I’m still stunned that so many people enjoy BTHP and my continued thanks to anyone who listens.

X Factor here we come…well not me obviously.

I know some other people have already blogged about this but as it fits into the ‘too cool for school’ category it’s definitely worth mentioning again.

Songsmith generates musical accompaniment to match a singer’s voice. Just choose a musical style, sing into your PC’s microphone, and Songsmith will create backing music for you. Then share your songs with your friends and family, post your songs online, or create your own music videos.

If you want to have a play and find the inner ‘superstar’ a free trial download (98mb) is available. 

Goodbye Woolworths

I’m guessing that like many of my fellow countrymen there was a moment of silent reflection yesterday as the last Woolworths closed in the UK.  I have fond childhood memories of Woolworths as if furnished me with the two things that any self respecting school boy in the ‘70’s couldn’t be without.  Pick & Mix and Airfix kits.

Adieu Woolies…