Peter Viney's Blog

I went to buy a small TV with integrated DVD, and went to the John Lewis store in Poole, where I found the one I wanted, the Sony KDL-22BX20D, had risen from £269 last week to £299 this week. So I went to the Comet warehouse store at Fleetsbridge to check out 22” integrated TV / DVDs. The store had an appalling picture, fuzzy and covered with white dots on every TV, compared to the crystal-sharp TVs at John Lewis. This is my conversation.

Me:                   I’m looking for a 22” TV / DVD combination.
Salesman:      Goodmans and Ferguson. £179.
Me:                   No, I want a quality brand.
Salesman:      JVC?
Me:                  Maybe. Have you got a Sony?
Salesman:      Sony don’t make TV / DVD combinations.
Me:                  Yes, they do. I was just looking at one in John Lewis.
Salesman:     They don’t.
Me:                  Here’s the John Lewis sales token with the model number.
Salesmen:      Oh, yes. We don’t stock Sony because the DVDs overheat.
Me:                  You said Sony didn’t make them just now.
Salesman:      Well, they do. But they catch fire.
Me:                  I think Sony probably know how to make DVD players.
Salesman:     Anyway, Samsung’s the same as Sony. We’ve got Samsung.
Me:                  I don’t think it is.
Salesman:     Oh, yes. Samsung, Sony and Sharp are all the same.
Me:                  You mean they all begin with “S”?
Salesman:     No, I mean they’re all made in the same factory. They just have different badges on.
Me:                  I see. Well, thank you …
Salesmen:      Don’t you want one?

No reply. I was already walking towards the door.

* Footnote: In the end, I bought the Sony from Amazon, free delivery, £249, and had it before lunchtime the next day. I constantly bemoan the loss of shops with real people to Amazon, but some days you know why it’s happening.

This month I’ve been taking a long hard look at the Storylines grading scheme with a view to rewriting it. Some of the ideas that have come out of this have been added to the existing article Preparing Reading Schemes which is now three paragraphs longer.

“The Author” repeats some stats on the brave new world of digital music, in the context of the excitement among writers about the alleged but hypothetical fortunes to be made from e-books.

An American site (www.informationisbeautiful.net) calculated how many downloads etc a musician had to sell to earn the “US minimum monthly wage”. This is how it runs:

Self-pressed CDs … 143

iTunes album downloads … 1,229

iTunes track downloads … 12,339

Then it points out that now music is often streamed rather than downloaded. To earn the minimum monthly wage from last.fm a track would need to be played 1,546,667 times in a month.

On Spotify, a track would have to be played 4,549,020 times.

As Bob Dylan sang with The Band at the Isle of Wight Festival, “Who’s gonna throw that minstrel boy a coin?”

Not digital media, that’s for sure!

New article on Listening and mobiles added to ELT articles.

They drive you mad. Our eco-friendly fridge let’s you put about three items in before it starts beeping to demand that you close the door. The timer on the microwave beeps loudly (and doesn’t stop).  So does the one on the oven. The electric induction hob beeps if any pan touches the control panel. You can find yourself cooking with quadrophonic beeping erupting simultaneously. And because three of the items are the same make, they have exactly the same beep so you can’t work out whether it’s the microwave, the hob or the oven.

Then you get in the car. Karen has a Suzuki Splash, and when you take it out of the garage you have to negotiate the drive in reverse. It doesn’t just beep at you to put your seatbelt on but beeps with increasing volume and speed. The thing is there’s a hedge along the side, and I can see much better without the seat belt on. I’m in my own drive. When I get to the end, I’m often going to stop and get out to let the family on board. I don’t need a seatbelt. Why can’t they disable it when you’re reversing?

Don’t even ask about the computer’s beeps.

Next door they’re building a new house. For health and safety reasons every digger and other motorized equipment on the site beeps loudly when it’s reversing. They start at 7 a.m. The beeps are to warn builders to get out of the way. At 7 a.m. I couldn’t care less whether they succeed.

So for recreation and to cover the noise, I’ll turn on the radio. Oh, no! They’re playing the old novelty song, “Beep! Beep!” by The Playmates.

I know people miss “Comments” but do click on the comments on “Moving Hous.” David from Australia has contributed a transcript of what might have been said in the palace while waiting for the politicians!

On another point, I mentioned the colour of ties as significant in the debates. Over the five days of negotiations Brown wore a mauve or purple tie. When he resigned he wore red. On BBC’s Newsnight after the resignation, spin doctor Alistair Campbell mentioned that Gordon Brown had people searching out a red tie for his farewell speech. So this sort of symbolism does matter and people do think of it..

I’ll draw attention to the newly-posted  article on copyright and photocopying of educational materials. This is a question that often leads to debate. Feel free to comment.