Sunday, January 19, 2020
Saturday, January 11, 2020
Neil Peart Dies
A truly inspirational individual, Rush my favourite band growing up has lost their drummer and lyricist:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51072190
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/10/neil-peart-dead-rush-drummer-appreciation
And of course a tribute to the drumming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWRMOJQDiLU&feature=emb_logo
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51072190
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/jan/10/neil-peart-dead-rush-drummer-appreciation
And of course a tribute to the drumming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWRMOJQDiLU&feature=emb_logo
Friday, January 3, 2020
BBC Sounds searching (google search operators)
I've always found the browser based search on the BBC websites to be pretty terrible.
It's especially noticeable on things like iPlayer and BBC sounds where you are trying to hunt down a title that is maybe not precise.
Google has some search operators which help:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
In my case I wanted to find a Clive James series, so we can restrict the search with "site" and then further restrict to the url "sounds"
site:www.bbc.co.uk inurl:sounds unreliable memoirs
Finding this directly in Sounds was almost impossible!
Of course it is getting more complicated to download the file for offline use - something the BBC try to hide away (I can't always stream stuff, so this is essential for me). As a license fee payer I see this as a right not an optional extra at their discretion.
But the excellent get_iplayer can be used to download the programme pids from the catalogue.
It's especially noticeable on things like iPlayer and BBC sounds where you are trying to hunt down a title that is maybe not precise.
Google has some search operators which help:
https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/
In my case I wanted to find a Clive James series, so we can restrict the search with "site" and then further restrict to the url "sounds"
site:www.bbc.co.uk inurl:sounds unreliable memoirs
Finding this directly in Sounds was almost impossible!
Of course it is getting more complicated to download the file for offline use - something the BBC try to hide away (I can't always stream stuff, so this is essential for me). As a license fee payer I see this as a right not an optional extra at their discretion.
But the excellent get_iplayer can be used to download the programme pids from the catalogue.
Intellectual slavery - Dominic Cummings blog post
I've been meaning to read some of Dominic Cummings over detailed blog posts. Today I read the "call to arms" on about recruiting people to aid the decision making process.
https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/
It's full of technical name drop and hubris. I can see it creating quite a stifling intellectually fearful and constrained environment (probably the opposite of what he's thinking of).
I'm nowhere near ever reading any of those papers he continually cites - but it still provided a really hilarious read in some places.
It made me think of two things:
https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/
It's full of technical name drop and hubris. I can see it creating quite a stifling intellectually fearful and constrained environment (probably the opposite of what he's thinking of).
I'm nowhere near ever reading any of those papers he continually cites - but it still provided a really hilarious read in some places.
It made me think of two things:
- Who would want to work as an intellectual slave?
- Every Sir Humphrey is going to be working overtime to stop this guy!
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