Shelf life

For a while the appeal of box sets of tv shows escaped me entirely. My attitude was that it was only worth buying something if you were confident that you’d get your money’s worth by watching it several times over, exploring all the special features, and so forth. Even then, I found it hard to [...]

Theme tune

While suffering through the blaring emptiness of the Torchwood theme tune the other day (my wife watches it, while I find something more fun to do, like scrubbing the inside of the oven), and mentally comparing it to the haunting majesty of the Doctor Who theme tune, I started wondering - when did programme makers forget [...]

I know what I like

An article I found this morning via Utne (which also reminded me of something posted a while back at Smattery) got me thinking about my comfort zone. I try to vary my media diet as much as possible, yet I still easily slip into a routine of checking only certain sites, reading only certain magazines, lurking [...]

Slow news day

One of the advantages of living in Brussels is that the cable TV suppliers provide you with a range of channels from all across Europe (and beyond). This can be especially revealing when it comes to news and current affairs, as you can see the same major stories covered (or not) in different ways by [...]

Il paziente inglese

Ho cominciato ad imparare l’italiano nel 1999, qualche mese dopo aver incontrato Paola. In totale ho seguito quattro corsi diversi – uno a Londra, due a Dublino, dove abitavamo nel 2000, ed uno a bruxelles. Nel 2001 ho passato 9 mesi a Genova, ma li non ho studiato. Communque mi sembra che era in quel [...]

"From the people who brought you…"

While bookshopping recently in Italy, I was struck once again by the idiocy of their system of arranging books by publisher, rather than just by author or even genre. How often have you gone to buy a book and known in advance who the publisher is? Or if you’re just browsing, wouldn’t you like to [...]