On 20th Dec 2006 I officially moved into to my new house. Today, 22nd May 2007, a mere five months later, those nice people at Tiscali connected my broadband.
Some other time I will rant about this, about why it took a certain phone/internet provider so long to free up my phone line. But today I am just happy.
A couple of lunchtime thoughts led to an idea for a blog post:
Thought 1: “I enjoyed What About Brian? last night but it’s not turning out to be must-see TV which I thought it might. It’s kind of a soap with jokes.”
Thought 2: “Hmm, most TV is either soapy or procedural. Or a sitcom. Or a combination of the three.”
So, can most TV be categorised as either Soap, Sit-Com or Procedural?
But in terms of on-going series – hourly or half-hourly regular fictional programs, I think most hit my 3 or combination of the same. What do I mean by these three terms:
Sitcom: Primary purpose is to amuse, to make jokes. Value is obvious – everyone likes to laugh.
Procedural: Cop/lawyer/doctor/forensic shows are the obvious, but not only, examples. Problem(s) and/or Mystery(s) is defined, explained and resolved. Value is in the sense of closure.
Soap: On-going story lines using, and hopefully developing, the same characters. Value is that investment with story and characters is greater and so pay-offs can be bigger. Sense of attachment to characters, caring about their problems and triumphs, is greater IF characters are developed.
Soaps divide into real (or traditional) soaps and pseudo- soaps. The former tend to be plot-driven and the “churn” rate for both storylines and characters is so high that it tends to be unrealistic. A character that lasts any length of time in a real soap will have been through any number of relationships, breakups and dramatic life-events. So much that you hardly recognise who they are. Pseudo-soaps tend to have less episodes than real ones – they’re not on year round and have only one episode per week when they are. They can still be plot-driven but have the space to be character-driven because the “churn” is slower.
Seems to me that in the old days there was a strict divide between Sitcom and Procedural, and Soap. The former two had to reset at the end of every episode, which allowed for out of context, out of order viewing (popular with schedulers). However now most shows are mixtures. Desperate Housewives is basically a sitcom-ish, plot-driven pseudo-soap. Bones is procedural with on-going elements and character development.
It’s tempting to think our favourite shows aren’t so easily categorisable but I think they are. Buffy, for example, started out as a procedural – find and kill/stop the monster of the week – it grew into more plot-driven soap – season long story “arcs” – and always kept developing the characters. Of course there was always a strong strand of humour, and outright sitcom episodes in some cases.
I don’t know how profound all this is. Like many before me I’ve probably just created a classification system and squeezed everything I can think of into it, without really explaining anything.
Anyway that’s what I was thinking about at lunchtime.
I successfully sold my ebay items, got positive feedback and came out about £70 ahead after expenses. Result! However I’m not sure I’m about to start an ebay business just yet. There are a few items about the house that I’ve been eyeing up but… Honestly the thing you realise pretty quickly is that it’s time consuming. In terms of a time spent versus reward situation you want to sell a few high price items ideally.
Which is only 1 but should’ve been 2. MythTV crashed again – which is becoming annoying. Fixing the underlying problem might not be possible until I get my broadband connection but the crashes are identifiable so I’ve set up a scheduled job that checks for them and reboots if necessary. Not elegant but should stop me losing recordings.
Still considering how to make the blog more readable. Would probably mean sticking to one topic which I’m slightly loathed to do. Being brief would be better though.
Anyway – that’s my “catch-ups”, now I feel free to post a new though.
Douglas Adams, in one of his Dirk Gently books, describing what an ‘electric monk’ does[1], mentions in passing that VCRs are “machines that watch TV programs so that you don’t have to” (paraphrase). As usual with Adams underneath the joke is a point well worth thinking about.
For example, in 1993, I owned a TV but that was all. OK not all, I owned shirts and pants and CDs and probably a few other nick-nacks. But as far as TV was concerned that was all. If I wanted to watch something I had to be there in front of the TV at the time it was shown.
In 1994, as well as my quota of nick-nacks and underwear, I bought a new TV and a VCR. Now I could record things when I was out. I was no longer tied to TV schedules. I needed to remember to set the video of course, which was often a faff. I also needed to make time to watch what I’d recorded – which proved a bigger challenge. Thus the madness began.
By 2006 I owned a VCR, a DVD recorder, a PC with a TV card and recording software and a PVR. I had the means and the capacity to record far more TV than I could ever watch. It was now possible to record 2 or even 3 programs and watch a 3rd (4th). The logistics of planning such viewing are however beyond challenging (e.g. record BBC1 9-9:30 on the VCR and BBC2 9-11:30 on the PVR for the film and then record Channel 10-12 for the other film…) The madness had grown.
Now, May 2007, I have a fully-functional[2] MythTV box. I no longer am tied to the schedules at all. The challenge has receded because finding and recording programs is as easy as browsing a guide (or even saying “record every Kevin Costner movie”)[3]. However this very ease of use creates its own issues. It’s so easy to record that why not record nearly everything that’s vaguely interesting? The madness has been curtailed with one hand and extended with the other.
I’m saying all this because last night, after only a few weeks (a month? more?) my MythTV hard drive is almost full. A lot of it is crap that sounded worth a look. A fair bit is stuff I’ve watched but not deleted. MythTV has an auto-expire function. You set a recording to auto-expire and when the drive is getting full it can be deleted. If there’s nothing that can be deleted eventually it’ll refuse to record new stuff – it won’t have the space to. Part of me thinks if I use this system properly I’ll be ok. I’ll keep the madness at bay.
“Properly” would be as follows:
Which should mean MythTV mostly manages its own space and everything is ok. At present for example about half the space is auto-expirable.
It makes a lot of sense. It’s all very plausible. But am I kidding myself? See the “madness”, what I’ve learnt from 1994 onwards about deferring watching of TV, is this: being able to record TV is simply a form of procrastination. If you don’t watch it soon after it’s recorded chances are you never will. “I can watch it any time” very often means “I will watch it at no time”.
For example, I mentioned some time ago that I was watching the reruns of Dawson’s Creek. I was using my PVR to do this. They were (are) showing them every week-day. I got behind and I now have a backlog of around 50 (some on my PVR which is now permanently “full” the rest on my Myth box). I’m actually looking forward to the end of the currently showing 6th season as that will be the end of the recordings. But will I ever watch them all?
Hence the honesty. Honesty with one’s self that is. How much of this stuff will I really watch? This is similar to the dilemma I faced with a music program I used to use called iRate radio The principle is simple – scattered across the web there’s loads of free and perfectly legal downloadable free music (demo tracks from unsigned bands mostly). Most of this is from bands you’ve never heard of. What you do is download the “player” which downloads and plays 6 starter tracks. You rate (hence I-rate – it’s not about anger) the tracks as they play. Your ratings are fed back into the iRate database and matched against users with similar ratings. Based on this you get fed new tracks (the iRate site doesn’t have the music it just keeps a record of where they can be downloaded.) – you rate those and so on… Over time the system should become more and more in tune with what you like and give you music you enjoy.
However for me it seemed this process took too long. Firstly this is because the player plays the same tracks over and over as it downloads new ones. Even with broadband I found I was listening to a few good tracks over and over and a lot of mediocre ones. It seemed slow to learn my preferences. I searched the iRate forums and found others had had a similar problem. The answer given by the software’s author was a little surprising:
The software works, people aren’t honest enough about their preferences.
“Do I really like this song or am I giving it a highish rating because it’s of a genre I like and I hope by doing so iRate will give me more songs of that genre (but better)?”
He suggested to be brutally honest and don’t try to fool the system.
To be honest I never stuck with it long enough to see if that worked but either way it made me think, and it makes me think about MythTV and auto-expiry too. How much of this crap will I really watch?
Well this post is not so much with the pithyness, let’s hope someone finds it entertaining.
footnotes:
[1]which was to believe things for us so we don’t have to and thus allow us to hold several contradictory positions at the same time. A vital ability in modern life.
[2]well ok there are glitches and it needs rebooting quite often but it basically does what it’s supposed to. Enough to be useable. Enough to prompt the kind of issues this post is about.
[3]I have no idea why anyone would want to do this either[7] but Costner was the first name that popped into my head OK?
[4]”crap” is my term for anything that I’ll watch but which has little real value. Often sensationalist, one-dimensional or of tangential interest. I’m happy to admit I watch crap.
[5]”disposable” would be stuff like Friends, Frasier etc. Stuff that’s nearly always enjoyable when it’s on but that you’re not going to miss not seeing and which is almost certainly going to be re-run.
[6]Which currently means writing the files to a data disk. MythTV has an archiving feature that produces playable DVDs but I’ve not got it working yet.
[7]I quite like Tin Cup and Field of Dreams is good but once is enough for Dances With Wolves and never is enough for Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves[8]
[8]I always tell it like this – I was unemployed (briefly) when that movie came out and thus qualified for a cheap afternoon rate of £1 instead of the £4ish that was the full price at the time. So I went along. It had Alan Rickman and one good joke[9] It had impossible but amusing geography[10]. Still, I came out thinking I wanted my pound back.
[9] Rickman’s Sherriff to a serving wench: “You my room 10:30”, to the next wench “You 10:45” (pause) “and bring a friend.”
[10]From the White Cliffs of Dover to Sherwood Forest via Hadrian’s Wall in an afternoon on foot.
So after being registered for ages (years I think) I finally listed some items for sale on ebay. Whenever I’ve thought about doing this in the past I’ve been a bit nervous about the process and a bit scornful of the amount of money I could make versus effort. Buying a house and the consequent purse-string-tightening has given me a new perspective on the money angle!
Basically I’ve just listed items that I got with my Dell PC that I don’t need – mouse, speakers and that graphics card. One identical to mine sold for £68 yesterday and there are ebay shops selling them for £65. Neither of which I might add include both a dual DVI and dual VGA converter which I am doing. Having said that it’s an auction and you never know. I’ll be happy with anything I get (or I would have made the lowest bid higher)
(except for M.)
One of the blogs I follow had this this morning:
But here’s my advice, too: a blog is like a TV show. It needs a hook to get people to read it. It needs to create a compelling, attractive world (in TV terms, an “attractive fantasy”). And it needs consistency.
Got me thinking about my blog. It hasn’t got a ‘hook’ really and it’s not consistent. You’re as liable to read about very techie computer stuff, person faith type stuff or just random wibblings about my life as anything else. I suppose the truth is that I mainly write for myself – to get it out of my system, to express myself and as memories to look back on. (At least some of the techy stuff has come in useful later when I’ve needed to do the same thing again and didn’t need to start from scratch again.)
I guess my writing per se is not entertaining enough for people to be interested in absolutely anything I say. Unless they’re close friends like M.
My other big blogging sin is I ramble on at too great a length.
So – short pithy, witty posts, consistently about one topic – with a hook? Hmm. Have to mull that one over a while.