Ewan Spence

Best of luck to Baratunde

Tue, 29 May 2012 22:19:21 +0100

“I’d been at The Onion for four and a half years, and had just written a book which covered contentious issues with a lighter hand,” Mr. Thurston told us. “Timing wise, it made sense–everything just coincided. I was out of the office a lot, and the company was moving to Chicago, which isn’t really an option for me. Chicago is a great city–especially in the summer, maybe only in the summer–but four and a half years is a lot of time at one company, and everything just lined up.”

Life after Onion, Betabeat

Whatever happens next, he’ll still be a man from Brooklyn with a shovel to me.

"Eurovision: Beyond the Sequins" almost tops the Amazon Kindle music charts!

Fri, 25 May 2012 21:48:50 +0100

ESC Insight’s Ewan Spence is sitting nicely behind “Queen: The Illustrated Lyrics” in the Amazon Kindle charts with his book “Eurovision: Beyond the Sequins”. Pick up your copy before the show starts at Saturday 9pm CET!

Running from the end of Dusseldorf 2011 with the victory of ‘Running Scared’ to the start of Baku 2012, ‘Eurovision: Beyond the Sequins’ looks in-depth at Europe’s favourite TV Show, as well as following Ewan Spence’s travels across Europe to visit the National Finals of Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland, as well as the preview parties across the continent.

Ewan Spence looks beyond the sequins, pyrotechnics and key changes to explore what Eurovision really means, from the finer details of the contest to the myth of political voting. This book examines whether the best song ever wins, the media perception of the contest and the ability of this mad, wonderful institution to represent Europe and the people of the continent

Eurovision is more than three hours on a Saturday night in May. It’s something that lives and breathes throughout the year. But what happens between the end of one contest and the start of the next? In those fifty weeks before rehearsals start once more, the Song Contest doesn’t stop. It doesn’t die. It’s still a huge sprawling exploration of culture, music, people, and politics.

The Guardian have published my latest book through their Guardian Shorts brand. If you head over toÂ Amazon, youâll be able toÂ pick up your Kindle copyÂ (Amazon US also carries the book, and iBooks will have it up shortly as well).

Iâd love to hear your comments on the book â thereâs about one week to the Eurovision Final (May 26th), so thereâs not a huge amount of time to promote the book while the Contest is still in the public conscious, so feel free to tweet, message, or write up a post on the book. And if youâd like to review it,Â get in touch!

"Eurovision, Beyond The Sequins" now in iBooks

Wed, 23 May 2012 21:44:50 +0100

A quick heads up that my Guardian Short book, “Eurovision, Beyond the Sequins” is now available in iBooks for your iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches.

First review is up on Amazon as well:

If you want to jumpstart your ESC week with something more than just the usual Abba revival shows, buy this.

The Eurovision Song Contest is one of the very few true European experiences and tools like twitter and facebook have put it on a whole new level. In my childhood I learned to count in english and french through it, today a week ahead of the big night I am looking forward to watching the event online and the hashtag for #esc at the same time.

Although coming from a citizen of the UK ;) Ewan’s book provides a very European look at this event and how it plays out over the year. Given that most people know all the basics of the event, there is no need to introduce it here except for those typical questions of the political voting. I especially like the insights into the different countries how they chose their entries - I never realized f.e. how big the festival in sweden is.

There is a lot of love involved for the ESC and the book is set up in nice little chunks, making it a perfect “read a chapter a day to prepare” for the final. Now if you excuse me, I need to find out where to watch the semifinals …

It’s still on Amazon, obviously.

How Flickr Died

Sun, 20 May 2012 12:14:53 +0100

Today, it all seems too late. The iPhone is the most popular camera on Flickr, but the feeling isn’t mutual. Flickr isn’t even among the top 50 free photography apps in iTunes. It’s just below an Instagram clone in 64th place. By way of comparison, an app that adds cats with laser eyes to your photos is 23rd. If you can’t beat laser cat, you probably deserve to die.

And even more head meets desk moments from Gizmodo.

'Eurovision: Beyond the Sequins', my new eBook with The Guardian

Fri, 18 May 2012 13:37:04 +0100

As you know the majority of my Eurovision work is no longer on this blog, but based at ESC Insight (www.escinsight.com) and SBS Eurovision Radio in Australia, but this is one that I’m really proud of.

The Guardian have published my latest book through their Guardian Shorts brand. If you head over to Amazon, you’ll be able to pick up your Kindle copy (Amazon US also carries the book, and iBooks will have it up shortly as well).

Eurovision: Beyond the Sequins.

Ewan Spence looks beyond the sequins, pyrotechnics and key changes to explore what Eurovision really means, from the finer details of the contest to the myth of political voting. This book examines whether the best song ever wins, the media perception of the contest and the ability of this mad, wonderful institution to represent Europe and the people of the continent.

Eurovision is more than three hours on a Saturday night in May. It’s something that lives and breathes throughout the year. But what happens between the end of one contest and the start of the next? In those fifty weeks before rehearsals start once more, the Song Contest doesn’t stop. It doesn’t die. It’s still a huge sprawling exploration of culture, music, people, and politics.

I’d love to hear your comments on the book - there’s about one week to the Eurovision Final (May 26th), so there’s not a huge amount of time to promote the book while the Contest is still in the public conscious, so feel free to tweet, message, or write up a post on the book. And if you’d like to review it, get in touch!

What to do when you need pageviews? Cut-price MacBook rumour!

Mon, 07 May 2012 22:18:17 +0100

MacBook for $800 new in Q3? Looks like Digitimes needed to boost their page views!

Risking Windows Phone on a Horse was a smart idea, Microsoft

Mon, 07 May 2012 10:35:35 +0100

Go Hansen! Go you silver-legged son of a bitch! There he was! Getting ready to pull it out and show the odds-on favorites what he was made of! Except he didn’t. Hell, he didn’t even show. It turned out he was made out of lose. Metaphors. They are cruel.

Giz.

An apology over the Samsung Galaxy S III

Fri, 04 May 2012 15:41:17 +0100

Last night, after several months of rumors and speculation, Samsung finally announced their 2012 flagship smartphone, the Galaxy S III. It’s a device that I’ve been telling everyone to wait for, telling everyone that it’s going to be the best Android handset to come out this year, telling everyone that buying any other smartphone would be a huge mistake. Now that the Galaxy S III is official, I have to admit that I was wrong, and I’m deeply sorry.

Stefan Constantinescu.

Woah, there's a Fighting Fantasy documentary?

Wed, 02 May 2012 14:15:15 +0100

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEvH12X95hE

If you’d like to see this film as much as I do, turn to 68.

If you’d rather die, turn to 14.

Remembering Roland

Tue, 01 May 2012 11:18:47 +0100

Many years ago, Jim Hughes and I had a Formula 1 blog called Fun-1. The goal then was to try and be sarcastic, bitchy, and portray a sport that was almost, not quite unlike, Formula 1. We had a lot of fun with it, but as F1 became more soap opera, it started to read a little bit too much like real news.

But one of Jim’s posts always stuck with me, and with all the tweets popping up today (May 1st), I wanted to revisit that post. One hunt through backups and archives later, and it gets a re-post here:

Today is the tenth anniversary of Ayrton Senna’s death at Imola. So what has happened in Formula 1? Are the cars safer, slower, is the driving cleaner? Yes, No and definitely not - Michael’s outrageous punting off of JPM at Imola is graphic evidence of how low F1 driver standards have sunk in the past decade.

I watched both accidents at Imola ten years ago (I also watched Berger’s accident at Tamburello a few years previously), Ayrton’s didn’t affect me. Maybe I was still in shock, but I never liked the guy. Sure he was exquisitely fast, but his general attitude to racing - if in doubt punt your rivals off - was abhorrent to me, imagine your grief if Michael was killed today? Rightly or wrongly that’s pretty much how I felt about Ayrton.

Roland Ratzenberger was a different matter; he was one of the good guys. I’d seen him race at Le Mans a few times, and he was no muppet paying for a seat. I believe he was Toyota’s first non-Japanese works driver, which in those days said a lot, even if Toyota’s current approach to employing drivers is somewhat surreal. Just wanting Schumi lite never mind being willing to pay him millions is rather odd…

Watching a driver (or any human being) being given heart massage on live television is not an everyday sight, and it’s not one I want to see again. But that’s what I saw after Roland’s accident and it was very moving and disturbing. Later in 1994 I went to Le Mans and one of the SARD Toyotas had four drivers’ names painted next to the door, but only three drivers at the circuit; Eddie Irvine, Jeff Krosnoff and Mauro Martini. This is the car that Roland was supposed to have been driving.

90 minutes from the end of the race it was leading, when it slowed and stopped just past me on the pit straight with a broken gear linkage. Krosnoff got out of the car, went around the back and manually selected third gear. He then set off on a slow lap of the 9 mile circuit before pitting for the linkage to be replaced. The car lost 13 minutes and dropped back to third place, 15 seconds behind the second placed car. Irvine cut this lead at a rate of three seconds per lap, and I’ve never seen so many people willing a car to go faster. Irvine took second place on the penultimate lap, but the lead car was a lap ahead, and “Roland’s” team had to settle for second place.

Roland, Ayrton, rest in peace.

Billionaire says something that isn't seaworthy about Titanic

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:03:47 +0100

Of course it wouldn’t be news if you said you were going to build a fourth ‘Olympic’ class vessel, if you were going to mention it’s a rebuild of the Brittanic (sunk by a mine in 1916), or the Olympic (retired in 1935 after 24 years of service). Far better to say it’s a rebuild of the Titanic, call it Titanic 2, and then invite 1000 of the word’s most famous celebrities aboard for the maiden voyage.

What could possibly go wrong?

Pedantry and Gay Marriage

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:13:03 +0100

I believe I have found a knock-down argument for marriage equality: there is no decent verb for “civil partnership”. #Pedants4EqualMarriage

Tom Morris

Nokia and Symbian's biggest issue in one simple quote

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:57:14 +0100

Lee Williams via CNet.

When I was at Nokia and we shipped a Symbian product and it was bad, in its worst incarnation we knew that if we just flipped the switch, we could move 2.5 to three million units — overnight, no matter how bad the product. That was Nokia. That was Nokia’s brand, we knew we could count on that.

The problem is you can only pull that trick once before the networks see the customer feedback. 24 months later, all those customers looking to buy another smartphone on contract… didn’t buy a Nokia.

Deja Vu for Friendfeed fans as Facebook buys Instagram

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 22:47:51 +0100

Bret Taylor on Friendfeed’s blog.

We are happy to announce that Facebook has acquired FriendFeed. As my mom explained to me, when two companies love each other very much, they form a structured investment vehicle…

The FriendFeed team is extremely excited to become a part of the talented Facebook team. We’ve always been great admirers of Facebook, and our companies share a common vision. Now we have the opportunity to bring many of the innovations we’ve developed at FriendFeed to Facebook’s 250 million users around the world and to work alongside Facebook’s passionate engineers to create even more ways for you to easily share with your friends online.

FriendFeed.com will continue to operate normally. We’re still figuring out our longer-term plans for the product with the Facebook team.

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

A little bit of Easter Rock and Roll

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 11:13:36 +0100

The latest Rock Show podcast is up, available to listen here, or over at The Podcast Corner.

[audio:http://archive.org/download/TPCRock_Friday223-1/tpn_rock_friday_20120406_223.mp3]
MP3 File - Show Notes - RSS Feed

WithÂ Blondfire,Â Emma Louise,Â Cosmo Jarvis,Â Boy, andÂ Gemma Ray.

Judging this year's Eurovision Songs on the Juke Box Jury

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 21:03:23 +0100

As in previous years, the majority of my thoughts about The Eurovision Song Contest will be found on ESC Insight (www.escinsight.com). Rather than daily news about the Contest, an area well served by many sights, ESC Insight looks at some of the issues in more depth - think of it like a Sunday newspaper compared to the daily news of sites such asÂ ESCxtra.

Alongside the articles from myself, a core writing team of three others, and a number of regularÂ contributors, it’s also the home of my Unofficial Eurovision Song Contest Podcast. There’s enough Eurovision news throughout the year for a weekly news podcast, but as the Contest gets ever neared (May 26th) and the countries all declare their songs for Europe, the ESC Insight team sit down to judge every single song on the podcast, in a series of “Juke Box Jury” shows.

A simple format (we listen to each song, five per episode) and rate them Hit, Miss, or Maybe. After some lively discussion. Two episodes have already been posted, with the rest to follow one a week each Friday till Eurovision starts.

[audio:http://archive.org/download/UnofficialEurovisionSongContestPodcast141_JBJ2012_2/escinsight_20120330_141_JBJ2012_2.mp3]
Episode 1:Â Â Albania, Finland, Moldova, The Netherlands, and Turkey.

[audio:http://archive.org/download/UnofficialEurovisionSongContestPodcast139_JBJ2012_1/escinsight_20120323_139_JBJ2012_1.mp3]
Episode 2: Macedonia, Hungary, Latvia, Iceland, and Slovenia.

Donât miss an episode of this yearâs Juke Box Jury (or any of The Unofficial Eurovision Podcast episodes), subscribe to theÂ RSS feedÂ dedicated to the podcasts. iTunes users canÂ find us in the iTunes Store and get the show automatically downloaded to your computer.

#BlameVikkisCancer Update

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 16:43:21 +0100

Well, after being seen 75 minutes late for my appointment, the news is mixed. I don’t yet have a treatment plan as I need a further test (PET scan, some kind of radioactive thing, but I won’t get superpowers). There’s no further visible tumour at the initial site, and my lungs are clear, but my lymph nodes are enlarged which indicates a “not likely but possible” chance the cancer has already spread. This test will ascertain that, so in about a month I should know whether I’m having chemoradiation (mostly radiotherapy with a low dose of chemo thrown in) or systemic chemotherapy with a bit of radiotherapy (that’s the full-on serious one where I’d lose my hair and get really sick). Sigh.

From Vikki, via Facebook. Any comments on big blue rather than here, please?

Charlie Brooker gets it...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:04:58 +0100

The Guardian

So it turns out the birth of your first child is perhaps the most emotionally charged experience you’ll ever have. I even put down the new Angry Birds game for 10 minutes so I could concentrate fully, and that’s set in space.

The first 'Post-SXSW' Rock Show

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 14:50:09 +0100

One of the great things about going to SXSW Music, is coming back with a huge stack of new music to listen to, appreciate, and get out to listeners of The Rock Show. Missed the cross-posting of this on Friday, but here’s the first show after Austin.

[audio:http://archive.org/download/TPCRock_Friday222/tpn_rock_friday_20120323_220.mp3]
MP3 File - Show Notes - RSS Feed

Marlene Dietrich on "a nice cup of tea"

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 10:25:33 +0100

The British have an umbilical cord which has never been cut and through which tea flows constantly. It is curious to watch them in times of sudden horror, tragedy or disaster. The pulse stops apparently and nothing can be done, and no move made, until “a nice cup of tea” is quickly made. There is no question that it brings solace and does steady the mind. What a pity all countries are not so tea-conscious. World-peace conferences would run more smoothly if “a nice cup of tea”, or indeed, a samovar were available at the proper time.

Well, the internet says it is her, and even if it’s not, it rings true.