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TV Comedy

Dear Sir,

I was on the Argos website the other day, and noticed a startling similarity between the new Argos logo, and the Complico logo from The Peter Serafinowicz Show.

New Argos logo

Complico

Complico Logo

Argos


Could they by any chance be related?

Yours,
John Hoare

P.S. God, it’s shit.

(With apologies to @divaschematic.)

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The Young Ones: Building the Fourth Wall

TV Comedy

MIKE: This calls for a celebration. Vyv, throw another record player on the fire.
VYVYAN: Oh, certainly, Michael.
RICK: You bastard! That’s my record player!
MIKE: [to Vyv] You said it was your record player.
VYVYAN: No, I didn’t, Mike. I said “Let’s throw Rick’s record player on the fire, that’ll be good for a laugh.”
MIKE: Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it is yours, Rick.

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Amplify: Brand “Thinking”

Internet

As some of you may know, I used to write for a site called Noise to Signal. It covered everything, really – telly, films, gaming, you name it – hopefully with at least a vague modicum of intelligence.

Yesterday, I received the following little email. Because I’m nice, the name is redacted – but company is very much not.

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Hi-Dee T.V.

Other TV

Fancy a scan from Which Video, July 1983, on high-definition telly? Shut up whining at the back there, I’m going to post it anyway. Clickity-click to get a larger version:

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Moderation For ‘Em

Internet

Of all the things that I like to pretend I’m knowledgeable about, there is at least one thing I can claim I have direct experience of – forum moderation. I’ve been dealing with occasionally hair-rasing moderation on NOTBBC since 2003, and moderating Ganymede & Titan’s forum since 2007. (There’s also been a fair amount of comment moderation, but that can be a slightly different art, depending on the site – when comments are attached to an article, I think it’s reasonable to have a slightly firmer hand.)

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What is the vilest piece of emotional blackmail on the Internet?

Internet

I have no idea, but this must come close.

Recently I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. Not because of worries over privacy – although maybe I should be more worried about that – but due to the weird joint problem of using it too much, and not enough. Too much, as in spending every waking hour when I should be working playing Scrabble… and not enough, in that I did precisely nothing else with it.

So, I decide to deactivate my account. (You should, of course, be able to directly delete it without waiting, but that’s a rant for another day – and I probably would have chosen a simple deactivation this time round anyway.) And what greets me?

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Cartoon Network UK in 2003

Children's TV

I’d hoped to make this video rather longer, but today I have learnt one important thing: it’s hard to scrape images off a dodgy VHS without a Time Base Corrector. Nonetheless, it gives a good idea of the kind of presentation Cartoon Network had back in 2003. (It’s very easy to date a video when there are 10th anniversary trails on there…)

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Happy New Year. HAPPY NEW YEAR.

Meta

Hey. I’m John. This is my new hangout, innit. If you know me from my writing on Ganymede & Titan or Noise to Signal, then hello. If you don’t, then you may be in for a nasty surprise.

Got a few plans for this place, but I’ll fill you in as we go along. Let’s get started, shall we?

Oh, and if anybody wants to complain about me using -ize instead of -ise, then I point you towards the Oxford English Dictionary. It’s definitely not because I rather pathetically think -ize looks cooler and more technological. No.