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@ Le Web

by on 10 December, 2010 in Digital revolution, Neil's archive, Travel, Web/Tech

Off to Paris this week to tout WSJ Europe’s brilliant, extended technology coverage at the European tech scene’s biggest bunfight, Le Web .

Our new blog Tech Europe has been running for the last month under the guidance of new WSJ Europe tech editor Ben Rooney. Backing him up, I got to commit a few acts of journalism this week (whisper it) with some blog posts and even a little video.

Our team did a fantastic job of covering the event, including a live link with the Digits video show out of New York and coverage across print and web. Ben rounded up the event today, and you can also see all our Le Web blog coverage, or our European Technology page.

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Chick hits out at axis, sorry, *kicks* of evil

by on 29 October, 2008 in Current Affairs, Scotland, Sports, Travel, Uncategorized

The world may be absorbed by the revulsion at Brand and Ross’s vulgar telephone bullying of an old man.

But there is far more shocking news emerging from Scotland today, surrounding smooth-voiced Charles “Chick” Young (right), often rightly called the Barry White of Scottish sports reporting for his mellow broadcast reflection on matters both on and off the pitch and who, for a man of such fame, is well-known for the remarkable modesty with which he holds his many views.

Our hero had to be stretchered off the park during a Journalists vs MSPs football match on Sunday, following a red-blooded tackle from Labour’s John Park, which led to the MSP’s sending off before the game was entirely abandoned.

News of this shocking assault has only emerged today.

Red-faced MSP Ken Macintosh, who also played in the game, can be heard in the audio clip accompanying this story on BBC Radio Scotland about the match, expressing his regret and apologising to the Chick.

But it’s a measure of Chick’s legendary perspective that, even though the programme was clearly trying to play the whole episode in an ill-judged attempt at “laughs”, he found the courage to not accept that apology, and also brand the tackle as “evil, in my opinion”.

Talking to the Scottish Daily Record, Chick added: “John Park did me.  I’ve got six stud marks down my leg. I’m still limping.”

Chick told the Glasgow Evening Times: “They played like thugs. The treatment of us and the ref was scandalous.”

Chick added, to the Times: “One guy playing at the back for them was a nutcase of the first order and their language to the ref was scandalous. They totally lost the plot.”

And Chick pointed, in an interview with the Scotsman, to the clear political ramifications of the rammie, reminding his public: “What worries me most of all: these are the people who are in charge of running the country.”

The journalists had been losing 6-2 to the people in charge of running the country before scuffles broke out and the game was abandoned.

Adds that Times report: “One of Mr Park’s team-mates said that the journalists had over-reacted. ‘I don’t think there will be a return match.”

• My regular reader will recall Chick’s last appearance on this blog, when we brought you this classic YouTube footage of an ill-fated interview with Rangers manager Walter Smith. Warning – strong language on the other side of that link.

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On board the Qantas jet that popped a hole at 30,000 feet

by on 25 July, 2008 in Current Affairs, New Media, Travel

On the site today; dramatic video footage taken on a mobile phone from inside the Qantas jet that, at 30,000 feet, popped a hole. It’s occasions like this which, for me, really ram home why video on the site tells a completely different story to text.

The text story tells the story of a lucky escape, yes, but essentially it can only be a variation on: “Plane damaged. Everyone’s OK, lukily.” And you could say there’s nothing dramatic about the footage at all. Yes, the oxygen masks are all down. But the engines sound normal, there’s a little more chatter than normal but no screaming, and some people even still have their lunch in front of them. A stewardess, showing how really well trained and professional she is, appears to be smiling to a passenger.

But then you remember they’ve had the explosive decompression already, and the controlled plunge of 20,000 feet (this is a standard thing, as those earnest guys in the forums at the Professional Pilot’s Rumour Network will tell you). They’re not really sure what’s wrong with their plane, and most must have strong suspicions these are their last moments in this world. Maybe real, true horror isn’t like the movies at all – it can be quiet and orderly and just as horrific.

You only really see the tension as they come in to land – ground hurtling past through the window, some passengers have heads bowed and arms out-stretched to the seats in front, waiting for an impact that never comes. The plane just lands as normal, and after a while the cheery Aussie voice of the captain comes on to tell everyone all’s well, but they might have to wait a while while the fire crews take a look at the plane and decide if it’s fit to taxi to the terminal.

All so normal, and yet such a complete and utter nightmare. Little wonder some of them threw up after they got off the plane, while the captain who did such a good job was pictured looking quizzically at a four meter by two hole in the side of his aircraft.

It’s an amazing piece of footage, and it’s a marvel – ironically, as much of flying and engineering as anything – that the thing landed safely. I only hope they find out what went wrong, and quickly.

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Cheek by jowl

by on 30 January, 2008 in Sports, Swindon Town, Travel

photo.jpg

It’s rare you step out a football ground to be afforded a fine view of tonight’s dirty dishes in someone’s kitchen sink, but that’s what away fans at Kenilworth Road, Luton, get as they embark down a steep (and rather slippy) staircase.

This is the view out the back of the away end, behind one goal (pitch view here). The tiny, ramshackle ground must be one of the tightest fits in the Football League.

Terraced houses butt up against three of the four sides, as you can see in this Google overhead. The away stand is the one at the top of the ground in that view – if it looks impossible to even enter, it’s because you actually come through a living room-sized tunnel in the ground floor of that terrace of houses, under someone’s first floor.

Last night completed a personal double-header of tiny grounds – last week was Barnet‘s Underhill.

And yes, Swindon Town won 1-0, thanks, the first away win I’ve seen in three years. No penalties this week, which was a relief.

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In Croatia for a memorable win

by on 22 November, 2007 in Sports, Travel

The waitress at our hotel here in Dubrovnik was so distracted by the prospect of last night’s England v Croatia match she walked into a wall rather than through a nearby door while carrying our supper in. The collision sent food and crockery flying, minutes before kick-off, but she was fine, and it was understandable.

Any notions that Croatia, already qualified, wouldn’t be up for this final match were quickly set aside when we turned on the TV on Monday. Even without speaking a word of Croatian, I could still understand the universal language of footballing hype in the trailers for last night’s live coverage; fast-cut clips of Croatian players, wearing their familiar checkerboard red and white strip, scoring some of the goals – and making some of the tackles – which had propelled them to the top of their table.

There were, inevitably, shots of the infamous Robinson bobble from the last meeting of Croatia and England – which the Croats won 2-0. Then helicopter images of the imposing Wembley stadium, and a deep voiceover to tell this small nation it was going into the lion’s den, with an outside chance of putting a footballing superpower out the competition.

And then they did.

Continue Reading →

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Interesting Dulles

by on 12 October, 2007 in Travel

Washington Dulles’ mobile lounges

Washington Dulles’ famous mobile lounges. [Image shared under Creative Commons license by Kaptain Krispy Kreme]

Washington Dulles airport is, as it turns out, not dull at all. Opened by Kennedy in 1962, it’s a fine old cathedral to the golden age of air travel, built with an optimism that suggests its designers had greater aspirations than merely providing limitless shopping opportunities for thousands of sweating travellers stuck in interminable queues.

Of course, faced with modern security needs and passenger levels, it has all those queues, but at least it’s not got the mall strapped to the side. Instead, it’s got some elan, drawn from a time when air travel was glamorous and unusual. With its sweeping concrete terminal and retro-style signage, it feels like the only airport in the world where you could shoot the video for Yoshinori Sunahara’s Theme from Take Off (on iTunes – take a listen and you’ll know what I mean).

I have two favourite things about this airport. First, it wasn’t designed just to be an airport… it was also intended to be… a spaceport. Or, at least, as far as Wikipedia tells us – the giveaways are extra-long runways and terminal buildings in the middle of the airfield, it seems. That’s the kind of buccaneering mood they were in back in those days, you see; let’s build an airfield capable of dealing with a mode of transport not invented yet!

They were doing quite a lot of improvising, mind you. Because there weren’t even many airports intended for jet planes back then, they had to experiment with ideas for getting people from terminal to aircraft, and that meant they came up with my second favourite thing – mobile lounges, pictured above. A fleet of these huge trucks support lounges which travellers enter at concourse level in the terminal, after security. You sit down, and after a few minutes the whole shebang sets off across the tarmac.

These days they only go to another bit of the airport, not the air or space craft itself, and so infuriate anyone in a rush. But as you pass through it’s hard not to think it faintly remarkable they’ve lasted this long, complete with little decorative airplane-style fins on the roof. And you wonder if, given the surely inevitable energy crunch of the next few decades, future generations won’t look back on all airports as being of another age.

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BA’s crisis with crisis management

by on 6 July, 2007 in Travel

I quite like flying BA, mainly from my experiences on the Edinburgh to London shuttle which I used to take a lot. My opinion of them slipped, far, after an ill-fated journey to the US when the outbound plane was damaged on the tarmac at Gatwick, and the return flight was made on a scabby excuse of a charter plane, rather than the BA jet I’d expected. It was the worst flying experience i’ve ever had, and I thought a lot of it was down to BA’s poor handling of a situation which, initially, was not of their making.

Unfortunately, it seems they aren’t learning. Cecilia Weckstrom has another BA horror story – worse than mine, which saw her get to London more than 24 hours late… from the south of France. The aviation industry has its troubles, for sure; it seems bad crisis management is one of them.

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Appeal of the unfashionable Cotswolds

by on 23 June, 2007 in Travel

We once lived in Swindon, of course, which makes anywhere in the world that’s unfashionable – with the possible exception of Luton – look like Monaco.

But I do like the Cotswolds, just up the road from where we used to live, and was entertained to see fellow Scot Harry Ritchie defend them in today’s Guardian. He describes first seeing that landscape from the window of a childhood car…

“I had never seen anything like it. Not that Scotland doesn’t have scenery – of course it does, and lots of it. But Scotland doesn’t have much in the way of the lush, bucolic idyll that was passing gloriously by, beyond the car window which my nose was pressed against. Also, in the swathe of Scotland where most Scots live, the view tends to be disrupted – by open-cast mines, power stations, Glasgow …

So the Cotswolds came as a shock.”

This is, I’ll add, a little unfair on Glasgow, but a very accurate description of the Cotswolds’ appeal. It fits, also, for the lovely Forest of Dean, a little to the west.

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Video on the net

by on 16 March, 2007 in Travel

I see the weather’s closing in… so I’m off to California. San Francisco through the fog of jetlag on Sunday, Video on the Net the rest of the week in San Jose. Drop me a line if you’re around and fancy a pint of Anchor Steam.

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On holiday

by on 16 May, 2006 in Travel

If posting here could be any more sporadic, it will become so over the next week… I’m on holiday, as you’ll see on Flickr. I might be tempted to update more often if the Hilton’s broadband weren’t so breathtakingly expensive – 29 euros a day sets some kind of new record for me, although I’m sure someone’s paid more. And I am paying, so who’s the sucker?

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