Various events being held all over the world to mark the 200th anniversary of his birth.

Inadvertently, I've already marked it by listening to a chapter of David Copperfield read by Martin Jarvis. It's only when I got into work that I realised that today was the day.

Chas and Cam will be attending memorial events in various London venues. They even get a private reading given by Gillian Anderson.

Both have albums out within a few days of each other.

Both records loaded with covers and novelties

Why didn’t they get together and save us all some bother?

I suspect a combined Ringo and Paul album would have some mileage in the supermarkets and similar outlets.

I've seen a few of the nominated films and I will try to get to a few more. So far my pick of the bunch has to be "Hugo". I enjoyed "The Artist" but I wouldn't have it as best film.

I vote Hugo. What say you?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16700124

On the evidence of last night, I think they were right. Do you?

Not bad at all I thought. I had no idea about the story and I knew nothing about any of the characters and so can't comment on how true to Dickens' original idea it was.

All I knew was that the book was left unfinished.

Wikipedia suggests several sources from which multiple endings have been adapted and written over the years.

It seems that people have been having fun with the plot ever since Dickens passed on.

Worth catching on iPlayer if you missed it.

Klingon

Benedict Cumberbatch joins Star Trek cast

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-16423899

Finally got around to seeing the National Theatre production of War Horse last night. I had to book months in advance for the recommended front seats.

Everything you’ve ever heard about this production is probably true. The puppetry (or animatronics!) is stunning and a special bonus for Word readers is that the legendary folk artist Bob Fox has the role of singer / narrator.

Highly recommended.
Anyone seen it?

Nothing I watch on TV over Christmas will give me a greater lift than this exchange between Chris Kamara and Geoff Shreeves.

What possible chance could there ever be to resolve our differences over the Euro when we steadfastly refuse to budge on the imperial measurement system?

Will you ever go into a pub and ask for a beer rather than a pint? When filling your car with fuel, despite being surrounded by litres, do you ever think in terms other than how many miles per gallon you are going to get out of it?

This rather entertaining article from the beeb web site examines the British reluctance to join our European cousins.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16245391

So what are our chances? Will we ever shift?

(One thing I learned from this link is that our imperial measurement system is slightly different to the American one.)

So how did people get on? I ignored my own advice of waiting for it to settle down for a week before diving in on Saturday morning.

Once it took the money, it kicked itself into action. Eight hours later it was still on stage 2 of 3. I began to wonder if it was working or not.

I use apple TV at home and so I logged onto that to see if anything had happened. Sure enough, the iCloud tab gave me a link to my music collection. Some of the tracks were greyed out, which were tracks it either couldn't find, tracks that it thought were duplicates or tracks that it simply hadn’t got around to yet.

My Mac was still chugging away in the front room and I left it on overnight to continue to do whatever it was doing. Next morning, it was still chugging away on step 2 of 3 so I decided to interrupt with a reboot just in case. I think it had actually completed the process but the Mac was enjoying it so much it forgot to move on.

So I now have something like 13,000 tracks available to me in the cloud. So, what is the point?

Well since then, I’ve spent a bit of time getting to grips with it and enabling it on my iPhone. This is a plus point, especially if you have an iPhone or iTouch with limited disk space. I can now see my entire music library via my iPhone and can call up any tracks, playlists or albums that I want by touching the screen in an appropriate manor. This will then sync or download these tracks to the iPhone for immediate listening. I can then either leave them on the phone or a simple swipe will remove them.

I was reluctant to work in this way at first, but I’ve played with it and it seems to work fine. It would be useful for households who have multiple apple devices (with limited disk space) who can share the central resource. A note of caution would be to ensure that any syncing / downloading is done whilst in WiFi range. Downloading a playlist for example could wipe out a 3G data plan allowance during a commute. I think I’m noticing a slight delay in switching between tracks, but it’s nothing too troubling.

As for my library, the reality of matching my music has thrown up a few initial observations. Even though I have hardly any un legitimate content in my library I was expecting more benefit from the amnesty. I was expecting for example that any Vinyl that I have transferred to mp3 would somehow be magically transformed into high quality copies from the iTunes library. I don’t believe this has happened as it seems to match tracks using meta data information hidden within the tracks to identify potential matches. As self-created mp3’s don’t have the same standards, all that happened is that the files got uploaded to ICloud as they were.

Also, I was expecting any iTunes purchases that I made some years ago in the 128 bit formats to be replaced with the near CD quality of iTunes Plus. This hasn’t happened. It’s simply recognised that they were iTunes purchases and then left them as they were.

So all in all, for £21 per year I now have an offsite backup of my music library, the ability to access that library wirelessly via multiple devices and the ability to stream that library via apple TV into my main music system in the lounge. Not a bad result for the money.

How did you get on?

I’ve got a ton of music on my ITunes collection that is nicely organised when viewing ITunes on the computer. However when I look for an album on Apple TV it interprets albums with tracks by multiple artists as separate albums.

So a record with 20 different artists creates 20 albums. I’ve never quite grasped the compilation concept on ITunes as it tends to separate these from the rest of the material.

What am I doing wrong?

There’s often talk in these parts of your first ever gig, but can you remember the first football match that you ever went to see? (IE one that involved a turnstile.)

Interestingly, people at work are struggling with this one. I suspect word readers will have no such problem recalling the milestone.

Mine was

The Geoff Hurst Testimonial at Upton Park on 23rd November 1971. It was West ham V a European XI featuring Eusebio.

This was closely followed by my first visit to the hallowed turf of Dagenham FC for a quarter final match in the FA Amateur Cup. Dagenham V Whitley Bay on 23rd Nov 1971.

I appreciate that this could get me marched off the premises with all previous honours removed.

It was only when I heard the recent podcast that I realised that Jackie Leaven is not, and never has been the Jewish comedian (who I now know to be Jackie Mason).

I spent at least three days last week believing that Mr Mason was no longer with us.

Are there any identity mix ups that you are willing to admit to?

Heard it through about three times now. I feel terribly disloyal, but I’m just not getting it. (It comes out on Monday and I’m really not getting it).

It’s getting great reviews, so there is clearly something I’m not appreciating here.

Perhaps it’s about context. Maybe if I was stood on top of a hill, with snowflakes starting to fall amid the remnants of Autumn leaves, I’d feel differently.

Unfortunately I’m not and as a general rule, I don’t.

I still wish she was running up that hill though.

The Guardian today suggests Downton Abbey is at the top of the list with D list celebs currently messing about in the Jungle high up there too.

I’d add Coldplay at the Emirates Stadium as being the major ticket event currently on offer.

So what is the new boring? And come to think of it, what was the old boring?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/2011/nov/17/downton-abbey-kirstie-new-...