Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

BH

BBC 2
Originally uploaded by Mike Knell.

I'd forgotten exactly how striking Broadcasting House is in person, as it had been a while since I'd seen it by daylight until I happened to walk past today. 1930s architecture at its very finest and most elegant, a giant ship of a building sailing down Portland Place in a manner which reminds me of the Crimson Permanent Assurance. Eric Gill's fantastic sculptures make it one of those rare things - a building that's equally as interesting to look at close up as it is from a distance.

Inside, with the exception of the reception area (currently closed during the building works, but I hope it reopens) the building is, in my opinion, a bit of a mess after 70 years of alteration and remodelling to suit the changing needs of the BBC. But outside, it's a treat. A creation of the days when broadcasting was still a young ambitious medium, when the wireless was all and television was only the subject of Baird's vague and fuzzy demonstrations, and the mystery and magic of the new medium had yet to change into the utilitarian ubiquity that characterises the radio of today. With the possible exception of Television Centre, no broadcasting building has yet defined the characteristics of the medium it was built to serve so well.

Radio 4 UK Theme

I was.. well, surprised to hear that the controller of Radio 4 has deemed Fritz Spiegl's gosh-it's-early-in-the-morning Radio 4 UK Theme to be a historical anachronism and that what people want at 0530 is, in fact, more news. So I emailed the Today programme about it..

(note - there's more here in an earlier post.)

Hi,

I'm sure you're sick of listeners emailing you about the Radio 4 UK Theme, but I was surprised on hearing your piece on the subject to hear no mention of the wider historical use of similar medleys both within broadcasting in general and in the BBC.

The spiritual predecessor of Spiegl's theme was the "Fantasia on National Airs", universally known as "Nat. Airs", arranged by Jack Byfield and used as a startup theme by the BBC Television Service from the mid-1950s alongside Eric Coates' better-known "March for Television". Spiegl's piece has definite echoes of Nat. Airs, in particular with its use of "Early One Morning" as its key theme and in the appearance of "Danny Boy" (aka Londonderry Air), and it's highly probable that Spiegl wrote his piece as a natural successor to the Airs rather than as a wholly original concept. So while Spiegl's piece is only 30 or so years old, its roots go much deeper.

Other regional medleys were extensively used by the various regional ITV companies as their own startup themes. Some of them are masterpieces, most notably "Westward Ho!", a medley of West Country tunes used by Westward Television and Tyne Tees' superb "Three Rivers Fantasy". But over the years the regional medleys dropped away as regulatory requirements loosened, and with the introduction of 24-hour broadcasting the only one left was the Radio 4 UK Theme. It's the last of a long and honourable line, which is why it's so sad to hear that it's an endangered species.

Incidentally, your controller's vague assertion that the R4UK Theme is "five to six minutes long" is slightly odd. He's talking about continuity music here, and the Theme is precisely five minutes long - a nice round number, especially given its past use as an opening piece for the station itself in the days when Radio 4 opened from dead air at 0600 rather than carrying a sustaining feed overnight from the WS.

I understand that broadcasting has to change and not ossify - after all, that's a lesson which the BBC itself learned rather painfully on such occasions as the introduction of Radio 1 and its reaction to Independent Television. But saving five minutes at what my girlfriend's American father refers to as "zero-dark-thirty" to give a nod to a broadcasting tradition which goes back for at least fifty years seems to me a much better thing than injecting yet another news bulletin to replace the one which comes after the UK Theme anyway.

The UK Theme is part of the cycle of the broadcast day on Radio 4. From the UK theme in the morning, through Today and Woman's Hour to PM and the Book at Bedtime and ultimately Sailing By and the national anthem, it's part of what keeps the station ticking over, part of its 24-hour respiratory cycle. To get rid of it would not only be a shame, it would be throwing away one of the few remaining moments when broadcasters can still pause and remember those who came before them and built the industry in which they work totally from scratch in a remarkably short time.

It would, in short, be the worst decision made by a controller keen to make their mark since.. er.. well, who was the last person to try and scrap "Sailing By"?

Yours,
Mike Knell

Dear South West Trains

I just emailed this to the customer relations department at South West Trains...

Dear SWT,

(Note - This piece of terrible doggerel relates to the 2311 departure from Walton-on-Thames on 17/1/06.)

A good evening was spent at the house of my brother
In Walton-on-Thames - we'd been marking my mother's
Successful completion of yet one more year spent in
This world (how many I should really not mention).

We left for the station at ten fifty-five,
As we both had to wake and be reasonably alive
For work the next morning, so we set off to aim to
Catch the eleven past fast service for Waterloo.

The train had left Portsmouth some two hours before,
And was issued the headcode of two T six-four.
After calling at Walton it was scheduled to run
To Waterloo non-stop (well, via Surbiton).

At eight minutes past we arrived at the station,
And hearing the incoming train made to hasten
Through the tunnel which leads from the down "car park" side
Of the building, to the up. We had made it in time!

There the train stood, white paint stained by the sodium
Lights, doors shut tight 'gainst the cold of the night,
While the digital clock on the platform marked time
And the seconds flicked up towards 23:09.

I stepped forward in order to open the door
(Of a Siemens Desiro of class 444,
As being a bit of a trainspotting wonk
I often recall such irrelevant bunk.)

But the buttons to open the doors were inactive,
And the train just stood silent, Teutonically passive
With no visible guard to beg for admission
(He was probably inside with his head in a Grisham.)

As the station clock ticked to fifteen seconds past
Nine minutes past eleven - something happened, at last!
But rather than a ding and the door lights alluming,
The train just whined softly - and then it was moving!

The train had departed! Two whole minutes early!
Leaving us there, tail lights staining its pearly
White paintwork blood red in the dark of the night
As it speeded away and escaped from our sight.

"What the hell?" we both asked. "Don't they give these guys watches?"
"Did the guard just not bother to look at the clock? His
Timekeeping skills must be getting a little bit
Rusty, or was he just being a (censored)?"

And there we stood, stuck in the middle of Surrey
Still wanting to get ourselves home in a hurry
But having to wait there for ten minutes more
For the 23:20, a slow train, which called
At Surbiton, Wimbledon, Earlsfield and Clapham
And eventually brought us to Waterloo at, erm..
Two minutes to midnight, twenty-five minutes after
The train we'd intended to catch, which was faster

But because the guard hadn't been paying attention
We got home much later than had been our intention.

With my bleary, sleep-deprived eyes I implore
You, dear reader (though this poem's beginning to bore)
To remind all those drivers and guards of our fate -
And that early departures are as evil as late!

All the best (and sorry, that really was a terrible poem),
Mike Knell

Railway Signalling Made Easy, Part 1

You Shall Not Pass!
Originally uploaded by Mike Knell.

This is a signal. Don't worry about the fact that it's got four lamps and a bunch of other gubbins attached to it. The important thing is that big red light, which tells us that this signal is at danger. Technically, the signal would be described as displaying a red aspect.

Passing a signal at danger is very naughty and extremely dangerous, which is why incidents of drivers passing signals at danger are handled with such seriousness. While there are a very few exceptions which we'll cover later on, on the British railway network a single red light - or, in fact, any red light - conveys an absolute requirement to stop at that signal and proceed no further.

Next instalment - the other aspects. Bet you can't wait.

D200

In a bout of extreme fiscal irresponsibility (although it has rather usefully spurred me to finally put a bunch of unwanted stuff on eBay) I gave into temptation on Christmas Eve. I'd read the specs of the new Nikon D200 when the camera was launched, and had harboured vague thoughts that maybe I'd get one someday. When the stars were right and I had the money and could justify it. The main reason for this was that although my D70 is an absolutely fantastic camera which I'd recommend to anyone without hesitation, it was sometimes just a little fiddly for what I like doing, which is taking photos of trains and other things which only give you a few seconds to frame, meter and shoot. The D200 can also make more use of older Nikon manual-focus lenses than the D70, which I like. It's also somewhat more rugged, and has a magnesium-alloy body with gaskets around all the vulnerable bits to make it a bit more weatherproof. All these things are nice, and there are a few other touches which I liked enough to covet one despite the rather-more-than-a-D70 pricetag and the fact that I was really very happy indeed with the D70.

Anyway, I didn't think much more of it until just before Christmas, when I found that I was a bit better off than I thought I'd be. Oh, I thought. Maybe I can get a D200 sometime. When the stars are right. I can always sell the D70 to pay for it. Anyway, supplies are very limited at the moment and it'd take a long time to get one, so I went back to vague lust from afar.

Unfortunately, while visiting my parents I strolled down town on Christmas Eve to buy some presents and glanced in the window of the local camera shop to see.. a D200, with a sign cheerfully advising that this was most likely the only one on sale in Warwickshire. I agonised for a bit, paced up and down a lot, agonised a bit more, then thought "Oh, what the hell", and went in and waved my credit card. To imagine the significance of just finding a D200 on the shelf like that so soon after its release, think of it as being roughly equivalent to just finding a bunch of unsold Xbox 360s in the window of HMV on Christmas Eve. So, well, er, I had a D200 several months earlier than I thought I would, and my gadget lust was sated. Even better, the D70 is going to a good home, which is much nicer than selling it to some random person on eBay who might, like, mistreat it or something.

But what do I think of it? Well, there's certainly no buyer's remorse. As I grew up handling manual film SLRs the controls are nicely laid out (the ISO button being on top rather than shared with the playback button is a big win), and the screen is fantastic. The magnesium-alloy body feels sturdy enough to club an attacking leopard senseless if the need ever arises, and AI lens compatibility is very appealing. I borrowed my dad's 55mm Nikkor macro, and it worked just fine with the D200 - metering and all. And of course, seeing as I tend to crop images heavily, the 10.1MP CCD makes things like that a lot, lot easier. There are a number of other things I could also talk about, but there are plenty of people out there more qualified than me to write in-depth reviews.

There are two things so far which have annoyed me - firstly, it's quite easy to knock the AF selector from AF-S or AF-C to MF as it's a little lever just down by the lens mount (I've lost at least one shot this way already while on the Piccadilly Line), and secondly, the drive mode selector's most usual settings (single, continous low speed and continuous high speed) aren't at the ends of the dial, so it's hard to change drive modes without looking at the dial. I've also lost a shot this way by switching into self-timer mode rather than high-speed mode. Oops.

What I do with it now is, of course, very much up to me. I certainly now have a serious incentive to pay as much attention to my photography as I did when I was younger. I also need to get a decent tripod (as London is the city of gloomy weather and long exposures), and having discovered the magic of really fast lenses after getting an 85mm Nikkor f/1.8 for Christmas I think I'll be hitting eBay for a fast 50mm pretty soon. I have a horrible feeling a copy of Photoshop CS2 might be in my future as well - but in the meantime, there's a move and a wedding to plan. And pay for.

The Fleet's Lit Up

A famous incident in the pre-war days of BBC Radio was the "Woodrooffe Incident", also known as "The Fleet's Lit Up". On 20 May 1937 the BBC was going to carry a live commentary on the illumination of the naval fleet, and its man on the spot was former Naval officer Lieutenant-Command Thomas Woodrooffe. Woodrooffe had taken full advantage of the generous entertainment provided on board his old ship, and when the time came for the broadcast his state can only be described as "tired and emotional". Because in those days there were no continuity suites - all switching was done in the control room, it was some time before the engineers took the initiative of fading him out themselves.

There's now an MP3 of what I believe is the full incident available on the web, from here at nr23.net, but there wasn't yet a transcript, so I thought I'd make one. It's hard to make out Woodrooffe's words at times due to the crackly off-air recording, so I apologise for the occasional (indistinct).

This incident is notable for two things. Firstly, even the fearsome John Reith must have been at least slightly amused, as Woodroffe was only suspended for a week after this incident. He went on to commentate on other things for the BBC, notably declaring in the closing minutes of the 1938 FA Cup Final that "If there's a goal scored now, I'll eat my hat." There was, and he did.

Secondly, it led to the development of continuity studios as part of the programme chain, where undesirable happenings on air could be taken care of much more quickly as continuity had direct control over station output. More on this here.

ANNOUNCER:

This is the Regional Programme. The Illumination of the Fleet. Once again we're taking you on board HMS Nelson for a description of the scene at Spithead tonight by Lieutenant-Commander Thomas Woodrooffe.

WOODROOFFE:

At the present moment, the whole fleet is lit up. When I say 'lit up', I mean lit up by fairy lamps.

We've forgotten the whole Royal Review ... we've forgotten the Royal Review ... the whole thing is lit up by fairy lamps. It's fantastic, it isn't the fleet at all. It's just ... it's fairyland, the whole fleet is in fairyland.

Now, if you'll follow me through ... if you don't mind ... the next few moments... you'll find the fleet doing odd things (indistinct, but that's my best guess). At the present moment, the New York, obviously, is lit out ... and when I say the fleet is lit up ... in lamps... I mean, she's outlined. The whole ship's outlined. In little lamps.

I'm sorry, I was telling some people to shut up talking.

Umm.. what I mean is this. The whole fleet is lit up. In fairy lamps, and ... each ship is outlined.

Now, as far as I can see is about ... I suppose I can see down about five or six miles ... ships are all lit up.

They're outlined, the whole lot. Even destroyers are outlined. In the old days, y'know, destroyers used to be outlined by a little kind of pyramid of lights. And nowadays ... destroyers are lit up by ... they outline themselves.

In a second or two, we're going to fire rockets, um, we're going to fire all sorts of things (indistinct). And.. you can't possibly see them, but you'll hear them going off, and you may hear my reaction when I see them go off. Because ... erm ... I'm going to try and tell you what they look like as they go off. But at the moment there's a whole huge fleet here. The thing we saw this afternoon, this colossal fleet, lit up ... by lights ... and the whole fleet is in fairyland! It isn't true, it isn't here!

And as I say it ...

It's gone! It's gone! There's no fleet! It's, eh, it's disappeared! No magician who ever could have waved his wand could have waved it with more acumen than he has now at the present moment. The fleet's gone. It's disappeared.

I'm trying to give you, ladies and gentlemen, (indistinct) the fleet's gone. It's disappeared. I was talking to you ... in the middle of this damn (cough), in the middle of this fleet ... and what's happened is the fleet's gone, disappeared and gone. We had a hundred, two hundred warships around us a second ago, and now they've gone, at a signal by the Morse code, at a signal by the fleet flagship which I'm in now, they've gone, they've disappeared.

There's nothing between us and heaven. There's nothing at all.

(recording ends)

Please hold.

After spending 17 minutes on hold to BT Openzone while I was sitting in a Starbucks on Tottenham Court Road recently, I gave up waiting when I realised that my coffee would be cold by the time everything was sorted out anyway.

Being put on hold doesn't annoy me in itself. Wandering through a couple of menus before being transferred to a human doesn't annoy me either. But sitting on hold for ages simply to get to talk to a person at all infuriates me. I just don't see how some companies think it's okay to have customers and potential customers twiddling their thumbs for 15 minutes or more while your call handling system repeatedly tells them how important their call is. Most people have got better things to do, and being told that "your call is very important to us" at the same time as being told to hey, just stay on hold and be patient is, well, as Sparks once put it, sending mixed signals.

Yes, there are various allegedly-magic digits you can dial while navigating various phone systems' menus, but these only dump you out of the menu systems and into the hold queue. And even if they bump you up the hold queue.. well, that's not really fair on everyone else who still has to wait.

Also, I was in need of a small project to learn about Ruby on Rails, so I sat down and fiddled with things for a bit and behold, the first incarnation of Holdlog is now available. It's pretty ugly because I'm not a web designer or CSS guru, but it works. Well, there are probably some bugs too, but nothing fatal that I know of.

Please do have a look at it (not that there's much to see at the moment - it needs people to start inputting data for it to get useful) and start timing your own holds... Oh, and tell your friends, of course. Naturally.