Postings have been a bit scarce of late for the very simple reason that I am on a BBC shooting course this week in North London.
I leave the house at 8am, arrive back at 7pm and still have my Vancouver jet-lag. However, the course is excellent. Really excellent. Learning how to use the Sony PD150 – a pro-sumer camera, broadcast quality shots but not the real pro cameras.
I've learnt an enormous amount and tomorrow – the last day – get my own actor to boss about and film to pull into a new-style report. Terrific.
Why am I doing it? Simple. Skilling up in time for the next wave of the Internet. Plus, I love learning new stuff, and I hope to film some of the interviews I do all the time and sell them to new markets.
But it was learning lots of radio techniques in order to get into podcasting that got me going. The web has opened up sound, is on the cusp of turning it upside down. And soon, inevitably, it will do the same to video. The latest iPod already shows music videos and shorts.
So, learn how to film professionally and there you go – another extremely useful skill. And it's great fun. Soon as the course is over and I've slept for three days, I'll figure out how to turn my filming on the course into a downloable MPEG file and stick it up here.
Anyway, that's why I've been quiet of late. Loads of stuff has been going on of course. And I see that people have picked up on my Condolezza Rice letter.
What is really strange is that it has taken publications that I actually write for days to cover it. If they wanted to pay me for it, they could have it, and a lot more much earlier. Ah well.
Oh, and large numbers of Slashdotters have convinced themselves that the letter is a hoax. The entire evidence of this, it is argued, is bad grammar in the letter. And the fact that the word “issues” appears where it should be “issued”.
I don't think the grammar is particularly bad. It's not exactly eloquent but then what do you expect, and what does it matter – diplomatic letters are not literature.
As for the “issues” bit – that's simple – I made an error when typing it up from the hard copy I have.
