As Corporal Jack Jones was known to say “Don’t Panic” at the title of this blog post, it’s not me who’s going away. Now I suspect that even regular readers and those who’ve just stumbled across this probably don’t have a great emotional attachment to my witterings so probably couldn’t care less if I stay or go.
In a departure from the usual “What I’ve been reading, watching and listening to” format I’ve just got a couple of ‘closedowns’ to note this time. First up Google Reader. I was sat on a train one afternoon, catching up on my reading on the Google Reader App on my phone, and came across Adam Bowie’s post on Killing Google reader. As google clarify here – google reader is closing in July.
Unlike many of the others people on-line lamenting it’s demise, I don’t often use the Google Reader website (other than to add subscriptions). My main use is the Andriod App to read feeds from various blogs and news sources on my phone. This is both much more user friendly and quicker than using the Andriod browser to read blog pages, plus they are all combined in one place. The Reader App also seems to some limited degree cache the feeds, so is good in areas with limited network coverage. My search is still on for a replacement Andriod App with similar functionality.
The second ‘closedown’ is that of BBC Television Centre. David Lloyd makes a good point about the beeb going over the top at the coverage of the close of ‘TVC’. Of course the BBC are not really “moving out” completely, BBC Worldwide is moving into the old ‘news centre’ and Studios 1 to 3 are being refurbished, and the BBC will be using them again in a couple of years time. However the all arrangement does sound like one of them slightly dodgy sounding “sell your home, but rent it back” schemes to me.
I found some great pictures of the “dying days” of Television Centre by Peter Sumpter, if you really want to loose a couple of hours in geeky history, the TV Studio History site has a long write up.
I’ve never been in Television Centre myself, though like many people feel that I’ve something of a connection to the iconic building through years of seeing it on screen. At least TVC will not be meeting the same fate as BBC Manchester’s New Broadcasting House, now demolished and being used as a car park. However that one will be the topic for another day.
Final thing of minor note I’ve removed my ‘recent twitter posts’ from the left hand menu of this site. Twitter changed their API and I’ve not had the time to work out what I need to change to get it working again.
