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Don’t Worry, Iggle-Piggle

Children's TV

“The night is black,
And the stars are bright,
And the sea is dark and deep…
But someone I know is safe and snug,
And they’re drifting off to sleep.

Round and round, a little boat, no bigger than your hand,
Out on the ocean, far away from land.
Take the little sail down, light the little light,
This is the way to the garden in the night.”

Why do I love In The Night Garden so much?

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More Than Meets the Eye

Children's TV / Internet

I never watched Transformers as a kid. As a now-28-year-old male geek, this is tantamount to sacrilege, but it’s true. I’d avidly watch Wacaday, and then lose interest in Transformers shortly after the opening theme tune. The only eight year old boy in the world who found giant robots and battles boring. And as for the toys, I was too busy playing offices to notice.

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Lookalikes

TV Comedy

Dear Sir,

I was on the Argos website the other day, and noticed a startling similarity between the new Argos logo, and the Complico logo from The Peter Serafinowicz Show.

New Argos logo

Complico

Complico Logo

Argos


Could they by any chance be related?

Yours,
John Hoare

P.S. God, it’s shit.

(With apologies to @divaschematic.)

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The Young Ones: Building the Fourth Wall

TV Comedy

MIKE: This calls for a celebration. Vyv, throw another record player on the fire.
VYVYAN: Oh, certainly, Michael.
RICK: You bastard! That’s my record player!
MIKE: [to Vyv] You said it was your record player.
VYVYAN: No, I didn’t, Mike. I said “Let’s throw Rick’s record player on the fire, that’ll be good for a laugh.”
MIKE: Oh, yeah, that’s right. Yeah, it is yours, Rick.

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Amplify: Brand “Thinking”

Internet

As some of you may know, I used to write for a site called Noise to Signal. It covered everything, really – telly, films, gaming, you name it – hopefully with at least a vague modicum of intelligence.

Yesterday, I received the following little email. Because I’m nice, the name is redacted – but company is very much not.

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Hi-Dee T.V.

Other TV

Fancy a scan from Which Video, July 1983, on high-definition telly? Shut up whining at the back there, I’m going to post it anyway. Clickity-click to get a larger version:

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Moderation For ‘Em

Internet

Of all the things that I like to pretend I’m knowledgeable about, there is at least one thing I can claim I have direct experience of – forum moderation. I’ve been dealing with occasionally hair-rasing moderation on NOTBBC since 2003, and moderating Ganymede & Titan’s forum since 2007. (There’s also been a fair amount of comment moderation, but that can be a slightly different art, depending on the site – when comments are attached to an article, I think it’s reasonable to have a slightly firmer hand.)

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What is the vilest piece of emotional blackmail on the Internet?

Internet

I have no idea, but this must come close.

Recently I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. Not because of worries over privacy – although maybe I should be more worried about that – but due to the weird joint problem of using it too much, and not enough. Too much, as in spending every waking hour when I should be working playing Scrabble… and not enough, in that I did precisely nothing else with it.

So, I decide to deactivate my account. (You should, of course, be able to directly delete it without waiting, but that’s a rant for another day – and I probably would have chosen a simple deactivation this time round anyway.) And what greets me?

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