Nick Piggott

Excitedly waiting to see if the newsreader has made it for the 20:30 bulletin on #bbc6music

Bristol's housing crisis explained in one small industrial estate A tale of Luxembourg investors, powerless councillors, a viability crisis and 20,000 people on the housing waiting list

I took a deep dive into Bristol's housing crisis, seen through the lens of how one minor planning permission to spruce up some industrial units explains so much about the crises of affordability, building costs & viability.
get a cuppa & have a long read!
www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol...

Just spotted a swan on the central reservation of the M4. The temptation to report it to Wiltshire Police using the name Peter Ian Staker was extreme.

(It was just one swan. And they knew about it - the warning signs were coming on already).

Local TV, London. You could probably negotiate them up to 7p?

Take me down to the Parallax city where the far moves slow and the near moves quickly

It's very healthy to be fairly sceptical about anything at CES, which now seems to be less about Consumer Electronics, and more about drumming up investment...

Greatest Hits Radio testing the waters by playing FGTH Relax of an afternoon....

Also in Austria, which came as quite the surprise to the accounts departments of the British owners of Austrian radio stations back in the day.

Summary - I paid £108 to be reassured that even in the hands of an army of creatives, AI is not fit for primetime.

(Although I think my view represented 20% of the audience. The 80% were "wowed")

The film has been cut to 65 minutes, keeping in the crowd pleaser musical numbers and just enough material to hold the storyline together.

Special shoutout to the supporting actors "painted in" by AI. I'm sorry your feet, faces, clothes and gestures were mangled beyond recognition. I've seen small kids at regional Christmas shows show better supporting acting. It was excruciating.

Basic basic things; it's usual for an actors feet to touch the ground they're walking on, not hover above it. Does Judy Garland have freckles or not have freckles? At times, the effect was more "iPad hand drawn cartoon" than "live actors".

[tech aside - I'm assuming the actors were roto'ed out of the original, new backgrounds created "inspired and enhanced by the originals", and then the actors "touched up" and matted back in again]

But with a more critical eye - I'm sorry, I've seen university grad projects with better production quality. No disrespect to the creatives who were involved, it just looks like a fundamental failing of the proposition "can AI make a film"?

Audience reaction was mixed. The show is supported by some very cool sound, lighting and physical FX, and the projection technology is extremely impressive - so it's easy to be over-awed...

If you work in the creative industries and you're worried about the impact of AI on your career, I would recommend going to see "The Wizard of Oz at The Sphere" in Las Vegas.

If that's the current state of the art, IMO your skills will still be of value for a while...

Thank you for your service....

3D TV anyone....? No? Oh....

Not as much as the large gun adverts....

Are you visiting or presenting? (Early morning is a miserable time of day to arrive into LAS).

I think it's the decent thing to do.... something fitting.

It's always good to pay tribute at the end.

Midnight at the Oasis, Brand New Heavies at the end of Oasis Radio in St.Albans.

I don't know how many people heard it, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

Our signal has been a bit post-Xmas wobbly today. We've given it a strong cup of black coffee and a shower and hopefully it'll be more stable from now on. ☕☕

I'm almost out of ways to describe #virginmedia 's incompetence with IP. Today's genius achievement - inter-network routing is glitching, but extra-network is fine. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

I'd be aiming to be #1 or #240. "Last but one" doesn't delay the flight. 👍

The butterfly effect that not enough people have considered. Lots to consider - the true costs of 'big tower' infrastructure, and the options to work with Telcos. We've learned a lot from that in SSDAB rollout.

You'll be surprised but....

Sorry to all you Avonmouth and Portishead people - we had a power outage but it's back on again now. ⚡⚡

LH could / would never. Booked a flight? You're flying that flight, regardless of whether it helps you or them. Or pay a $$$$ rebooking fee.

I appreciate UA's pragmatic approach. Maybe that's why I get all my TATL flights on LH metal ticketed by UA 😁

Never thought I'd be saying that #RadioDNS had better up time than Cloudflare, but here we are. 🤷‍♂️