Following a link on Wesley’s ‘Media Readings’ blog, I’ve used Wordle to generate a visual representation of the content of this blog:
Wordle records the most frequently used terms on a blog or any other website and presents them visually. Try it at http://www.wordle.net/
Most years since 2000 I have remembered to post a list up online of my favourite things of the year. I make no claims to authority but hope, as always, that by doing this I will be able to reconstruct my awful memory at some point in the future when digital archiving means that I can collect all of these things in one place…click on the images if you want to find out more about any of these obsessions….
Music: The Hospital Records podcasts. These are simply unbelievably good. Every week or so you get a free hour-long show of drum and bass, mixed up with some more leftfield quirky bits and pieces and occasional restaurant reviews. Earlier in the year I went to their night, Hospitality, at the 02 in London – after realising that I really have become the old guy at the back of the rave muttering about how nothing is as good as it used to be, I now content myself with playing the Hospital Records podcast in the office at full volume when there is no-one else around. Sometimes I even sneak a cheeky dance in at the end of the day.
Book: Tony Bennet et al’s ‘Culture, Class, Distinction’. This is a work of cultural research that is almost terrifying in its achievements. A team of researchers developed a methodology with which to investigate Bourdieu’s theories of cultural capital, power and class in 21st century Britain and, after 4 years or so, wrote it all up in a book. Coming to the conclusions that ‘class matters’ and that cultural participation is the key concept for understanding the role of culture in producing and defining social divisions in contemporary Britain, they have updated and refined Bourdieu’s work.
Film: Star Trek. I know, I know…..but it was really good, honest. It’s simply not true that I would have enjoyed it even if nothing had happened at all and at some point a door had made that ‘proper’ star trek door-opening noise.
Website: Global Tourism Issues. Two of our students at Greenwich put together this blog as part of their 2nd year studies. Now that course has finished they are carrying on with what has become a hugely popular website. Every day they update the site with snippits of news, images and usually amusing commentary about up-to-the-minute issues in the global tourism industry. They also have a twitter presence, for those of us with 140 character attention spans! I’ve been referring students and colleague to this site for the last few months and it is a great resource for anyone researching or working in tourism.
