Living with Osteoporosis

I talk to Winchester resident, Elizabeth Tipple about her Osteoporosis, a disease that affects bones, causing them to become brittle and break more easily.

Editor Interview: Neil McCaw, Vortex Magazine

I Interview the Editor Of Winchester University's Vortex Magazine, Neil McCaw:

Don't Starve - A Review

You wake up in strange place. A gangly man named Maxwell appears and tells you that you don't look so good. He suggests you find some food before nightfall. You forage some berries, you collect sticks, you pull up some grass, you find some flint. You fashion a makeshift axe and cut down a tree. You build yourself a pickaxe and break apart some rocks. You find golden nuggets and craft them into a science machine (of course). You craft a spear and hunt down some nearby spiders. If you get hurt you chew on glands pulled out of their bodies. This helps a little. Night falls and you build a fire. You see eyes staring at you from the darkness. You decide to cut down a nearby tree to build up the fire. The tree comes to life and hits you as a gigantic eyeball runs past on two skinny legs. You die. Maxwell smiles.

"I want to play a game..."

Welcome to Don't Starve, perhaps a more apt name would simply be Don't Die. This is a game that wants to kill you in any and every way it can. It wants to make you dare to hope that you can survive everything it can throw at you. You'll begin with all the confidence that you can have in a brave new world, teeming with possibilities. Good luck with that, and let the games begin.

Just wait until your beard catches fire.

First things first, you must not starve. How do you do that? Well you collect food so that you Don't Starve, and then you make tools that help you find food so that you Don't Starve, and then You explore and find new technology to create better ways to make food so that you Don't Starve. Building a fire is an absolute must, without fire you cannot cook, and without its light you simply wont survive, stand in the darkness and you wont walk out.

This is not a forgiving game. You can plough hours into it, gaining a better foothold against a world that simply does not want you in it, only to be killed by a swarm of bees when you try and steal their honey. When you die, your game is over and there is no way to go back. You can start again and redo the tearjerkingly tedious tasks that you must go through in order to start the game, or you can quit and vow never to play this sadistic torture simulator ever again. Until you can't help but try again. In each new game, you improve and learn better ways to survive. You'll learn the best ways to speed into success until you think that this time will be the time that you win, but the thing about Don't Starve is that there is no particular goal other than sheer bloody-minded survival.

Treeguards:
Some Evergreens don't take kindly to being chopped down.

Perhaps the most impressive and oppressive part of Don't Starve is the Winter. Every 20 in-game days, the seasons will turn and colours become washed out, snow falls, and no food grows. This is where Don't Starve comes into its own. The difficulty ramps up a notch, then another 10 notches just for good measure. The cold becomes more likely to kill you then anything else. Wearing warm clothes will stave off the cold for a time, until it creeps in and drastic measures may have to be taken. Setting fire to a tree in desperation may be your only option, but don't be surprised if you start a forest fire in the process, wiping out any firewood for in the vicinity, which brings us back to the cold and the dark.

This is not a game for the faint-hearted or those short of patience. It wont hold your hand and tell you what to do, and while it is full of little victories, there are always demoralising defeats. It starts off slowly and tortuously, and only becomes harder as you go on. It will force you to learn, to adapt, to try out new things that might, and probably will, kill you. But if you don't try them your apathy will kill you just as readily.

Or spiders... Probably spiders.

The Gothic art style will charm and immerse you. The dark humour will cut away at the bleakness. And sometimes it wont be quite as lonely. You might make friends with some pigs who will follow and protect you, buoying your spirits with the occasional “I love friend!”. They are not clever pigs, but if you feed them, they will come, just be careful not to get them killed.

It is also worth noting that the team behind Don't Starve, Klei Entertainment, have promised to continue to update the game with new features, monsters, and mechanics for several months past the original launch on April 23. This should serve to keep the game that much more interesting every month or so. This helps somewhat with fears that the game might stagnate after a time.

Don't Starve is a commitment. It takes time to get to grips with the mechanics and learn its secrets and you will have to spend a long time grinding away at the same frustrating errands over and over again. If you want a game of volatile action and thrilling cut scenes, then this is not for you. If you want a game of innovation, constant tension and genuine fear, then step right up. Maxwell is waiting.

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 Pictures courtesy of Klei Entertainment.

 Thanks to Corey Rollins of Klei Entertainment.

News Day - 22 March 2013

Electoral Law

I was a vote counter in the 2010 General Elections. Not the most glamourous job, I know, but the pay is very good indeed considering the highest qualification you need is to be able to count to 25. It can be quite uncomfortable being a counter, as while you're working, you're being watched like hawks, by the candidates and their various henchmen. Making sure no ballots accidentally go in the wrong pile, exclaming over how many they have, or complaining about how few they have. I'm digressing. Something that stuck out to me was that, in contrast to the Party-People, there was no noticeable press coverage. I know they were there, but they were keeping a low profile. I'd expected them to be all over us as well to find out how the vote was swinging, but there was barely a peep. At the time I wondered why that was. And now I'm going to explain it.

Electoral reporting for broadcast journalists is a hodge-podge of law, tradition, and regulation. Before we get too mired in the podge, it's worth a brief explanation as to why it's important that elections are properly reported.

First and foremost, journalism in the fourth estate of the country, we are (relatively) independent of a governing body, and as such we watch them, and protect the country from any potential threats to life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Consider the government our guardians, and think on the old adage: "Who will guard the guardians?". or perhaps more appropriately, who will keep an eye on the guardians to make sure they stay out of trouble. Doesn't have much of a ring to it, does it?

This view is has been very relevant in the last few weeks with the election of the Police and Crime Commissioners. People have been elected who will help decide to way the police protect us and it is more important than ever to ensure that the candidates for the job keep everything above board, and that the people know everything they can to decide who they should elect.

Which brings me onto my second point. How do you decide who it is that you vote for? You would watch debates, perhaps go online to find out what information you can on what they do, watch the news to see how competent they seem to be in various situations. Any and all of the above, is provided by journalists. The vast majority of the public aren't going to truck themselves down to watch a debate, or Question Time or what have you. Instead they can watch it all from the comfort of their homes, because we bring it to them, through live broadcasts or Twitter updates, news packages. The list goes on. And as a result, people base their voting decisions on footage we have shown them. This is quite a power to have, and I'll now start to talk about how we absolutely cannot abuse it.

Foremost, and most obviously, if the public are using our coverage to decide their vote, we have to be sure that we are 'impartial' as is stated in all of the relevant codes, regulation and law. We cannot have an bias toward one body or another. This is at least what is true for broadcasters. Newspapers on the other hand can support whoever they please. This is a throwback to the early days of the press. When daily newspapers first became popular. There could be the capacity for so many, that it really didn't matter that they were biased, the public would simply read whichever one was closest to their beliefs. But with television (this is mostly if not all in the UK) there were so few channels that they could not afford to be unbiased. Let's say there was only two channels (which, believe it or not, was once the case), and both leaned toward a particular party then the viewer is bound to get a skewed view the day's news. As a result, news channels in the UK tend to be as unbiased as possible. This is possibly unnecessary today as there are hundreds of different news channels, and we're in the same situation for TV as we once were for print.

Of course now the situation is changing for newspapers, as they are publishing video content on the internet. Perhaps new precedent will be put in place, though wouldn't that potentially have to be internationally accepted. Jurisdiction does not technically exist on the internet, and while, IP addresses and other devices that locate an internet user and allow countries to enforce their laws, media regulation seems a grey area. But I'm not here to philosophise the ethics of the intangible force of the internet. Let's look at how tv news tends to cover elections.

Broadcast media in the UK has to follow certain guidelines in the run up, and execution of the elections. The BBC, for example, have to give the same amount of air-time to the major political parties. Indeed they would keep a detailed account, down to the second, of how much time each had had. They do this because they know damn sure that the political parties are going to be checking to make sure they're not being left out.

Of course, this gives us another problem, how do we rank the various political parties? It's easy to say that Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat are all major parties. But what does UKIP, Green party, BNP, even the Monster Raving Loony party fall under? None of them are major parties, some of them have much more support than others. Do they deserve the same amount of time as the others? At the end of the day that is exactly what it comes to. Broadcasters decide who deserves more time than the others. This may seem unfair, but it's unfortunately the way it has to work. If you only have two minutes in a package, you simply do not have time to cover them all. The decision over who to leave out, is pretty much down to whoever has more support. This is most noticeable in local news. As you would expect, they know who people want to see more of.

The exception to this would simply be aesthetics. If the Monster Ravers built a giant wicker man and invited people to toast marshmallows whilst Christopher Lee was campaigning for them, well, who wouldn't want to see that?

There is always a danger, during an election period, that you will end up defaming someone. Indeed elections have always been known to get somewhat vicious as voting day draws closer. A particularly gritty example of this was in the 2010 general election, with ex government minister Phil Woolas. Whilst campainging for a seat in Oldam East and Saddleworth. He published two false statements (one of them here) saying that his rival Robert Watkins, was 'wooing the extremist Muslim vote'. He won the seat but later, the result was declared void. The court ruled he was guilty of breaching the Representation of the People Act 1983, which says that:

Section 106(1) - makes it a criminal offence to make or publish a false statement of fact about the personal character or conduct of an election candidate, if the purpose of publishing the false statement is to affect how many votes he/she will get.

Section 106(5) - makes it an offence to publish a false claim that a candidate has withdrawn from the election, if the publisher knows it to be false and published it to promote or procure the election of another candidate.

Needless to say, be careful during elecions. There can be people who would like nothing better than to shoot the messenger. 

Channel 5 News bulletin criticism.

A brief summation of my initial thoughts, whilst watching  Channel Five's 5pm news bulletin (in relatively chronological order).

The headline sequence is good looking, though I found it strange that after the flood headline, with the quote from David Cameron (not the most enthralling, but that's to be expected from the PM), there was quite a long gap before the next one, it works if the aim is to separate the top story from the others, but to a casual viewer, it seems like there is only one headline showcasing the entire programme.

The rest of the headlines, were a mix of public interest story (the Norovirus) and pop culture: Nadine Dorries relating to I'm a celeb; Bill Tarney of Corrie fame dying (admittedly there's more gravitas to this); and sports personality predictions. I'm not sure if I like the still and zoom of Chris Hoy, I'm of the opinion suspense doesn't really belong on a news show, though as the final piece it has something of an excuse as people will potentially wait longer to see it. I just don't think Chris Hoy's opinion is that much to be excited about.

The floods lead the entire bulletin, it was a very flood-heavy programme, which is reasonable as that is currently the biggest story in the UK at the moment. That said, the flood stories took up about eight minutes. On Monday's bulletin they even took up about 11. As well as having a flood special later on the Monday) and that could be quite a lot to ask of most audiences if they don't have much of an interest in them.

There were two flood packages today (three yesterday) both of which were introduced by a live OB with the reporter, and one of which returned to the OB afterword. I'm not sure how relevant some of it was, some provided updates on the stories, though they could have potentially been said by the presenter. That said, it made it look much more professional, especially from the point of view of Winchester News Online. We've had virtually no success with live OBs and to my mind it is one of the things that helps to look much more credible, on a technical level.

The graphic in the first flood story, looked very good (showing the UK behind the stats) though I had slight issues keeping up with the stats. I believe it mentioned the number of flood warnings and alerts, as well as the train announcements and road closures. A good selection to have, slightly hard to follow, but much better to have graphics than anything else.

The interview with David Cameron was great to have, it was a shame he didn't say much of particular interest, though not surprising. Some expo on what he wanted and hoped to happen.

The most noticeable feature of the second flood package, was the interview with a man trapped inside his house. with the reporter shouting questions to him as he leaned out of a window. Not only did it highlight the man's plight, but jumped out at as a very interesting part of the story.

The package also had some vox pops of flood victims, generally at WINOL we try to avoid VPs. However, in the circumstances it's a great way of gauging the problems ad temperament of the people affected.

The Norovirus story, as I said before, is a typical story formed around the public health interest. Health stories are always big and seem occur frequently at this time of year. That doesn't always make them too necessary. As far as I can tell, the story was simply saying that something that is always around, is happening somewhat early this year. The still image of the virus looked good, and I would have been surprised if there wasn't one. But the music underlay was perhaps a bit too sinister, it felt like the T-virus from Resident Evil was being unleashed. I'm not sure what the point of the music was, except to imply that the virus was something to be feared.The still of the virus, as well as the underlay were both used again at the end of the piece. It brought the story full circle, but also stood out to that there were apparently were no other pictures that could have been used.

Again in this piece, graphics were used, with an ER looking background, these looked very strong, and were a good way of rattling off figures without becoming too dull.

The Eon OOV  was quite quick, and worked to break up the heavy packages, though I'm honestly not sure what it was about, compensation for customers who switched services (I think) and it didn't seem there was much of a story there. Probably the reason why it was an OOV in fairness.

The reminder after the break was expected, and a good way to both remind, and introduce people to the bulletin, and also didn't delay too long, so no impatience to worry about.

The Yasser Arafat story had it's place as a fairly important one in the world, though rightfully I think, it hadn't earned a particularly high place in the programme, as it is somewhat out of place with the rest of the packages

Bill Tarney's funeral was well and sympathetically done. and the shots and interviews of Corrie stars were well used.

I liked the crane fire OOV. It was something of a "bloody hell look at that!" story, without a great deal of substance, but it's the sort of thing that wakes up the viewer and get them more interested in the bulletin as a whole. As a device to get the viewers attention, it worked brilliantly.

It was excellent to have an Interview with both Chris Hoy and Ellie Simmonds. Both athletes have become very big in the last few years, especially so in the wake of the Olympics. I liked the vox pops with member of the public saying who they'd like to win. We generally try to stay away from them at WINOL but for something which is decided by the public vote, it works.

Throughout the bulletin I noticed that a lot of the reporters tend to have themselves in shot during interviews. I feel that seeing a small part of the back of the reporters head in shot is a little jarring. maybe because I'm not used to it. I'm not sure if this is an editorial decision that they should do it. Maybe the audience of Channel 5 News appreciates it. In which case, that's fair enough. Working off my own experience at WINOL, though, it's generally thought that the viewers don't come to the news to see the reporter. they just want to know the story.

WINOL Bulletin 31/10/12

This is the latest of the local news bulletins produced by my journalism course at the University of Winchester. This bulletin contains part of a continuing piece on the Hampshire Police Commissioner post; The closure of a Southampton Ford factory; A look at the local effect of Storm Sandy in the USA; Football and ice hockey from the local Hampshire teams, and a pub on wheels, now I know that's got your attention! 



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