Wilko Ramblings....

Part whatever in an occasional series of ramblings.

I know I’ve spoken about this before but it’s so more relevant these days with the technology that I don’t pretend to understand of cookies and tracking cookies.

Here’s an example of what I mean : Listen to BBC Asian Network on line and within an hour on Facebook’s sponsored pages are “Hundreds of Muslim women” wanting to meet me, which maybe quite fun if only it were true!! Taking it to the next step even if in error you accidentally clicked on these Muslim women and even closed it as quick as you opened it by the time you opened your e mail page there would be a banner ad there which miraculously has just appeared – Match.com!!

Of course it goes on from there too…. Put that last paragraph in an e mail, especially with gmail and send it even to yourself and then read the ‘suggestions’ from Google about that e mail! They now have the BBC Asian Network, Muslim women and Match.com to play with.

Got to be honest it can be fun if you are fully aware of what is going on, but think how it could affect the less aware or the more vulnerable – and we can all fall too easily in to that category!!

........ as an updated postscript to that above, I get an e mail notification of my blog posts and in 10 minutes amongst several other questionably relevant 'mentions' is <<Listen to A.R Rahman on Jango (a service I also subscribe to but didn't tell you before) currently playing Revival - Vande Mataram.>> and that was in just 10 minutes but probably in reality 10 seconds!!

Sticking with the BBC Asian Network for just a second, I love it by the way despite not understanding a great majority of it, but it sounds good!! There’s a lesson to be learnt here. They put stuff on because it sounds good and that is the only categorization allowed!! It may, rarely, be in English or Urdu or Hindii or Turkish or Tamil or any of many other recognized central Asian language. For broad minded, world music lovers this is brilliant. Sometimes only certain words that don’t translate that well are all that end up in English…. Booty, body and dance floor are prime examples!! Again the opposite occurs, the presenters speak for the most part in highly accented English but break quite often in to their native tongue.

The other lesson here of course is that good broadcasting content breaks down all the barriers! Imagine the BBC European network! German songs followed by Swedish vocalists singing in French with announcers anything other than your native tongue. The news in a highly accented French!! No one would listen! Guaranteed!

I guess you know that you are 56 and not 16 :

If when you are off the beaten track you check your signal on your phone, just in case you fall or get way too lost to recover on your own!!

If it is no surprise to you that this steep incline is called Angina Hill! No kidding!