Blog
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Slurping podcasts for research and preservation with yt-dlp
My comedy archive includes hundreds of podcasts stretching back to the medium’s infancy, and I continue to actively preserve dozens of shows each week. I also routinely listen to and transcribe podcasts in the course of my research, so I’m constantly saving and organising local copies of audio files. Since podcasting is haphazardly elegantly built… Continue reading
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RSS for researchers
RSS rules. It’s one of the last remaining vestiges of the good internet, and its status as an open, extensible, decentralised standard feels increasingly anachronistic, perhaps even radical, on today’s web. Over its lifetime RSS has proven surprisingly flexible and conducive to new uses — podcasting being the most famous example — but the standard… Continue reading
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Doctorb
Last month I submitted the amended version of my thesis, meaning that after I sprint across the stage at Marvel Stadium and execute an exquisite flying kick to the Vice-Chancellor’s bonneted head, I’ll be a doctor. I haven’t looked it up but I assume this is the procedure. I hate to make this all about… Continue reading
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Fan-led preservation practices: remastering The Ricky Gervais Show
“The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it.” John Gilmore I’m part of a small but enduring community of online weirdos centred around The Ricky Gervais Show, a comedy programme hosted by Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and producer Karl Pilkington on and off between 2001 and 2010. The show is now mostly forgotten,… Continue reading
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Art and (in)accessibility
Love this piece in Overland, by Kieran Stevenson, noting the grotesque irony of Julian Rosefeldt’s Euphoria — a purportedly anti-capitalist screed of a film — playing at Melbourne’s bougie marquee arts festival RISING. The worst part of the show’s marketing isn’t encountered until after you decide to leave—attendees must exit through the gift shop, where… Continue reading