The Blueprint Podcast

 

 Episode 75 - Noise Theft [26:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We like to stick a flag on world events once in a while, and with the recent pointless conviction of the founders of Pirate Bay, we tackle noise theft in this episode.

Having reloaded their special foot-shooting gun some years after taking down Napster and causing file-sharing to become the many-headed monster that it is today, the people who themselves live in order to make huge sums of money from the work of creative people who are paid far less have done it again.

Pirate Bay is still there, and even if it wasn’t, Mininova is, and so is Piraboogle and all the rest of them.

Spotify, which is pretty much the same thing that Napster suggested ten years ago, has now occupied a position whereby everything is legal, the music industry make money out of it, and the consumer gets instant access to free tunes. Perfect, if wholly ridiculous that they didn’t just let Napster provide the same service back in the day.

They could do the same thing with movies and TV shows if they felt like it. In fact, I can legally watch On Demand television through my Virgin Media connection, but if I miss, say Lost one day and wanted to catch up with it the next, it would be illegal for me to download the episode using bittorrent using the same connection. Mental.

The Napster case just fragmented the issue and made it unmanageable for years. The Pirate Bay issue will do the same thing again, and here’s the kicker – it was fragmented already, because bittorrent doesn’t rely on one website’s existence to work. It relies on bittorrent clients which are available for free download. Even those are plentiful.

The lawyers can play Whack-A-Mole until they retire, and it’s they who are really sucking the money out of the music and DVD industries. They’re the ones who have somehow got people convinced that chasing website owners is better than actually trying to do something positive about the way that copyrighted content is delivered in the 21st Century.

Spotify works, so create the exact same service for movies and TV shows, you absolute bunch of idiots.

Rant over. We also give you a scat singing masterclass during this episode, but not before a thrilling game of Dog Bingo.

We hope you enjoy this week’s podcast. This week’s photo is of some file sharing.

File sharing - Always use clean files

And for good measure, here’s a picture of Reveen as well, since we talk about him this week.

Reveen. He wants you to relax with him

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 Episode 74 - You Have Been Watching... [20:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Remember when British sitcoms used to end with “You Have Been Watching…” and then a montage of clips of each of the stars with their name captioned on the screen? There were quite a few of them, and we tackle the inaccuracies and untruths within one British sitcom this week, or at least Chris does despite Dave’s protests that it wasn’t meant to be real.

We’re coming to you from Barnsley once again, and although we are still a bit hungover, we’re a using sentences a bit more than we were last week.

Please sponsor Chris’s continuing charity moustache, then join us next week for the next thrilling installment of The Blueprint Podcast.

Ruth Madoc in Hi-De-Hi. Chris met her at the Billingham Forum when he was about 18, fact fans. She was very nice.

PS – while looking for Hi-De-Hi related stuff, I’ve just discovered that actress Dianne Holland, who played Yvonne Stewart-Hargreaves in the show, died this February aged 78.  Apparently she was a good laugh in real life.

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As promised, photos will be uploaded here of the charity tash as it develops.

Many thanks to those who have so far donated or pledged donations by email, hope that you, reader, will sponsor my charity moustache too, and help terminally ill people and their loved ones to enjoy better quality of life.

www.justgiving.com-chris-tash

Moustache day 1 - not much to see yet!

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We have become Twits recently, or at least Chris has, and you’ll find him (me (him)) Twittering most days.

Twitter is a fun little thing. It’s a bit like an unholy union between the status updates of Facebook and the chat rooms of the Internet’s earlier days. The best thing about it is that many famous people are there, and you can pretend that you’re friends with them, even if they largely ignore your sicophantic overtures.

So far, I have been ignored by Stephen Fry, Jonathan Ross and Richard Herring. Oh, and Wesley Crusher from Star Trek, as well. Not a bad list of ignorers, I trust you’ll agree. I aim to be ignored by royalty and a talking animal by the end of this year.

You can come and see what’s going on behind the scenes if you go to http://twitter.com/BlueprintPod

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 Episode 56 - Criminal Swimming [27:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Episode 56 is a veritable smorgasbord of worldwide interest and competitive chat. Not only do we make a further attempt to speak to Xavier Laurent in France, but we have received an audio greeting all the way from the Netherlands.

We’ve also got a brand new game to play on the subject of quotations, which those of you who are fond of guessing things will adore.

We also chat about Indiana Jones’ CV (that’s his résumé if you’re in the US), and some talk of hydrotherapy leads to an idea for criminal swimmers.

I was nearly late today, because there was a jam on the motorway! Ho ho!

We’d also like to take this opportunity to point you in the direction of some other great podcasts which are floating around the interwaves.

Collins and Herring’s podcast is two famous guys enjoying a bit of chat and banter, and there are plenty of laughs in it, as well as lots of swearing. They’re nice and long, at over an hour each, so if you’re at the gym or on a long journey, make sure you take these two with you, as well as The Blueprint, of course.

Stephen Fry, possibly one of the world’s busiest and most widely-talented living creatures, has some podcast episodes, or Podgrams as he prefers to call them. They are often incisive and incredibly interesting, whilst the belly laughs, when they come, are superb.

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 Episode 55 - Lost in Translation [31:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yes, it’s episode 55 of The Blueprint, the British talk radio podcast that brings you the fun behind the mysteries of language and truth, whilst transcending boundaries of distance, speed and endurance. Or something like that.

In this episode, we have another go at contacting our French friend, Xavier, using some cutting edge technology. It goes reasonably well, we think.

The big news this week is another exciting new feature called Real Or Phoney, in which we throw truth and lies around like confetti at the marriage of Mr Veracity to Miss Duplicity.

We hope you’re enjoying the show, please drop us a line if you’ve got anything to say, ask, or complain to us about.

This lady is either demonstrating a sneeze for us, or this photo has something to do with one of Dave's other topics about the speed of bodily functions.

Join us for more Blueprint fun and laughter next week.

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 Episode 54 - Mind Your Language [26:09m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

The theme of Episode 54 is most certainly that of language, and it’s many uses. From Noel Coward’s special way of speaking, through to Ozzy Osbourne’s special way of singing, people certainly find their own ways to use language, and so do we.

Ever keen to embrace the wider world, we make attempts to contact a French podcaster (do you think he likes us?) and we hope to speak to him again soon.

To illustrate the success level of our French escapade, here’s the metaphorical street that we ended up in:

Rue De Merde

We’ll be back next week with more such talk, and more “Who’s The Greatest” fun and frolics.

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 Episode 53 - Super War! [37:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Welcome back to episode 53, in which Chris and Dave once again tackle the mighty issues of the day.

This week, after some parenting advice from Chris regarding Star Trek: The Next Generation, we’re keen to settle once and for all the question of who’s the greatest – Batman, Spiderman or Superman? As laymen in the superhero knowledge world, we don’t use the usual set of criteria for judging such things, though. We’ve got our own ideas.

For example, with which of the three would you feel most uncomfortable if you were trapped with them, naked in a lift (elevator, American listeners). Which would make the best rabbi? You get the picture.

This week’s visual aid constitutes proof of the result of the first “Who’s The Greatest” contest.

Please take the time to fill in our Listener Survey – it only takes a minute or two, and it helps us to find out, broadly speaking, what sort of people we’ve got listening to the podcast. That in turn helps us to improve what we do.

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 Episode 50 - Introducing Dave [33:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

As promised, we’ve now got new episodes of the Blueprint Podcast coming your way on Fridays at 5pm (UK Time) once again. Again, many apologies for the hiatus, and I hope you enjoy the new stuff.

This episode sees the podcasting debut of Dave Russell, an old friend of mine from Sixth Form College. Dave lives in France most of the time, so we’re lucky to have him on board for a while while he’s spending some time in the UK.

In this episode, we reboot with a brief history of The Blueprint, which leads us, of course, onto some allegedly topless blondes who robbed a teenager in the street recently. As with so many quirky stories, though, the briefest of investigations shows that not all is as it seems. Honestly, it’s like they start with the headline and then look for a story to sort of fit in with it, sometimes.

Then it’s a brief guided tour of the Amsterdam Sex Museum which, as you may expect, is a truly bizarre place, and one where visitors adopt those facial expressions. You know the ones – “I’m an enlightened modern person, this isn’t funny or crude, it’s simply the expression of our basic primal de… …look, there’s some breasts!”

Ensuring that Dave gets a proper baptism of fire (pun intended), we then get into religion and The Bible by way of a sulky priest who refuses to speak during services.

So, back with a vengeance, then. Please let us know what you think of the show, which you can do by emailing (link at the top of the page at www.blueprintpodcast.com) . If you have time (and you do, otherwise why are you reading this?) please take a minute to complete our Listener survey, which helps us to keep track of the general shape of our listenership.

Episode 51 will be right here at 5pm (UK Time) on Friday, October 24th.

Here’s an aerial photo of Amsterdam, where you can combine elegance with coarseness within two or three strides, and be almost run over by a tram or cyclist whenever you like.

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