TMINE

Well, the blog’s been going for a few years (two and a half) now and since a good proportion of it has been reviews, I’ve built up a fair old count: about 500, give or take, including third-episode verdicts, et al.

This can make it a little harder for y’all to find things than I’d like. After all, I do preview and review many new US shows quite some time before they make it across the pond: Dexter, season one, started last Wednesday on ITV1 (it’s already been on FX), a bit over a year after it aired in the US; and Mad Men started on BBC4 last night, six months after it first aired overseas.

There’s the complete archive, the search engine and tagging here, of course. But even if the show’s virile enough to have merited a tag, quite a few articles can get tagged relatively quickly (Dexter‘s chalked up 30 so far, while Mad Men’s chalked up 13), which makes finding the review a bit of a chore.

There have been complaints.

So, after building a rudimentary lathe and after an hour or so of clanging round the back, I’ve put together the Reviews A-Z, a simple index of all the reviews and (almost) nothing but reviews, sorted by title in alphabetical order.

It seems to work all right, although it does make me wish I’d been a bit more rigourous in my naming conventions, a whole lot sooner, but it should be of help. You can always find it at the bottom of the reviews list in the ‘Reviews’ tab to the right – yes, the grey bit under the “Featured Articles” bit and above the “Recent Videos”.

Let me know if you find any problems, or if you hate it. Or if you can’t find it. Oops.

You’ve probably noticed that some commenters get to have pictures by their comments. How do you get to have your pic by your comment, you might be wondering?
Here’s how

1. Get a MyBlogLog account and remember to provide your URL when you leave a comment
2. NEW FEATURE: Sign in with your LiveJournal or Vox account and this lovely blog will go grab your current user picture and use that. If you change your pic (or you’re already signed in with LiveJournal and your pic isn’t showing up), you can update it by logging out and then back in again.
3. Some other way I’ve forgotten.

I’ve been working on a way to get this to work with Blogger accounts, but Blogger’s a bit behind the times so it’s officially Hard.

As promised last week, I’ve redesigned The Medium Is Not Enough to be a little less antediluvian. Hope you like it.

There are still a few minor bugs with it, which hopefully I’ll be able to iron out over the next few days, and I’ve still got to reclassify most of the back entries so don’t expect “Random Thoughts” and “Essays” to expose too much, at the moment.

All comments welcome!

UPDATE:… once I’ve fixed the commenting system! Oops!

UPDATE2: Fixed it! Apologies to Anna, Rullsenberg and anyone else who tried to leave a comment but couldn’t – I’m officially an idiot.

As you (hopefully) all know by now, I’ve been running a readers’ survey since before Christmas to see what sort of things you guys want on this blog, partly to make sure you all have fun here but also partly to make sure I don’t die an early death from over-work and stress.

Anyway, the polls closed on Friday, the results are in and what’s going to happen next is after the jump. I was going to use charts and graphs to break it all down, but that seemed like a lot of effort and would somewhat have undermined my point about not doing too much work.

Continue reading “Readers’ survey results”

Happy New Year, everyone. Welcome to the future. My, isn’t it shiny and – oh dear – relatively bereft of new US television thanks to the ongoing writers’ strike. Oh well. What shall The Medium is Not Enough do?

Happily, there’s always British TV (oh, Father. Why hast thou foresaken me?), Big Finish plays, movies and DVDs. Depending on my omnipresent blood-pressure monitor, social engagements, how many of my limbs are broken at any one time and that cruel, merciless arbiter of life and time that we call “work”, I’m hoping to launch a couple of new features over the coming month, including “It’s in my DVD collection and it should be in yours, too”, “The Sepia-tinted Carusometer” and reviews of some of the older Big Finish plays. I’m also hoping to do episode-by-episode reviews of Primeval and Torchwood when they hit us in the faces with the subtlety of softcore gay porn that also happens to include dinosaurs. I also taped Sense and Sensibility. Maybe I’ll review that. Certainly, a review of Return to the Web Planet will be coming your way soon.

There is also the ongoing readers’ survey. So far, only a few replies – by which I mean four – which isn’t all that promising, but it has given me a few ideas. The Carusometer, for instance, is going to do less talking – how appropriate.

But come on guys, let me know what you want – if you don’t use it, you’ll lose it! I’m still sorely tempted (despite my workaholism kicking in having been exposed to today’s milligram of work) to drop it, but if another three to five people say they find it useful (they don’t even have to use their real names), I’ll keep it on. The survey will continue until the 11th and the news will continue on until then at least.

TTFN!