Oi. You. Yes, you.

Why are you on my blog? It’s not like I update it anymore. You’re just being nosy. I bet you have better things to be doing with your life. No? Well let me give you one then.

I have started to do my own internet radio show. Your ears are needed. So head over to this page, and listen. Give me feedback. Song requests. Abuse. Anything.

Just listen. OK?

I doubt you’ve ever read it. Most people ignore it, I’m sure, and I certainly would. However, if it is on your screen for around 10 seconds you can’t just ignore it. That would be rude, so I feel inclined to give just a little bit of my attention to the notice, (someone spent time typing it, after all) and so this was when I noticed the words “oil rig” in the middle of it.

Why can films not be shown on oil rigs without the copyright holder’s permission? I bet the workers watch films at home. And there can only be so many hours aboard an oil rig where you find staring at a pressure gauge interesting. They need something to enjoy! And they aren’t allowed to watch a movie.

I felt so strongly about this I did some research – searching Google “why can’t films be shown on oil rigs“. There isn’t much. So I replaced “film” in my search for the word “movie”, because American’s prefer the word movie. And I found one result on a discussion site.

Someone had had the exact same “huh?” moment as me, and a few people (two) had answered. Here is what they said:

Well, some oil rigs are really big. Some of them have over 500 employees on board, and some of them have cinemas. I’m sure the line you are referring to has something to do with that: although the cinema on an oil rig might not technically be a cinema (the boss pays for it, it is outside of territorial waters, etc.), the producers of the movie still want it to appear that way.

But I don’t think there is any formal inspection on the matter, although it can be argued that an American oil rig is subject to American law wherever it is, just as this is the case with ships (I’m assuming this is all true. It does apply to Dutch oil rigs and ships, however.)

Posted by Coldfire

They have cinemas on board! It’s like a cruise ship. Someone should notify Michael O’Leary, maybe he could do package cruises on them.

Then someone else wades in:

Yeah – it’s clearly aimed at “public” showings. The rig owners would not just be showing to their own employees but a lot of other contractors too. I used to work offshore though and never remember seeing that warning but then probably was not reading the intro stuff too closely given the subject matter of most of the video library!

Hmmmm. I suppose a distinct lack of women for months at a time…

Anyway, he then went on to talk about which country governs an oil ship, in a trackback to Mr Coldfire:

BTW I am pretty sure that – apart from drillships – US (or any other flag state) drilling rigs ARE NOT automatically governed by their flag law. Certainly this is not the case in the Dutch sector of north-sea or any other EEZ I am aware of which would all follow local law. What commercial/contract law is applicable in the contractual chain that brought them to that location in the first place is at the choice of the parties concerned. If a murder took place though it would be local law. In international waters outside any claimed EEZ though it might be different. Rigs are not generally governed by the international marine conventions applicable to ships – not that the US have ratified too many of them anyway!

Posted by notquitekarpov

So there we go. Now we kind of know.

I also found a discussion on the matter in the Malcolm In The Middle fan forum. Who knew Malcolm In The Middle fans discussed such important topics on their own special website? The old woman who lived in a show gets mentioned,which is nice.

Footnote: The WARNING message also prohibits use in schools, coaches and clubs. I have seen DVDs with this message on in all of these environments. I am a law-breaking rebel. A bit like when Tesco sold me a Gavin & Stacey boxset which was a 15, when I was 14. They should be fined.

I first discovered it years ago when there was a feature on one of my local station’s shows where they played music you wouldn’t usually hear on the radio. All I could remember of  this song was the lyric “there on the stair, right there, a little mouse with…” or something like it. I decided to Google this and I found the song I loved, from all those years ago.

Instructions:

1. Go to wikipedia and hit random. The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to quotationspage.com and hit random. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3. Go to http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/ The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4. Use Photoshop or similar (PowerPoint will do), even Windows paint will work, to put it all together.
5. Upload the finished work somewhere, and post a link to it in the comments so we can see your glorious piece of work.

Here are a few of my efforts:

6 years ago I would have been in my element. Christmas was coming! Santa was coming! I didn’t really still believe in him, though no one actually told me the truth I just gradually worked it out. Mainly because my Mother would often send me off int he middle of shopping trips to go to another shop with my Father whilst my Mother went present buying in Woolies or such like. I do remember getting very excited when I was about 4 though when I recieved some felt tips with the tag reasding “love Santa x”. I noticed it was in my Mother’s handwriting, but I wanted to believe. And I did.

Now Christmas is just another day for me. We get a holiday becuase of it. You have to go spending money on people, on things they probably don’t want or need and will stop using/watching/listening to in 2 months time. It’s the thought that counts. Yet the magic of Christmas has gone for me. If I was still 8 now I would have loved it, sending Christmas cards to all my friends and posting them in the school Chrimbo card collector box, I would have loved all the snow on the ground and I’d be bouncing off the walls.

If I had my own way I wouldn’t be having turkey for dinner tommorow, I’d be having a Chinese. There would be no presents neatly wrapped, it would just be like a long Sunday afternoon with a good film stuck in the middle of it. We haven’t put the tree up, because I said it was unnecessary. No one is coming round to visit us on Christmas Day, unlike last year. There’s nothing special about tomorrow.

Bah humbug.

I’m a miserable git anyway, but Christmas just turns that on full pelt.

Honestly, I would love the magic of Christmas to touch me again, but it ain’t happening. Sometime soon it will, and when I’m older and have kids of my own I’m sure it’ll be as magical as I remember.

P.S Merry Christmas.

And I got an answer. And of course, due to the limitations of twitter and 140 characters I needed a bit of explanation. Which I got. Then I asked some more stuff and got answers, and then eventually they sent me a link to Google, via a site called Let Me Google That For You –  a clever link which you send to the person involving an animation of the search being typed in, with the caption “Was that so hard?”

And this made me realise something, and made me feel slightly sad.

We all rely on Google for our everyday life, most of us use it or another search engine everyday to find something on the interwebs. But, my point is I think we rely on it too much – any question or thought you get in your head you can Google and an answer will be there. There’s no more looking it up in books, or asking other people. No one can share their knowledge, which I find sad. All the things we know are so rarely used in life. People don’t ask you things, and we don’t think for ourselves. Google is always there and we can just go to it and find out what we need. Our knowledge is purely based on our specialist subject, our work and we’ve all become narrow minded. You may well have a passion and flare for a certain something and know a lot about it  but who are you going to share it with? No one else is interested, and all the people at work have the same passion and flare, and the same knowledge.

And as much as it is nice to be able to Google a dilemma or question, asking a real human being is so much better. Call me negative, but it’s true. And as much as I did type the question into Twitter, at least I got a human response. They had the knowledge to answer the question, but when was the last time someone asked them it? Most probably no one ever has.

Google exists you know.