Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Recent Books
It feels like ages since I wrote about some of the recent books I’ve been reading. Let’s try to put that right with this handful of recently finished books. Taipei Story by Rebecca F. Kuang I first discovered Rebecca F Kuang when I read her fantasy epic Babel a couple of years ago. Her lastest…
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Trevor and Simon at the Bull & Gate
Remember Trevor & Simon from Going Live and Live & Kicking? Well if you’d wondered what they were up to these days, I can tell you that Trevor is in a band called Sucker who were playing at the Bull and Gate in Kentish Town on Friday night before a friend’s band came on. This…
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C4 on a Friday Night
Interesting to read the responses on Mediaguardian’s Organ Grinder blog to the question “Will you be watching Channel 4 tonight?” Obviously, for me the answer is a resounding no. I’d post my response there, but the commenting system seems to be down at the moment. So let me write here instead. We’re at the start…
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Words and Phrases I’m Really Fed Up With
It’s not that there aren’t some fine sites that utilise some of the following; but the words and phrases themselves are so over-used that tedium sets in when I read them. To put this in context I read a trade story about the Costa Book Awards (formerly the Whitbread Book Awards). It explained that as…
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Select Committee Looks At Quiz TV
Interesting report from the BBC about yesterday’s (I think) procedings in the Culture Select Committee examing “quiz TV” shows. At first it seems curious that Sky Bet should be so vehement in its opposition to the current state of play. Surely all these channels are paying the parent BSkyB lots of cash to rent space…
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TV Criticism
Since the Daily Mail recently decided not to replace their TV critic with a regular in the job, there has been a bit of debate about the value of TV reviewing. Today in Mediaguardian, Mark Lawson questions whether or not we need to change the way we do things. Previously, Peter Preston in the Observer,…
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Great Music Copyright News
Some of the best news recently has got to be that the UK is not going to extend the copyright on music beyond the current 50 years to a proposed 95 years. The rather random seeming 95 years is because that’s what it is in America. As I’ve mentioned before, record companies are seemingly unable…
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CCTV Cameras OK – Microphones a Step Too Far
Oh the irony. Earlier this week Henry Porter presented a fine programme on More 4 (should have been on Channel 4) called Suspect Nation, examining not just ID cards, but the rash of CCTV cameras and other monitoring that’s going on. In particular, there’s the “function creep” where data’s captured and used more and more…
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Curious New Ad Campaigns
This weekend, I’ve noticed two new print campaign ads which seem worthy of some note. First off, Microsoft is advertising its Live search. With the strapline “Does the world need another search engine?” it explains some of the reasons that surfers might want to use Live instead of Google. Obviously it doesn’t mention Google, but…
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Ed Reardon Series 3 – Coming Soon
Regular readers will know that I’m an enormous fan of Ed Reardon’s Week. The paperback of what’s effectively the first series recently came out, and with any luck, next March should see the release of the CD of series one. But more imminently, at 11.30am on Friday 15 December, the first of six episodes of…
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Bush TR2015WIFI Wi-Fi Radio
I thought I’d write a brief review of the recently released Bush Wi-Fi radio. With the growing number of home networks being set up, this has to be a growth area for radio, and I’ve only really been waiting for prices to fall far enough to buy one. This particular model can be purchased at…
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Orange’s 60 Seconds of Fame
I have to link to this because, well, I made it.
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Casino Royale
So finally the new Bond is with us – Daniel Craig. Frankly, after the last film, the only possible way was going to be up. Recently we’ve had The Bourne Identity and more specifically, The Bourne Supremacy where the realism was heightened and the visceral thrill of something perhaps not working out returned to the…
Hadrian’s Wall
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