Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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RAJAR Q3 2026
This post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the many years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via…
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The Front Page
The British Library has a new exhibition at the moment called The Front Page. It’s a retrospective of around 100 front pages from British (well, I reckon English actually, since I didn’t see any papers from outside of London, with the possible exception of the Manchester Guardian) newspapers from the last 100 years. It’s fascinating…
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VOIP Phone
I’ve played around quite a bit with VOIP but thus far, I’ve not really embraced it. A while back I mentioned that I’d seen Tesco selling cheapish phones accompanying their own VOIP service. Today I crossed over to the darkside and went into Tesco where I noticed a sign that suggested that the phones had…
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X-Men: The Last Stand
The Last Stand (or X-Men 3 as it was known until pretty recently) is the latest, and possibly final entry in the X-Men film series. Although Bryan Singer was univerally praised for his first two, they always left me a little cold; perhaps because I was more a DC comics reader than Marvel. Singer, of…
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Deal or No Deal… The Book!
Wandering aroud Ottaker’s today I couldn’t help noticing that someone’s managed to publish Deal or No Deal, the book. So, I wondered, exactly how do you turn a guessing game into a 400 page book. A quick flick through it, revealed that it must have been “written” inside a week. As I say, Deal or…
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Silence of the Grave
This is the book for which Indriðason won the CWA Gold Dagger award last year. I enjoyed the first book in the series, Tainted Blood (or previously, Jar City), and the return of police detective Erlendur is welcome. As before, he’s struggling with his private life. He lives alone, but his dug-addicted daughter has miscarried…
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“Bogus” Therapies
I’m really glad these doctors have come out to speak up against the pointless waste of the NHS spending on “alternative” medicines that offer absolutely no proof of actually working.
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Pet Shop Boys – Fundamentalism
I know just about every magazine or newspaper has already given the new Pet Shop Boys album, Fundamentalism, 4 or 5 stars (out of five), but it really is that good. I am a bit of a long time Pet Shop Boys fan and this album really is the best since Behaviour with some great…
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LA Stories
Listeners to The Geoff Show may have heard ITV’s Head of Entertainment recently fielding programme suggestions from listeners. He was very good, and a scarily high proportion of ideas had already either been pitched or even produced. Anyway, Jackson is no Johnny come lately to the broadcasting game, and he’s just presented the first pair…
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Doonesbury
How long has Doonesbury been in the Independent on Sunday? It always seemed a little weird that The Observer didn’t carry it – and now I know why. (Although I think it was probably more a case of nobody else taking it, and IoS deciding that they would).
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HD Launches
A good piece on Mediaguardian about HD, with Sky’s service launching today, and material already being available to some Telewest customers. I tend to think that it won’t take off quite as quickly as some would hope, since we’ve alredy got more definition with PAL, compared to the US NTSC format. We’ve also had widescreen…
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Sell of Radio 1 and Radio 2
A report from the European Media Forum is reported to suggest that BBC Radios 1 and 2 should be sold off. They’d raise £500m and since this would “re-balance the radio market and level the competitive playing field between commercial broadcasters.” I beg to differ. What’d actually happen is that vast parts of commercial radio…
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Digilogic PVR
I’ve been meaning for ages to mention the Digilogic PVR that I got from Argos a while back – the FVRT95 (incidentally it’s identical to the T90, but that’s Argos code). For under £100 you’ve got an 80 GB single-tuner PVR which’ll record around 40 hours of television. As it came supplied it could timer…
Hadrian’s Wall
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