Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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HBO Max and Paramount+: What It Might Mean For Sports
Today the deal was done, and Paramount took over Warner Bros. Discovery in a massive deal that has much of Hollywood quaking. There were some last minute wrinkles with a deal being struck a couple of weeks ago with a group of US Attorneys General, with the general view being that they folded and didn’t…
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It’s Different This Side of the Pond
Yesterday I saw my first TV ad – at least in quite a few months – for Wonder Woman 1984, the next instalment of the blockbuster DC Extended Universe film series. The TV ad tells me that the film is opening in UK cinemas on 16 December. Hmm. Now this is a film who’s release…
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Amazon and Rugby
This weekend the hastily arranged Autumn Nations Cup competition kicks off, with eight European nations playing each other in two pools initially before a finals weekend determines the winner. The competition is there to replace the usual Autumn internationals made up of southern hemisphere sides playing a series of big games in Europe. I’m sure…
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Substack Journalism
Earlier today, the actor Johnny Depp lost a libel action against News Group Newspapers and the journalist Dan Wootton. I’ll leave others to get into the detail of the case. But I follow a handful of folk in “British legal Twitter” and there were a few interesting summaries and thoughts on what the outcome meant…
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Rebecca
Netflix has a new adaptation of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca on the service. While this isn’t a review of that film, I can say that it’s probably just “OK” rather than anything special. And that’s a shame because I’m an enormous fan of director Ben Wheatley, and he has a decent cast – with a…
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Why ‘Access’ and ‘FYI Daily’ Exist
The other night I was looking for something to watch mindlessly for a bit and noticed that action film John Wick: Chapter 2 was on Channel 5. That would be suitably mindless. So I flicked over and was presented with a needless bit of fluff about some terrible-looking new Robert De Niro film. I was…
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Danger UXB
My phone rang. It was dad. “Hi Dad, what’s up?” I had actually spoken to him about 45 minutes earlier so it was unusual that he was calling back. “Mum thinks she’s found an unexploded bomb in the garden.” “What!” “She’s on the phone now to the police…” Mum is a keen gardener, and she’d…
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The Pros and Cons of YouTube Music – September 2020 Edition
I’ve been a user of Google Play Music for quite some time now – almost exclusively because they uniquely allow you to upload your own music (or other audio) to their servers. You could upload 50,000 tracks to the site. Why is this important? Maybe you have music that hasn’t been commercially released? Your friend’s…
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Building A Computer
For something like 10-15 years now, my main computer has been a laptop. Most recently, a Dell XPS 2015 with an Intel i7-6700 processor, and which I upgraded to 32GB RAM at some point. But I always struggled with just a single 500GB M2 SSD, with video taking up too much space. Once you’ve got…
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YouTube Ads Are Not Smart
Like many people, I watch a fair bit of YouTube. A surprisingly large amount I watch via an app on my TV, but I also watch all kinds of how-to tutorials on my PC. And with YouTube videos come ads. I’m a YouTube Music subscriber (previously Google Play Music) so it’d only be another £2…
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Out of Time by David Klass
The Green Man is out there, committing crimes across the US in support of the environment. Tom Smith is a junior FBI analyst – can he help catch this undoubtedly brilliant killer? And does America actually want him caught? That’s the set-up for this page-turning thriller. We join the action as Green Man launches an…
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The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine
I bought this book off the back of an entertaining interview with the author in The Observer a couple of weeks ago, and I’m incredibly glad I did. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist is a memoir of sorts, with Tomine literally sketching vignettes of his life as he persevered to become a renowned cartoonist.…
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Just Like the Other Girls by Claire Douglas
This is a twisty little tale where you’re never quite sure where the story is heading. Una has just got a job as a live-in companion to the wealthy, but cold Elspeth. But the money is good, and she’s willing to put up with the fact that Elspeth’s daughter Kathryn really doesn’t take to her.…
Hadrian’s Wall
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