Month: September 2014

  • Radio Update

    There are various bits of radio news over the last few days that are worthy of note: Capital has a new advert – Using all those artists who showed up for the Summertime Ball and did bits in front of a green screen. It’s a neat trick that they’ve been doing for a while –…

  • Douglas Adams

    12 May 2001 was a big day for me. It was the FA Cup Final, with Arsenal playing Liverpool in Cardiff. And it was also a good friend’s wedding in London. The match didn’t go so well for an Arsenal fan like me (forced to sneak off during the reception to watch the match on…

  • Polling and the Scottish Referendum

    What an interesting few weeks it has been for poll-watching. I say that from my London perspective. Obviously north of the border, this is a debate that has been running for years now, and us southerners have only really woken up to it recently. In particular, we woke up to it following a Sunday Times…

  • Tour of Britain 2014 – Stage 8 (London)

    A good day yesterday at the Tour of Britain watching first the time trial, and later a 10 lap circuit race around town. Lots of opportunities for photos, and I took them! For all my photos, head over to Flickr. And for something a little different, here are some of my photos along with some…

  • A Streetcar Named Desire

    The corner of Royal and Desire in New Orleans. There really was a streetcar that ran along Desire… It seems that this has been one of the hot tickets of the season, which just makes it bit odd that I managed to buy a pair of tickets for a Saturday night a couple of weeks…

  • Wildlife Sound Recording Course

    I spent last weekend near Reepham in Norfolk learning some of the basics of sound recording. Regular readers to this blog will know that I’ve tinkered loosely with audio in the past. I’ve owned a Zoom H2 for a number of years, and in particular I’ve tinkered around with some binaural recordings. But while the…

  • The [Insert Your Name Here] Arena

    Earlier today I got an email advertising an upcoming gig with Sting and Paul Simon. Tickets are going on sale soon for the event taking place at the Phones 4U Arena. Phones 4U Arena? That’s a new one to me. I realised pretty quickly that it probably wasn’t new, and was just a recent sponsorship…

  • When Are Casio, Timex or Rolex Making a Smartwatch?

    Another day, another over-excited consumer goods release. Most others use trade shows. Apple does its own thing. It works for them. Fine. I can’t comment on the phone updates as I’ve not really seen anything that interesting or novel in any phone I’ve seen announced recently. Certainly nothing to make me think that my Nexus…

  • House Style

    I had to laugh at the weekend when Danny Baker pulled apart a trailer that adopted that most over-used radio production style of having alternate lines with some kind of digital/distanced effect. You know what I mean. And if you listen to this short clip, you’ll know what Baker is getting at. listen to ‘House…

  • The SEO of Titles

    I’ve moaned for a long time about the lack of imagination in television programme titles – particularly in one-off documentaries. The producers’ theory seems to state that if you don’t adopt the “Ronseal” approach, then nobody will know what your programme is about. We browse EPGs rather than use the Radio Times or newspaper television…