Month: February 2016

  • The New Day

    Well full marks for bravery. The New Day really is a different offering to the rest of the national news offering. It’s Trinity Mirror’s new national daily – and yet still feels a bit like a spoiler targeting the now Johnston Press owned “i” as the previous owner – the Lebadevs – take The Independent…

  • The Flying Scotsman

    I caught The Flying Scotsman at Finsbury Park this morning as it came through on Platform 7. It was being followed by at least four different helicopters shooting news footage!

  • Capturing MiniDV Tapes

    Time flies in technology, and “old” formats get left behind frighteningly quickly. Here’s my problem. I have a box of perhaps 100 Mini DV video tapes. They were shot with a camera that still works, and I want to capture the files into a digital format for preservation (I will hang onto the tapes as…

  • Trumbo

    I’m fascinated about the period of the Hollywood Blacklist – that post-war period, as the Cold War was getting under-way, when virulent anti-communists including Senator Joseph McCarthy started “investigating” perceived pro-Soviet beliefs and output in Hollywood. Before I went to see Trumbo, I thought I’d watch Fellow Traveller, a 1990 film made by the BBC…

  • DAB and DAB+: Some Testing Ahead of SDL/D2 Launch Next Week

    Rupert Brun, expert on all things audio and late of the BBC, has been testing his radios at ahead of the Sound Digital (SDL) launch in a week’s time. The multiplex is in full test mode at the moment, so if you want to know if you can hear the new services, then a rescan…

  • The Encounter

    The Encounter is a tour de force piece from actor, writer and director Simon McBurney and the Complicite theatre company. I confess that I mostly knew McBurney from his acting roles including the excellent Archdeacon Robert in the wonderful Rev with Tom Hollander, but you soon realise how accomplished he is simply from this one…

  • Spotlight

    Spotlight tells they story of the Boston Globe investigate journalism unit – called “Spotlight” – who investigated the long-term cover-up of child abuse by a significant number of priests within the Catholic Church in Boston beginning in 2001. The film is based very much on the Spotlight team in the newspaper itself, and details how…

  • D2: All Coming Together

    NB. This is not a DAB radio. The picture above is of possibly the most beautiful radio I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s the Nocturne, made in 1935 by a US company called Sparton and designed in Art Deco style by Walter Dorwin Teague. This one sits in the Wolfsonian museum in Miami. If…

  • Shock News: Car Drivers Quite Like the Radio

    It has been a bit of a bugbear of mine in recent years that car manufacturers who are busily building their “infotainment” systems (aka the ever more complex multimedia thing that sits where once you found a radio/cassette/CD player), don’t really know what their users want. The speed of consumer technological developments does not align…

  • Sell Me Personal Use Music Rights

    I like making the odd video, and invariable, I prefer to use music on the soundtrack. Given that I’m not about to commission my own music for my little projects, I have two choices. I can either use a music track I already know, or I can go to a music library and for a…

  • RAJAR Q4 2015

    Once again, this post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the past 9 years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I’m delighted to be able to bring you this analysis in association with it. For more details on RALF, contact Deryck Pritchard…