Month: February 2015

  • Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2015

    With a couple of days holiday to use up before the end of February, and not being too certain where to go, a friend suggested that Ghent was nice. I’d never been, and then I realised that if I did go, it’d be in time for the “Opening Weekend” of the Spring Classics – the…

  • On “Internal Browsers” – And Twitter’s Recent Addition

    A while back Facebook integrated a so-called internal or in-app browser into its mobile apps. The ideas is that when you click to see a website that somebody has shared on Facebook, instead of being taken out of the Facebook environment, the app would display the relevant page within its own browser. The main reason…

  • A New Radio Academy

    Yesterday, the now outgoing chair of the Radio Academy, Ben Cooper, presented a new vision of what the Academy should be. You will perhaps recall that it has been through some fairly tumultuous times recently. The packed AGM last December saw the airing of some serious differences of opinion at a time when both the…

  • Qatar 2022: Winners and Losers

    I’m just trying to see who the winners and losers of Qatar 2022 will be following FIFA’s decision to hold the World Cup in November and December rather than the traditional summer slot: I suspect that there are many more losers, and not very many more winners. I do think there’s a strong chance that…

  • Podcasts: The Android Problem

    A piece on Digiday examines the undeniable fact that listening to podcasts is heavily skewed towards Apple’s products, despite there being significantly more Android devices in the market. Now we know that not all things are equal: iPhone owners spend more on average – probably not surprising because they tend to be more expensive devices,…

  • View from the Shard

    To the 34th floor of The Shard and the Shangri La Hotel where a friend is having a party. A great night but a challenge to get good photos from. I knew that the internal lights of the glass would cause horrible reflections inside, so to try to combat it, I arrived with a piece…

  • The Duke of Burgundy

    Peter Strickland is one of my favourite directors at the moment, and basically I will watch anything he makes. He used an inheritance to make Katalin Varga, a fascinating little 2009 film in which a woman confronts the abusers of her past. It’s set in Romanian speaking Hungary and filmed in that language. But it…

  • Buying a Copy of The Times

    It really shouldn’t be this hard. If I want to buy a newspaper, and there are some of us who still do, then it’s pretty easy. I go into a local newsagent, garage or supermarket, pick up a copy and hand over some money. Yes, the newsagent might want me to place an order with…

  • Greenwich

  • The £5 Billion League

    You know how this is supposed to be austerity Britain? Well you wouldn’t know that looking at the sums announced earlier today as the conclusion of the next three years’ of live Premier League coverage were concluded. The total cost of the rights was £5.136 billion for the seasons 2016/17 to 2018/19. Sky has retained…

  • Self

  • Revolution – Round 1

    In my ongoing quest to get through all the photos I’ve previously taken and been sitting on, we reach this October 2014 event – the first round of the UK track competition, Revolution. To put this in perspective, they’ve just had Round 4. And it’s coming back to London in a few weeks, so I…