Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Archiving Podcasts
This week, it was announced that WTF with Marc Maron would be ending its run after 16 years. The show will end sometime in the autumn (aka ‘fall’) having produced more than 1,600 episodes over that time. Maron’s podcast was one of the big early titles, and it’s fair to say that although Maron was…
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The Best Democracy Money Can Buy
I got hold of this book after hearing it’s author Greg Palast speaking on the Simon Mayo programme on Radio Five Live. I suppose he’s a slightly more literary Michael Moore. The book is written in the same freewheeling style, but there’s just a little bit more depth. Sometimes he’s a little off the mark…
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The Essential Spike Milligan
I got this at work, and was really only reading it, as I had no other books to hand and wanted something to read. I fairly raced through it, but must admit that I skipped entire extracts. I suppose that I’ve never really got The Goons, so complete scripts of various episodes make fairly hard…
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BBC Big Read Top 100
Well the BBC’s top 100 books have been published, and they’re a bit disappointing. Harry Potter’s there in abundance – surely it should be counted as one book like Lord of the Rings? Then there are books like Animal Farm which are evidently books people read at school for O Level or GCSE. And of…
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Murakami
Nice big piece in today’s Guardian Review about the phenomenom that is Haruki Murakami.
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My Route To Work
Well I’ve been trying something different this week. I can save a third on my travel costs if I get an overground only train ticket. That means that I have to travel in to Kings Cross, and head off on foot, but this has a bonus of being some actual exercise – with a half…
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The Best A Man Can Get
This book is extremely popular in medialand, a bit like E. And also like E, it had been sitting on my bookshelf for quite some time. I only really picked it up because it was the morning after our party at work, and my bag was still at work. As it turns out, it was…
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Guantanamo Bay
As we learn that the Americans have caputered Tariq Aziz, the Iraqi deputy prime minister, we must begin to wonder where in the world he’s likely to be held. And Guantanamo Bay seems the likeliest destination. The front page of this morning’s Guardian carries a report that the Americans are shamefully holding children they captured…
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Sugar
Well I used a tablespoon and a half of it today in my (very successful) first attempt at breadmaking, but I need to ensure that I don’t let sugar exceed 10% of my diet according to a new report published jointly by the WHO and the FAO. This report has incensed the US sugar industry…
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Music Collector
I’ve just returned to a program that I first got interested in a couple of years ago – Music Collector. The idea is that it keeps a database of all my CD music (and indeed any other music that I have). The really clever part is that it can batch scan CD TOCs and then…
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Breadmaking
OK – I bit the bullet. I bought a breadmaker – a ridiculously cheap breadmaker. I got it from Woolies for �19.99. They’d reduced it successively from �39.99 to �29.99 to �24.99, until finally I deemed it cheap enought. I bought some flour, yeast and other bits and bobs, and as I type, I’m theoretically…
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American TV to Iraq
Just watched an entertaining piece about US efforts to present themselves to the Iraqis by rebroadcasting American news programming locally with Arabic voiceovers. The Guardian had a similar story this morning. Although ironically, ABC was showing an interview with The Dixie Chicks over their comments about the war and their feelings about Bush. (Incidentally, their…
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The White Lioness
I read this whilst studiously avoiding The Guardian’s review last Saturday, when I saw “Reviewers of thrillers usually remain tactfully reticent about plot details” in the first line. To be fair, when I came back to the review after reading the book, it wasn’t as bad as I thought in terms of giving away the…
Hadrian’s Wall
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