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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.…
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Four Months In – Many Politicians are Still ‘Zooming’ Badly
I posted a Twitter thread on this subject earlier, but I thought it was worth exploring a little more here. This morning I was watching BBC Breakfast, and Louise Minchen was interviewing Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary, Nick Thomas-Symonds from his home constituency in Torfaen. What I couldn’t get over was the poor resolution of Thomas-Symonds’…
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The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Richard Osman’s first novel is as delightful as it is unexpected. Writing a crime novel didn’t seem like the obvious next thing for Richard Osman to do, and I always get a little nervous when celebrities turn their hands to something outside their previous career. Are they just being published because they’re famous? Well that’s…
Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
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Yellowface/All The Lovers In The Night
Yellowface by R F Kuang I first came across R F Kuang with last year’s very enjoyable Babel, an alternate history of the British Empire told in a world where magic exists and is controlled by an elite group of individuals. Yellowface is very different, but no less enjoyable. It’s a book about books, and…
Hadrian’s Wall
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