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YouTube: Different Things to Different People
There have been a few stories kicking around about YouTube’s end of year “Rewind” video. YouTube has been making these for a few years, and they’ve grown to become big-budget affairs. But this year’s video is seemingly the most “disliked” video in YouTube history. Now I should say upfront that I have not watched this video.…
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Eleven Sports in the UK Reported to be in Trouble
I wrote something on Twitter about this, but thought I’d elaborate a little here too. There was something of a shake-up in rights prior to the start of this football season when newcomer Eleven Sports entered the UK market and snapped up rights from Sky (La Liga) and BT Sport (Serie A and UFC) amongst…
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IKEA Tradfri Lights Working with Hue, Alexa and Google Assistant
Here’s another one of those tutorials that I really shouldn’t need to write but somehow do, because despite dozens of tutorials already existing online, it was only a combination of things that got everything working for me. In short, I already have a Philips Hue lighting set-up and I wanted to add some IKEA Tradfri…
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Building a Desktop National Rail Dashboard
For ages now I’ve been meaning to put together a home dashboard: a screen that gives me up to date information about my local railway station with the departure boards showing. A slightly bigger ambition was to have the dashboard also display times for nearby buses – and perhaps the weather and Twitter news feeds. …
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Late Autumn
I thought I’d try to get my drone up for the dying days of autumn before the leaves have fully gone and the cold settles in. So late afternoon on Saturday I captured some footage over Trent Park. I was pretty satisifed with the results, and because I’m seeing Amiina on Sunday evening, I used…
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Setting Radio Alarms with Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant
First a note of caution. This piece was published in November 2018, and it’s entirely possible – indeed probable – that things will have changed if you’re reading this at any point after that date. It’s also worth noting that I’m in the UK, and these solutions may not work in your region. Also, I’m…
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Dark Sacred Night by Michael Connelly
Possibly my favourite show on Amazon Prime Video is Bosch, based on the Michael Connelly series of novels. The fifth season isn’t due until next year, but the good news is that Amazon has already renewed it for a sixth season! Harry Bosch has now appeared in something like 21 novels now, and Dark Sacred Night…
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Greatest Hits Radio
Interesting news from Bauer Media this morning. They’re launching Greatest Hits Radio nationally from January 7th, to sit alongside Hits Radio. Together they will form the Hits Radio Network. It sounds like this new mostly networked service is being positioned as a slightly older version of Absolute Radio Network. It will target 40-59 “Reclaimers,” playing…
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Trends in Podcasting: Cults and Cult Leaders
This is a sort-of follow up to yesterday’s piece on daily news podcasts. It may become an occasional series. In March this year, Netflix launched a documentary series called Wild Wild Country. It’s a six part series exploring an Indian guru and his followers in a county in deepest Oregon. There’s no obvious way to…
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Trends in Podcasting: News Podcasts
In January last year, The New York Times launched a new podcast called The Daily. Spinning off to an extent from what the paper had been doing during the 2016 Presidential election, The Daily quickly developed a following. With a strong voice – both authorial and audible – in Michael Barbaro, it grew quickly. For…
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Things I Hate on News Sites
I’m something of a news junkie, and I spend a lot of time reading stories on a reasonably wide range of news sites. I pay for a number of those sites, but appreciate that advertising revenues alone aren’t enough to support any sites – with the possible exception of the very largest. But there are…
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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