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Crossfading in Music Streaming Apps
I think it’s fair to say that based on functionality and widespread adoption, Spotify has the best music streaming app. If somebody interesting has a shared playlist – it’s on Spotify. If you want to connect some hardware to a streaming app – it’ll probably work easiest on Spotify. And because it’s the biggest, it…
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Festive 500
The “Festive 500” was a cycling challenge cooked up by Rapha, the cycle-clothing company, in 2010 to promote more cycling across the Christmas and New Year period. Essentially the idea is that you cycle 500KM between Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve. With the advent of Covid, the “rules” allow to achieve this either out…
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Boxing Day 2021 Radio Times
A penultimate look at the TV and radio across the festive period. Where I’m sitting at the moment, it’s a very grey and dank Boxing Day, so the TV might offer more hope than a Boxing Day walk. As usual, click through, or to the links below to view fullsize (especially on mobile). The fullsize…
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Tour de Force by Mark Cavendish
I should probably preface this review by saying that I know one of the Cavendish’s ghostwriters, Daniel Friebe. So make of that what you will! When Mark Cavendish stormed to victory on Stage 4 of this year’s Tour de France, I was ecstatic. Cavendish is a cyclist who I’ve loved to follow for years. He…
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The Dark Hours by Michael Connelly
The latest book from Michael Connelly feels as contemporary as anything he’s written recently. Connelly always says that his books are set at the time that he writes them – hence his characters like Harry Bosch age in real time. But he also heavily references what is happening in the real world, and this book…
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The Second Cut by Louise Welsh
In The Second Cut we revisit the world of Rilke, who readers first came across in Louise Welsh’s fantastic debut The Cutting Room. Rilke works for Bowery Auctions, and he’s given a tip by a friend, Jojo, that there’s a house clearance sale coming up that his firm might want to get involved with. Rilk…
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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
I’ll start by saying that I absolutely loved this novel set in the world of independent computer games from the 90s onwards. It took me a chapter or so to get into the book but then I was swept up in the story of Sam, Sadie and Marx – who end up setting up a…
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Christmas Day 2021 Radio Times
Merry Christmas! It’s that time again, when you’re sitting down looking for something to watch or listen to. I’m here to “help”: Click on the image or here to see the listings larger. Click on the image to see the image larger. I’ve been annotating the Radio Times for quite a while. Take a look…
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Christmas Eve 2021 Radio Times
It’s my annual look at the country’s premier TV listings magazine as I run my virtual rule over what’s on regular telly (and radio), annotating my copy as I go. As ever, click through for larger versions. Larger TV listings here. Larger radio listings here. For what it’s worth, I’ve been publishing these since 2009,…
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Raspberry Pi Pico Solar System
The October 2021 issue of MagPi magazine featured Dymtri Panin’s Pico Solar System, and I fancied building one. The Raspberry Pi Pico is a tiny microcontroller board that costs a whopping £3.60 or so. It is powered by a microUSB socket and it can run bits of code that allow it to control things on…
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The Infinite Dial 2021 UK
41% of the UK population listens to podcasts each month. That’s probably the headline finding from some new research that will be of interest to everyone interested in the UK audio space. Edison Research, the company that has probably lead the field in US audio and podcast research in recent years, has published its first…
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Broadcast v Streaming
On an episode of Richard Osman’s House of Games that aired at the start of this week, there was a question in the Distinctly Average round that made me sit up. The celebrity contestants are paired up and each must answer a numerical question that is usually based around making an estimation. They’re not expected…
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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