-
Bikepacking King Alfred’s Way
Here’s a trip I made earlier this year, but didn’t write about at the time. I’m publishing this piece now because I did always mean to write about my experiences, but also because I made a podcast of my trip, and that podcast has just been published as an episode of The Cycling Podcast’s Explore…
-
The Agonising Death of the Physical Soundtrack Album
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the issues surrounding getting hold of physical copies of the Dune soundtrack albums in physical form. In summary, two of the three (!) are available as CDs, but at surprisingly high prices, and seemingly not mass produced at traditional CD pressing plants. A Digression Into Producing CDs…
-
RAJAR Q3 2021
This post is brought to you in association with RALF from DP Software and Services. I’ve used RALF for the many years, and it’s my favourite RAJAR analysis tool. So I am delighted that I continue to be able to bring you this RAJAR analysis in association with RALF. For more details on the product, contact Deryck Pritchard via…
-
Dune Soundtrack
I’m looking forward to seeing Denis Villeneuve’s take on Dune this weekend, when it finally gets its UK release (technically Thursday). I came to Frank Herbert’s novel in my early teens around the time that David Lynch’s version of the film was released. But more about all of that when I’ve seen the film. In…
-
Top 10 Podcast Trends – Radiodays Europe 2021
I was fortunate enough to present at Radiodays Europe 2021, and for those interested, here’s a copy of my slide deck. I hope it’s useful, and you can download it via LinkedIn.
-
Bewilderment by Richard Powers
Alongside The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, this is probably the most important, and affecting novel that I’ll read this year. Theo is an astrobiologist, a scientist who studies exoplanets around other stars in our galaxy. He’s a single parent bringing up his 9-year old son Robin, a child with behavioural issues,…
-
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
One of the most anticipated novels of the year doesn’t disappoint, delivering in large part what you expect it to deliver. Alice is a novelist, a very successful novelist, who has struggled with some issues in recent times, and has now moved into a temporary home in a rural part of Ireland to take a…
-
Squeeze Me by Carl Hiaasen/The Law of Innocence by Michael Connelly
Squeeze Me came out last year, but for some reason I’d been sitting on it rather than reading it. That’s my stupidity because Hiaasen is master of the comic crime caper, and this is yet another wonderfully funny book in his oeuvre. We mostly follow Angie, a wrangler of all kinds of wildlife working in…
-
A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark
This an enjoyable steampunk romp through a 1912 Cairo in which magic and djinns exist in a world related, yet unrelated to North Africa at the start of the last century. Fatma is the newest agent for the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments and Supernatural Entities. As one of the few females on the force, it’s…
-
90s MTB to Singlespeed Conversion
Sometime around 1995 or 1996, I bought a Giant ATX 850 mountain bike. This was a rigid bike – not even any front suspension. It had an aluminium frame and 3 x 7 speed chainset. That bike went a lot of places with me. In late 1996, I rode it in the Moroccan Atlas mountains.…
-
The Antisocial Network by Ben Mezrich
This is the new book from Ben Mezrich, author of The Accidental Billionaires, the book that became the movie, The Social Network. It covers a handful of weeks at the end of 2020 and the start of 2021 during which time, a Reddit group called wallstreetbets ended up driving up the stock price of a…
-
The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman
The key thing to know about this book is that if you liked The Thursday Murder Club, then you will love this! The gang is all back – Joyce, Elizabeth, Ron and Ibrahim, as well as Donna and Chris from the local police station, and the man of mystery that is Bogdan. This time around,…
Podcasts, Radio, TV, Books, Cycling, Photography and More
-
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
Check out some of my other photography
