My friend Ian Wallman and his friend Jim Ryan (who owns Miss Moneypenny’s) get together and do a spot of producing under the name Zoned Out. They tend to do a lot of remixes. Here’s one of their latest ones. It’s for someone called Ashanti. Wikipedia thinks she’s famous. I’m so not down with the [...]
Categories: Birmingham,Music
Tagged: Birmingham, Music
Warning: this is long and quite geeky. I’ve always been a little bit obsessive about music consumption. I love records and I have a large mp3 collection. They suit different purposes – and the best way I describe the difference is that I say that mp3s are for having on, while records are for listening [...]
Categories: Music
Tagged: Music
Bobbie’s at work, Jake’s off to town to hang out with the goths for a bit before staying the night at Ethan’s place, and I’m sitting here at home with a list of things to do (mostly writing) and not much in the way of energy or motivation. The lawnmower man has been and made [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: Personal
I was in London yesterday, dispensing podcasting and web advice to an international aid agency. I’d travelled down with Sam Coley, who’s our radio guy at the university (I remember being the radio guy…). We stopped off at Euston station for a bite to eat, and as I was buying my bagel, we noticed Mark [...]
Categories: Travel
I collect records. I accumulate CDs. There’s a difference. I love vinyl. I buy it and I treasure it. I don’t have a great deal of it (certainly not by my standards) but that’s because after having collected for the best part of 30 years, I got rid of everything – thousands of records and [...]
Categories: Music
Carved from greenstone I turned 40 back in September, and I had an amazing time doing it. I received one of the best presents of my life and a real fuss was made of me. The best thing about this birthday is that it still seems to be going on 8 months later. Last night, [...]
Categories: New Zealand
Tagged: New Zealand, Personal
Juliet, Bobbie and Louise enjoy their beverages It was a gorgeous day yesterday, and so after a strenuous morning watching the lawns being mowed, I headed to the Fighting Cocks pub in Moseley, where I met with Bobbie, Louise and Juliet for brunch. Bob had been in town shoe shopping for summer footwear. There would [...]
Categories: Birmingham
Tagged: Birmingham, Personal
Yep, that slide really says ‘Better Blogger Workflow’… So… the conference. I went to Chicago for a conference, not just to go to jazz gigs, wander around and look at public art, travel on the local rail (it’s called the ‘L’ train because it’s short for ‘Elevated’ – who knew?), drink in bars and buy [...]
Categories: Travel
Rail transport. It makes a city work. If I have one regret about the cities I’ve chosen to live in thus far, it would be that I’ve failed to pick places that have decent inner city rail transportation. I’m talking about trains that go from where people live to where they want to go. Auckland, [...]
Categories: Travel
Tagged: Travel
Quiet suburban house — or 10,000 volt deathtrap? We’ve had problems with the electricity since we first moved into this place a couple of months back. First, a couple of the lights didn’t work, and so we changed the bulbs – and those new ones immediately popped as soon as we turned on the switch. [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: electricity, landlords, Personal, safety
