I’m truly converted to Spotify. Do sign up.  For if you do you can listen to my latest mix-tape, Fingerlickin’ Deep Fried Sensation.  Yes it comes with adverts, but there you go, you don’t get something for nothing.

The mix is 1.5hrs long and consists of – as the title would suggest – soul, funk, afrobeat (mostly).

Feedback? leave me a comment.

This news story was highly amusing (Giving up my iPod for a Walkman).  My sister was the first person in our house to have a Walkman.  By an odd coincidence – considering recent events – the first album she got to listen to on it was Michael Jackson’s Thriller.  I later got a personal stereo, but not the Sony kind.  In fact I went through many, either killing them through use or they fought back killing my cassettes (my treasured copy of Frank Zappa’s Sheik Yerbouti died in this way).  There is no worse discovery than finding your favourite cassette tape is now a crinkled mess of useless magnetic tape. 

Later I graduated onto a discman, discovering that any small vibration – such as a gnat landing on a tree twelve miles away, was enough to make the disc jump.

I currently have two MP3 players – one a cheap and cheerful player from Tesco, the other is on my phone, and is actually a Sony MP3 player (full circle then).

I confess to finding the whole business of downloading tracks or ripping discs a bit tedious.

That wonderful old, ugly treasure-trove of a building – The Swindon Mechanics Institute – is featured as one of a number of theatres identified as being ‘at risk’ in this BBC news picture feature.  Of course the Mechanics Institute was so much more than just a theatre for the people of Swindon, it provided a place of learning, a library, a place for healthcare (during the many tuberculosis outbreaks), as well as a nurturing ground for trades unions and local democracy.

It also sits in the centre of an area important to our industrial heritage namely Brunel’s railway village (next to his massive railway works) which, as well as providing accommodation for workers, provided pubs, churches and Turkish baths.  Sadly confusion over ownership and successive lack of local council will has meant the Mechanics’ Institute has been derelict for many years with little being done to save it or restore it to its former glory.  I only hope if and when it is restored that it is restored as a functional space for the people of the town, rather than private housing or for business.

There is a pressure group but the website hasn’t been updated since January.
This website has some wonderful, heartbreaking pictures of what is which lead you to imagine what could be.  More pictures here from BBC Wiltshire

For more information about the preservation of British theatres visit the Theatres Trust.

Just got time to post about this – The Telegraph and other news sources report Lord Adonis’ announcement that a number of electric cars will be trialled across the UK.  BBC also reports on the same as cars are trialled in Coventry and Birmingham.

I’m following more on this at Google. Personally, I’d love to see how an electric car copes with my (very long) daily commute.  If anyone wants me to do so I’m more than happy to use this electric car  please.  It’ll be tough, I’m sure I won’t enjoy it, but ultimately it will good for society and Mother Earth.

British Newspapers 1800-1900   http://newspapers.bl.uk/blcs/

This is rather good. The British Library has scanned and made available content from over 2 million British newspapers from the 19th Century.  You have to pay to see most of them, but the prices aren’t exorberant, and two newspapers The Graphic and the Penny Illustrated Paper are completely free to look at.  You could look for Saucy Jack and the Whitechappel murders but I chose to look for Gilbert & Sullivan and found some most excellent first night reviews.

I’ve just finished reading Mary Stewart’s Merlin trilogy (The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment). I’m not a great one for Arthurian fiction but these three books – written in the 1970s – are excellent.  I think I liked them because they shied away from the great Arthurian battlegrounds, focusing instead purely on Merlin’s life, dark age politics, and beautiful but dangerous women.  They were also set in the Dark Ages, eschewing the romantic nonsense of Mallory and De Troyes.  Other authors have done this since but Stewart does this so completely and convincingly that you really do feel the cultural richness of Britain in its post-Roman, pre-Saxon days.  I seem to remember too a (frankly dreadful) BBC adaptation of The Crystal Cave back in the early 1990s which didn’t do justice to the book.  This is a pity as they’d make a great trilogy of films.  However the Beeb currently have a dull and perfunctory version of Merlin on the books at the moment so it’s unlikely they’d do it again.

http://www.transport-research.info/web/

The Transport Research Knowledge Centre now offers a rather good RSS function for folks wanting to keep up with the latest developments in transport research.  As well as a general RSS feed on the front page, you now also have the option of customised RSS feeds that allow you to subscribe to updates on any specific search result.  This works in the browsable areas of the website (e.g. country/organization) as well as in the advanced search section. Very handy if you want to focus on a specific area of research.

(I’d also quite like to see a RSS option added to the Links Library)

Spotted in an ice-cream kiosk on Whitby beach.

I’ll have two mint-choc chips and a couple of yer knock off Picassos please mate.

Yes, I did check the date. No, it isn’t 1st April.

“Google has a broader mission than people might think,” says Eric Schmidt, the company’s chief executive. A mission that could, perhaps, even extend to cutting the number of deaths on the road? “If we really put our minds to it, I’m pretty sure we can reduce those deaths,” Page says. He touched on the topic of self-driving cars – vehicles embedded with complex navigation technology and spatial sensors that can plot the obstacles (and other traffic) around them. Many car makers are already experimenting with self-driving cars, but Google’s mapping and geo-tagging expertise could provide information that’s crucial to success.

Full story: What is Google’s next move? Daily Telegraph, 21 May 2009.

Not long to go to Proms 2009 so these are my highlights for this year. I hesitate to call them ‘recommendations’, they just happen to be what I either like or would like to hear from this year’s programme. If you’re a horse racing fan, why not look upon them as tips and take a punt.

21 July: Purcell The Fairy Queen
25 July: Holst The Planets
28 July: Stravinsky The Firebird, plus late-night Bach
11 August: Sullivan Patience 
12 August: Prom 36 completely given over to Handel, also Philip Glass Violin Concerto Philip Glass Symphony No.7, ‘A Toltec Symphony’ (UK premiere)
13 August: Stravinsky The Rite of Spring
14 August: Jonny Greenwood Popcorn Superhet Receiver
16 August: Prom41 given over to Indian voices
19 August: Rachmaninov Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
20 August: Handel Samson
22 August: Beethoven Fidelio(conducted by Daniel Barenboim)
25 August: Michael Nyman – various film scores
4 September: Ligeti Atmosphères and Richard Strauss Also sprach Zarathustra
6 September: Handel Messiah
(I’m a bit ambivulent about The Last Night. I did watch last year as Bryn Terfel was singing)

There’s a lot of Stravinsky and Bach this year so I’ve just chosen my favourites.  No Nigel Kennedy/Jeff Beck showdown this year but its nice to see Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood flying the flag. And of course very good to see some Gilbert & Sullivan included on the programme.

Every Prom concert is broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/ as is traditional with  music, BBC television gives scant coverage. Details of what coverage there is can be found at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2009/broadcasts/tv/