After a while, I began to get into BBC 6 Music. I was still interested in the speech elements of the station more than the music. Adam and Joe became a regular listen, but I also began to appreciate the music output more. Programmes like the Freak Zone and Jarvis Cocker’s Sunday Service simply would not exist on another station — which is why there was so much outrage when it was suggested that the station would be closed down.

But when considering alternative options in the event that 6 Music closed, I realised that the outlook was perhaps not as bad is it might seem. As a commercial alternative, Absolute Radio wouldn’t be a bad option.

Shedding Virgin Radio’s dad rock image

In the space of just two years, the new owners of what used to be Virgin Radio have given the station a completely new lease of life.

I would never have considered listening to Virgin Radio. Its playlist was limited, repetitive and fusty. It was wall-to-wall dad rock.

Looking back, the transition to the new-style Absolute was quite steady. But the day it ditched the Virgin brand was the day it could move on from that albatross and the Smashie and Nicey image. Today, I think it is easily the most interesting commercial radio station around.

More than music

The key selling point of Absolute Radio, as opposed to Virgin, is that it is now not just about music. Now it’s an “entertainment” station. When you tune in, you are more likely to hear a comedian than a dusty old Status Quo song. Its current presenters include people like Dave Gorman, Iain Lee, Frank Skinner and Richard Herring — all much better known for being funny than being fanatical about what Virgin always called “real music”.

It’s a template that has been successful at BBC 6 Music ever since it started. Its original breakfast presenter was Phill Jupitus, while other high-profile presenters have included Russell Brand, Craig Charles, Jon Holmes and… Richard Herring. And it’s difficult to escape the feeling that Absolute’s weekend morning programming has been heavily influenced by the success of Adam and Joe on 6 Music.

The really impressive thing about how Absolute have gone about it is the fact that Dave Gorman appears to have more influence over the music that is played on his programme than Adam and Joe ever did. As a whole, Absolute is more accessible than 6 Music, but it is a station that is unafraid to step out of the mainstream on occasion.

Determined to try different things

But gradually, Absolute is becoming something more than a commercial 6 Music-lite. Its deal to broadcast English Premier League football matches is a bold move to for a music station to make, particularly since Radio 5 Live and TalkSport are so well established in this area. Apparently it is the first time a music station has broadcast top flight football since Capital Gold brought Jonathan Pearce to the world 20 years ago.

Absolute have launched some interesting spin-off stations as well. In addition to Absolute Classic Rock, there is Absolute 80s and Absolute Radio 90s (that is a way to make me feel old — my decade is now for proper nostalgia!). There is also Absolute Radio Extra. The best thing is that the latter three are all available on DAB.

There was also Dabbl, an experimental station where users chose the content. It has closed down now, but it is nonetheless a sign that Absolute is determined to experiment with radio.

Doing new things with radio

The people behind Absolute Radio have a great website, One Golden Square, which takes you behind the scenes of Absolute Radio. The openness of the website is wonderful. It is a great insight into what makes them tick, and it’s all very encouraging.

Absolute are always at the cutting-edge, thinking about the future of radio and different ways to listen to it. That is no wonder — the traditional 1215 medium wave frequency is very poor quality for a music station, so it helps them to investigate alternative ways of broadcasting.

One Golden Square Labs outlines some of the really interesting things they are up to. There is some nifty iPod Nano integration. They are also pushing ahead with HTML5 delivery.

One Golden Square are also behind the wonderful Compare My Radio. This website is a heaven for radio and stats geeks — perfect for me.

It is a treasure trove of stats about radio output in the UK. You can see what tracks and artists are popular, search for artists to find out what stations play them, and even compare the output of two radio stations — with Venn diagrams and everything.

A lot of people turned to this website to learn about 6 Music. Many defended the station on the basis of statistics collected by Compare My Radio. You can see how 6 Music compares to Absolute Radio.

The website is a fascinating service that must take a bit of work to maintain. It’s great that a radio station can take a step back and fairly allow others to compare it with other radio stations.

All-in-all, you get the impression that the people behind Absolute Radio are seriously passionate about radio. As a bit of a radio fan myself, that is a big winner for me.

The original was described by some as the anti-iPod. It looks like the sort of iPod knock-off that you might get free in a cereal packet. Instead of loading it with several gigabytes of your favourite music, the Buddha Machine comes pre-packaged with nine low-fi loops, which vaguely emanate from the fuzzy in-built speaker.

And it’s marvellous. The Buddha Machine may look cheap and tacky, and the sound quality certainly is not great, but this all adds to the quaint and charming nature of the device.

It became a cult object. Brian Eno is said to have been so entranced that he bought eight of them on the spot. It was treated by some as a musical instrument in its own right. Artists created remix albums inspired by the Buddha Machine. It even spawned a bizarre game, Buddha Boxing. Any resemblance to World Championship Stare-out is purely coincidental.

The second version of the Buddha Machine brought new loops, and the addition of a pitch-bending function, adding an extra dimension to the curious box of sounds. But it still retained its charm.

Now the idea has been developed further with Gristleism. It is a new variant on the Buddha Machine concept developed by the revered experimental group Throbbing Gristle.

As you can see from the demonstration video, Throbbing Gristle’s take on the Buddha Machine is rather more brutal than FM3′s more relaxing version. And while the originals come in unassuming, antiquated, almost second-hand packaging, Gristleism has a very slick, modern and extravagant style to its packaging.

Gristleism is an altogether different product. But it chimes with the same ideas about what it means to buy music in a physical format in these days of digital downloads. Record companies are increasingly seeking to make the physical editions of albums more appealing by making the package more of the product. The stylish packaging of Gristleism asks questions about music, just as the original Buddha Machines did.

Musically, Gristelism fulfils a completely different role. The originals, with the music composed by FM3, were more ambient in nature. They could sit happily in the corner, quietly emitting unobtrusive drones.

But as you would expect with Throbbing Gristle, things are a bit more madcap here. I have to admit that when I first started playing with this, I couldn’t stop grinning. I had to interact with the music. You can really utilise that pitch altering knob to great effect.

A few years ago I wrote about the Buddha Machine, a charming little plastic box that emits ethereal music. It is an interesting object, mostly because the nine loops that it can play are so other-worldly and, despite their brevity, infinitely fascinating. Which is just as well, because they will repeat endlessly. Well, until you switch it off or the batteries run out.

It was dubbed the anti-iPod, because despite the fact that it bears a similarity in design and concept to the famous Apple gadget, it in fact rejects the entire ethos of the slick iPod. The Buddha Machine reminds many of medium wave radios for the poor, crackly sound quality that comes out of its large circular speaker. And instead of boasting several gigabytes of storage space to put on whatever music you want, you are stuck with the nine loops. Essentially, it is what the iPod would be like if it was cheap and made in China. Instead of, er, expensive and made in China.

My post about the Buddha Machine became a bit of a landmark for this blog, as I ended up speaking about it on Radio Scotland. On the radio with me was a local Buddhist, who was understandably rather bemused about being asked about what she (politely) saw as a cheap piece of tat.

Ostensibly it is a piece of pure tat. It looks like the sort of thing that might plop through your letterbox a few weeks after you collect your twelfth Weetabix token. But there is something oddly engaging about the Buddha Machine.

It is an interesting statement about the position the entertainment industry finds itself in. This is an age when physical music formats seem more and more redundant. But contrary to this trend, the Buddha Machine — the ultimate physical format — has become a cult fetish object for music and gadget geeks.

Plus, you cannot help but be captivated by the music, which you can imagine being transmitted from outer space, or a hitherto undiscovered dimension. Or perhaps an anonymous exotic location on the other side of the world. Mind you, that last one is kind of true. The music, like the box, is made in China. You see, the Buddha Machine is the brainchild of the Beijing-based electronic music duo FM3.

Since then, FM3 have set to work on that difficult second Buddha Machine. I never suspected they would try to repeat the feat. Could it possibly recreate the magic of the original?

It is true that, unless you are new to the Buddha Machine, there is not much so mystery about the second iteration. To an extent, once you’ve seen one Buddha Machine, you’ve seen them all.

But there is enough that is new about the Buddha Machine II to justify the purchase. Of course, there are nine new loops. The music is as fascinating as ever, even if these new selections don’t quite seem to match the other-worldly qualities of the original loops. While the first Buddha Machine was based more on electronic sounds, a lot of the new music is more guitar-based — though it is still firmly of the ambient persuasion.

My personal favourite loop of Buddha Machine II is #3, ‘Piano’. It is a decisive but quizzical riff that, in a fairer world, could be the Windows startup sound.

Overall, Buddha Machine II feels like a more mature version of the original. Although the designs of the two machines are very similar, there are some subtle changes. The first Buddha Machine came in a variety of bright, almost childlike colours. The new version comes in deeper, more adult hues: burgundy, brown or — my choice — grey. Even the “summer edition” comes in a curious teal-like colour.

Buddha Machine II also comes with a new feature — a knob that allows you to control the pitch at which the loops play. At first, this new addition feels like a failure. Controlling it while the Buddha Machine is switched on produces a rather unpleasant, disorientating effect. It sounds like a malfunctioning tape player — a noise that made me feel sick when I was a child.

But a more careful use of the new control brings more pleasure. It unlocks infinite worlds hidden inside this tiny box. Instead of just the nine loops, for each one you now have a choice of a slow and low-pitched version, or a fast and high-pitched version — and everything in between. Each loop is now massively variable. Exploring different speeds of each loop reveals new elements, elicits new emotions and brings new experiences.

This will bring a new dimension to the past time of Buddha boxing. This is where two or more people experiment with a number of Buddha Machines, allowing the drones to weave themselves among one another. On first listen to such an experiment, the loops may seem to match up poorly. But it ends up being a fascinating ambient creation, like some massive imagined Brian Eno installation.

You can try it for yourself with the Buddha Machine Wall, a web page that lets you experiment using the original nine loops. FM3 themselves invite you to play with three loops from Buddha Machine II.

The Buddha Machine has come on a long way since its original release four years ago, having spawned a number of other projects. Robert Henke remixed the Buddha Machine to create the album Layering Buddha. FM3 themselves encourage such remixing by offering MP3s of the loops to download for free, available under a Creative Commons license.

And despite originally being the anti-iPod, you can now buy an iPhone app that apes the original Buddha Machine. Of course, it doesn’t quite have the same charm as the real thing, but there is nonetheless something novel about these wonderful sounds coming out of your phone.

All-in-all, this unassuming little box packs a lot of punch. It is roughly the price of a CD album. But as an object, you will get far more pleasure out of a Buddha Machine.

• Official Buddha Machine website
• FM3 website
• A great blog post about the Buddha Machine by The New Yorker‘s Sasha Frere-Jones

Copyshite

A series of posts

1. Copyshite
2. The entertainment industry’s wrong turns
3. The future of music: gigs and t-shirts
4. The future of music: pretty boxes

There are only two things in the world that give us absolute total happiness. One is seeing other people fail. The other is unwrapping a newly-bought CD.

–Armando Iannucci

In the wake of all the upheaval that the recorded music industry is facing, a lot of people have been predicting the death of the CD. After all, the very reason why music is cheap or free these days is because they don’t need to be put on a physical object which then has to be transported around the world. Surely digital downloads are the only conceivable future for music distribution.

I don’t like the idea of this. If I was five years younger it would probably make perfect sense to me. Last week’s edition of The Economist tells the story of a focus group that EMI held. It was aimed at understanding yoofs better. At the end of the meeting, the teenagers were invited to take as many free CDs from a pile on a table as they wanted. Not a single person took a CD.

It’s just the latest example of a recorded music industry that has always found it difficult to adapt to new technology. Historically, consumers have gone for the most convenient and cheapest format rather than the technically excellent one. So says Fredric Dannen if you scroll a long way down.

When the long-playing record (LP) format was introduced by Columbia Records back in the late 1940s, the industry as a whole resisted it, and many predicted it would never take off because 78s sounded better. Without question, early LPs did not sound nearly as good as 78s. But given the choice of listening to all of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony on two sides of one record versus sixteen sides of eight records, the consumer opted for convenience and simplicity (not to mention less shelf space).

…You can always count on the record industry to cling to the past, and to fight innovation.

So does the arrival of MP3 mean the death of the CD? I personally hope not. I love CDs. I am of that generation, probably a small five–ten year window of people who wouldn’t consider vinyl but had no access to file sharing as they grew up. Napster came onto the scene in 2000, when I was 14 — well into my music-consuming life.

I have been collecting CDs since I was nine years old. I haven’t counted, but I must have around 600 CDs. I only bought my first vinyl records a few years ago. I bought them grudgingly, only because they were not available on CD. I reckon today I have 30 vinyl records.

I have only ever bought around a dozen MP3s — again, because they were not readily available on CD or vinyl. (I have downloaded a few dozen more because they weren’t commercially available at all — mainly live bootlegs and demos.) I would consider buying more. But although MP3 is the format du jour, there is a big block in my mind preventing me from buying something that I will never be able to see or touch.

I suppose this makes me a collector. (Yes, my collection is in alphabetical order — or it was until I ran out of space.) Collectors tend to be fans of vinyl though, which makes me an anomaly.

It would be nice to think that the CD will limp on and eventually survive another day in the MP3 era just as vinyl has done in the CD era. I have grown up with CDs and I love them. I’m not an audiophile, so the sound quality issue doesn’t worry me too much. And to be honest, I can’t be bothered with the faff of vinyl.

Whether it is CD or vinyl, there will always be people like me who treasure the physical presence of an album. It’s not just about a collection of notes. It about an event, a happening. It’s the artwork, the packaging. The sleevenotes, the lyrics. The smell of the booklet. It has an aura. When you hold a copy of a good album, you are transported to its space without even having to put it on. Could all of this really die because of the internet?

When Radiohead released In Rainbows, the pricing structure grabbed all of the headlines. But that wasn’t the interesting thing for me. The pay-what-you-want method is just a belated recognition of the fact that people could choose to pay nothing anyway.

The other aspect of the release of In Rainbows interested me much more. I didn’t pay anything for the MP3s. I downloaded them for free when they were released on 10 October. That’s because I got them as part of the £40 “discbox” set.

The discbox is a premium edition of In Rainbows. It comprises a CD of the album, an second CD with eight extra tracks and enhanced content, a 2× vinyl edition of the album, and generally all-round badass packaging.

£40 is the most I have ever paid for an album. I hesitated before I ordered it — but not much. Although I am sort of a collector, I have never been a completist. I am usually happy to have the CD version on its own. But I couldn’t resist the awesomeness of the discbox — despite the fact that I hadn’t even heard the album.

This was largely ignored in the media coverage of the album, but to me it was the most notable aspect of the unconventional release of In Rainbows. When I first posted about In Rainbows, I neglected to even mention the fact that the MP3s were free. I didn’t find it that interesting.

People like me, who love the physical formats, will be continue to be catered for. It is easy to make money out of us. Slap a sticker saying ‘limited edition’ on a record and suddenly demand for it will become price inelastic. Suckers like me will buy premium versions of albums at higher prices than we would otherwise consider. And this will become ever more important for the record companies as physical sales continue to get eaten into by the internet, where profit seeking is impossible.

In Rainbows wasn’t the start of this. Limited edition versions of albums have been around for a very long time. But in an age where it is becoming increasingly difficult to make money out of recorded music, it is becoming more and more prevalent.

When I went shopping for Sigur Rós’s Heima DVD I thought £17 was a bit steep. Then I saw the limited edition version for £25 and bought it.

The deluxe multi-format edition seems to be becoming more common as well. Björk’s latest single, ‘Declare Independence’, is available as a deluxe edition, yours for only £19.99.

Formatted in the same extravagant packaging as the Volta double LP, this contains all conceivable formats of the single: double vinyl, CD and DVD.

Something else that is becoming more and more common is for people to automatically get the MP3 version for free when they order a physical version. For instance, Nonesuch has started doing this. You can choose between standard 128kbps MP3s or maximum quality 320kpbs at no extra cost.

It makes sense to me. Being able to have your entire music collection on a portable device is becoming an expectation these days. Since vinyl is a bit more tricky to get onto your iPod, it would be good to get the MP3s of music that you have already bought automatically for free. Hopefully more record companies will adopt this approach.

A lot of people have wondered aloud if the fact that we can now get music for free from the internet is devaluing music. But it seems to me as though the internet is not only driving the price of music down — it’s also driving the price of CDs and records up.

Music of 2007

A series of posts

1. What I listened to in 2007
2. Music of 2007: #40–#21
3. Music of 2007: #20–#11
4. Music not of 2007: three reissues
5. Music of 2007: #10–#4
6. Music of 2007: top three

I am a bit late with my ranking of albums of 2007. I know it’s the new year and it’s not very fashionable to be looking back once the new year has begun. But unlike some people — who publish their lists in early December or sometimes even mid-November — I like to wait until the end of the year until posting my end-of-year list.

Unfortunately, it is taking a bit of time for me to finish off the post. You know how I like to witter on. Plus, ahem, I still haven’t received a rather important album from 2007 through the post.

In the meantime, some stats porn from my Last.fm account to give you an idea of what I listened to in 2007.

A few caveats here. I got an iPod sometime during autumn, which means that I now scrobble my out-and-about listening habits, which wasn’t possible when I used my iRiver. As such, my obsession with Battles early on in the year only registers a little bit, whereas the purchase of Radiohead’s In Rainbows in October is visible for all to see.

Okay, on to the graph. I have written before about the rather fun LastGraph service. I have decided to create a LastGraph of my 2007 listening. Of course, it isn’t restricted to music that was released in 2007, but it does give a flavour of my listening habits over the year.

I’m afraid it isn’t easy to see the detail in this image, but as you can see it is rather large enough as it is. If you click on the image, you will be able to see the full-blown PDF file, if you are really all that interested. (Warning: The PDF is a big file — 2.64MB.)

The first 2007 releases to register in the graph are Field Music’s Tones of Town and Shining’s Grindstone. Battles’s Mirrored makes a small appearance in March, but as I said it is much lower than you would expect if you knew how much I genuinely listened to the album.

Besides Ceephax and Air, nothing too much of interest happens until June. Then comes Björk’s Volta. Not soon afterwards comes the magical week which saw the release of albums by Justice and Simian Mobile Disco. Also registering here are album I bought by Cornelius and Stereolab, although these weren’t from 2007. (Incidentally, this period shows a sustained reduction in the amount of music I listened to, reflecting how unusually busy I was during the summer.)

In August you can see the biggest patch of the year — The Future Sound of London, from when I bought From the Archives volumes 1–3. After that comes another huge patch of Blur, a period where I bought a few albums of theirs and even wrote about them on this blog. A bit of an obsessive period.

Soon enough pretty much everything is crowded out by In Rainbows. If you look carefully towards the end of the year you can also see The Fiery Furnaces, Gescom and Burial.

In terms of charts, here is how my rolling year chart for artists looks like.

1. Radiohead — 811 plays
2. The Future Sound of London — 613
3. Autechre — 602
4. Pulp — 567
5. The Fiery Furnaces — 549
6. Boards of Canada — 538
7. Blur — 530
8. Aphex Twin — 453
9. Squarepusher — 428
10. Battles — 425

And for tracks, In Rainbows pretty much dominates. Not bad considering it’s only been out since October. Battles and Shining also get a look in here. Justice, Björk and The Fiery Furnaces also feature in the top 50.

I’ll post my thoughts on the music of 2007 over the next week or so.

2007 F1 season review

A series of posts

1. F1 season review: the backmarkers
2. F1 season review: the frontrunners
3. F1 season review: the constructors (11th–6th)
4. F1 season review: the constructors (top 5)
5. F1 season review: broadcasts
6. F1 season review: podcasts
7. F1 season review: websites

In case you were wondering, I have decided against writing a review of F1′s ‘bigwigs’ — for the sake of my health. I just wrote a big rant about Max Mosley the other day anyway.

My next post was going to look at F1 websites. But this week Ollie White wrote a post about podcasts, so I thought I would move my post on podcasts to this week.

I’m a relative newcomer to podcasts. As a concept, they have grown much more quickly than blogging and I would bet that ‘podcast’ is more of a household word than ‘blog’ already. But they never really grabbed my attention because, for me, they are rather inconvenient to listen to, as I wrote a few months back.

Since I wrote that post, I have transformed into a big fan of podcasts though. This was partly because I replaced my ageing iRiver with a brand spanking new iPod.

I have to say, mega thumbs up to the people at Apple who have made keeping up with podcasts so easy! The iPod takes away so much of the hassle that existed with my old iRiver.

At first I only listened to podcasts on my commute through to university. But soon enough I found myself subscribing to more and more podcasts and not having enough time to listen to them all. Now I am such a podcast addict that I actually set aside some time every day to listen to them by going out for a walk (with the added benefits of exercise and fresh air that this brings).

So, from my mild scepticism in the late summer, I have turned into a full-on podcast addict. And right at the top of the list comes the F1 podcasts that I have gradually discovered. This post will review my favourites. They are listed in alphabetical order, in case you’re wondering.

AT&T Williams Podcast

As far as I know, Williams is one of only two Formula 1 teams who produced podcasts this year. Maybe it’s just me, but I would never have expected Williams to be so hip. They always seemed like a team that is mainly supported by middle-aged men, the kind of people who prefer Fifth Gear to Top Gear.

Maybe this is actually the case, because for me the Williams podcast is the least fulfilling of my regular listens. It is produced by USP Content — the same people who produce the excellent programmes for Radio 5 Live and Renault’s podcast. But the Williams podcast misfires a bit.

So what’s the problem? It’s just a bit too cheesy. It is a bit like a local radio programme. An example regular feature is ’2007′ (pronounced ‘twenty-oh-seven’) where presenter David Croft talks to Alexander Wurz at 8:07 PM on the Saturday before the race. I don’t know, but that is quite a hollow feature to me. Yeah, neat pun, but it’s a bit meaningless when you’re listening at whatever time you choose. Besides, we don’t even know that the interview was conducted at 8:07 PM and apart from that there was nothing much to the feature.

The interviews, conducted by Tom Clarkson, were normally a bit too fluffy for my liking. I can remember actually cringing at some of the questions. It is probably reasonably entertaining for some fans. But if you’re looking for insight and analysis it is best to look elsewhere.

Worst of all, some kind of glitch towards the end of the season meant that the podcasts weren’t getting delivered (at least to me — and I remember Sidepodcast mentioning a similar problem). The podcasts for Japan, China and Brazil all arrived on my iPod weeks after the season had finished. Does this mean that they were not getting published? To think about all the work that must have gone into producing them, only for them to be inaccessible until they were completely out of date.

All evidence that the Williams podcast existed seems to have been removed from the Williams website, which perhaps suggests that the podcast won’t be making a return next season. A list of old episodes is available on USP Content’s website though, and the iTunes link is here.

Chequered Flag Formula 1

The BBC’s Formula 1 podcast is one of the best for my money. The centrepiece programme is The Chequered Flag, which provides analysis soon after the end of every race. But when you subscribe to the feed you also receive other F1 programmes broadcast on Radio 5 Live including the race preview show and occasional editions of the 606 phone-in.

There is not much else to say apart from the obvious. I already covered Radio 5 Live’s coverage in last week’s post, and the same applies to the podcast. They contain excellent interviews and top-notch analysis. The kind of quality you expect from the BBC. Great stuff.

F1 Rejects

Direct from Australia comes the funniest F1 podcast I have come across.

The website is dedicated to the “heroic failures” of Formula 1 — the people at the back of the grid who regularly put their lives at risk despite the fact that they have no hope of achieving any success. The podcast has a similar vibe, with a kind of attitude towards bad drivers that is a curious mixture of disgust and awe — an attitude that I broadly share.

But while the podcast revels in its celebration / castigation of F1′s rejects, it has plenty to say about the world of F1 in general. If you are looking for a humorous take on the world of F1, look no further. I have only been listening for a couple of episodes, but already F1 Rejects is one of my favourite podcasts.

Formula 1 Blog

On balance, this is probably my favourite Formula 1 podcast. It is American, which is an advantage because it doesn’t fall into the trap that Brits have fallen into by dividing into two camps — pro-Hamilton and anti-Hamilton. Formula 1 Blog is more neutral in this regard — a great dose of reality in this world of Hamilton hype and anti-hype.

But Formula 1 Blog certainly isn’t a neutral podcast, and it prides itself on being a journal of opinion. Negative Camber is a Ferrari fan (no, I don’t understand either) and his sidekick Grace is a McLaren fan. As a result, the banter between them is fantastic to listen to!

Negative Camber is also quite nifty at doing impressions. His impression of Patrick Head’s grumpy expression is hilarious and a couple of weeks back he did an impression of Ross Brawn that had me in stitches on the train. I do worry about his strange obsession with Matt Bishop though. Any discussion of a McLaren press release soon turns into a discussion about Matt Bishop and how he copes with wearing the grey McLaren uniform instead of his normal loud shirts.

The podcast also touches on other motor sports, particularly MotoGP and WRC. But the centrepiece of the podcast is F1.

The podcasts are a tad on the long side — typically lasting almost an hour. The long idents also grate a little bit. They are an entertaining listen the first time round, but after that it takes about two minutes from the start of the podcast until the actual discussion begins. Nevertheless, it is always an entertaining listen.

ING Renault F1 Team Podcast

Note to Williams: this is how you do an F1 team podcast!

The most astonishing thing about the Renault podcast is the fact that important people who probably have a lot on their plate take a great deal of time to appear on the podcast. After every race, Radio 5 Live presenter Holly Samos visits the Renault factory to make the podcast. It is a brilliant way for an F1 team to reach the fans.

Pat Symonds in particular should be applauded for his dedication. It is always worth listening to what he says, and he provides refreshingly honest answers. He has held his hands up and said that Renault produced a bad car this year, and he has been completely open about these faults on the podcast.

The interviews with the drivers are also worth listening to, as they manage to avoid the fluff and cheese of the Williams podcast. It is strange that both podcasts are produced by the same company, USP Content, as the difference in quality could hardly be more stark.

I really do hope that Renault continue the podcast next season. More teams should follow suit, and the Renault template should guide them because it really is top-notch stuff.

Sidepodcast

This was the first F1 podcast I started listening to regularly, and I still loyally follow it.

I am in two minds about Sidepodcast, because I really like it when Christine and ‘me’ have an opinionated discussion, but the more factual and newsy elements of the podcast are not my cup of tea. For instance, a lap-by-lap review of the race sends me to sleep because I already know what happened. After all, I watched the race. However, I can see how it could be useful for those who missed the race.

Sidepodcast should be applauded for its experimental variants on the format. From time to time, for instance, short series are produced. For instance, last week there was a series called ‘Days that Shook the F1 World’ — a short daily podcast, each one focussing on a different pivotal moment in F1 history. Again, for me, these series are not so entertaining because I am personally the type who would rather delve into Wikipedia and books to find out more about such events.

There is a spin-off podcast called F1 Minute. It is a daily, 60 second long podcast rounding up the day’s F1 news in brief. Again, for me, it is not very useful because I usually keep up with news using RSS feeds and I already know most of the stories featured in the podcast. Nevertheless, it must be an excellent resource for those who are unable to keep up with the news as much.

However, I am in awe at the Sidepodcast video podcasts, which are top quality previews of each race. How do they do it?

Sidepodcast should also be congratulated for offering podcasts in the ‘enhanced’ format. These divide podcasts into DVD-style chapters. They also have the capacity to display images as the podcast is playing, which can be quite good if your are sitting around or in the train or something, although rather more off-putting if you’re going for a walk!

All-in-all, the content of Sidepodcast is not all my cup of tea. But in terms of effort, there is no doubt about it. Sidepodcast takes the crown.

That’s it for my review of my favourite F1 podcasts. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I have already mentioned Ollie’s post which contains some other suggestions that I will be trying out in the future, so take a look at that as well.

The existence of LastGraph makes me so happy. Like Andrew Godwin, who wrote LastGraph, I read this webpage a while ago and thought to myself, “I want.” But I thought it was a bit of a long shot to expect anyone to provide such a service.

Obviously I was wrong! What’s more, there are plenty of different options to choose from, so once you’ve made one graph you can make another and look at it differently.

Unfortunately, it only goes back as far as the beginning of 2005, so the early part of my Last.fm history. But what remains is fascinating to look at. The snapshot I have posted above is from May–July 2007. For some reason I always get more nostalgic about music that I listened to during summer, so I’m pretty sure that looking back I will get a little bit misty-eyed about Justice, Simian Mobile Disco and Can (incidentally, they were all albums that I bought on my last trip to the pre-HMV Fopp).

If, for some reason, you are interested in seeing the entire graph, it is available to download here. But be warned — the PDF is quite a large file!

The colours represent how early I first listened to a band. Reds and oranges were the first bands I listened to; purples are the most recent and greens are in the middle. Glancing at my graph, it is clear how much more eclectic my listening habits are. As time goes on there are fewer large patches, and the reds have been squeezed out by a larger variety of colours.

Surprisingly, it is completely impossible to follow any band all the way through my graph. I think this is down to the fact that I tend to just put iTunes in shuffle mode and let it select albums itself. I suspect the same bands would crop up week after week if I tended to choose for myself.

Even so, I am amazed that I can only pick out Battles three times on my graph. I have been flat-out obsessed with them for over a year (and particularly since the release of Mirrored), but seemingly I have not listened to them as much as I had thought.

My theory is that when I am out and about (and therefore not scrobbling), I choose what album to listen to more often, so this is where I have listened to Battles the most. (I think this happened to Polar Bear as well, who I listened to a lot, but are nowhere to be seen on my Last.fm profile.)

Funnily, I can see plenty of patches where I listened to Eels a lot. I never understood why Eels appear so high up on my Last.fm profile (not just overall, but for the past 12 months as well). I’m not sure the graph has aided my understanding of this, but I have clearly listened to Eels a lot more often than I thought.

I just got an iPod, so I will be able to scrobble while I’m out and about as well. I predict an increase in both the amount of music and large patches appearing on the graph. I hope LastGraph sticks around because it will be really interesting to create more of these graphs to compare over time.

H/T lots of people including Plasticbag and Somefool.

One more thing… Pffrffrfrt!

Seriously though, I need to keep up with technology news better. I had no idea that this latest presentation was even happening until I read it on Fake Steve Jobs — a blog that I only subscribed to a week ago.

You would not believe how close I was to ordering an 80GB iPod on Tuesday. Yeah, so I would have felt as stupid as somebody who had just bought an iPhone. On Wednesday they unveiled a better 80GB iPod Classic which is about £100 cheaper. For once, my dithering has brought dividends (assuming I actually get round to buying one of those new ones).

Anyway, it’s quite funny how rubbish everyone thinks the new iPods are. I mean, they have just unveiled a touch screen iPod. How awesome is that? But no, everyone has to complain about how it is just an iPhone without the phone bit (another reason for iPhone early adopters to feel shat upon), and how that Wifi bit looks ugly and how it doesn’t have enough storage space.

Okay, well they have a point about the storage. I would have been tempted by it, but given that my current 40GB MP3 player has almost reached capacity, and I am on the verge of buying an 80GB iPod — well, 16GB just doesn’t cut it. For gadget geeks? Maybe. Music fans? Nah.

As for that Starbucks thing, it just doesn’t make any sense. I mean, when have you ever heard anyone say, “Do you know what would make my life better? If I could buy the song they are currently playing in Starbucks!” Talk about underwhelming.

But the most ire is held for the iPod Fatty Nano. I am possibly in the minority here, but I have never thought that the iPod Nano was the nicest looking of gadgets. I thought the old iPod Nano was too thin. Ironically, everyone is complaining that the new one looks too fat. Which it does.

It’s bad luck for Apple though. It was widely derided before they even had the chance to officially unveil it. But now it is basically the official mid-range iPod. This means that it is probably going to be a lot of people’s Christmas present this year.

Imagine if you were a “big boned” child who was already teased about your weight. Then you turn up in the school playground with the fat iPod for your Christmas. What will happen? Instant permanent psychological distress. A murderer may be created. And it will all be Apple’s fault.

By and large, I’ve been fairly happy with the situation though. I can’t believe the way most people go through phones. Seemingly many people go through them at the rate of about two a year, or sometimes even every other weekend when they forgetfully drop their phone down the drain in a mad binge drinking-fuelled bum-bum performance.

In a way, I’m like one of those insufferable people who go, “OH, I just can’t set my VCR!” People who boast that they can’t set their VCR are stupid posers who really need to find something better to be proud about.

Me? I just go around saying, “Look! My phone doesn’t have a camera on it! It takes me half an hour to send a text! I don’t phone anyone cos I can’t be bothered to top it up!” Yes, I’m one of those terrible people who almost takes pride in how rubbish their phone is. I mean, this is probably three years old, which in mobile phone terms makes it a proper dinosaur. I mean, no camera!

But a certain website has come along and changed my phone habits for the better / worse [delete as applicable]. Yes, that Twitter nonsense means that I now receive about a dozen (probably more — believe it or not, I don’t count!) texts a day. This can be a bit embarrassing. I now receive such a large amount of texts that it suggests that people want to talk to me, when in reality I’m am just getting loads of tweets complaining about hangovers.

Also — I don’t know whether this is down to O2 or Twitter, or just the way that phones work — but often my messages come in clumps of about a dozen or even more. When I’m sitting there in a dull lecture, my pocket is sporadically buzzing away like a short circuiting dildo. All I can say is, thank goodness I don’t have a really annoying ringtone.

Actually having to use my phone has made me realise how clunky and slow it is. For instance, I can’t believe the fact that I run out of memory after about 50 texts. I assume today’s phones can hold a few more messages on them. Also, because of Twitter, I have come to appreciate how handy a mobile phone can come in. And I have occasionally felt out of the loop.

Counter-intuitively, Twitter might be making me less of a geek. (Well, it might be fostering a new era of net addiction for me. But I just like to see it as “engaging with society”. Of course.) Because of my busy modern hectic 24 hour lifestyle, on many days I might not find my way onto a computer all day until well after 9pm. Beforehand, I don’t think I really noticed. It didn’t bother me too much — besides, it’s probably good to stay away from the computer for most of the day.

But now with Twitter, I am being constantly reminded that stuff is happening, and I am missing out on it. What if there was a vaguely important email sent to me this morning? I might not see it until late on in the evening. An interesting blog post? I might miss it entirely. Important news event? My face will be nuked off before I know about it.

As somebody who, over the past few years, has been a bit of a “news junkie” and pale blogger, the realisation that I am actually not informed has unsettled me. And the sporadic stream of texts that I receive via Twitter has made me appreciate that this stupid thing in my pocket could actually come in useful.

Also, I didn’t really get anything interesting for my birthday, apart from money. It feels wrong to have turned 21 and only have the Borat DVD (thanks Gordon!) as a memento. I could get an iPod (and believe me, this is a particularly good opportunity for me to get an iPod), but since I just wrote the other day about why I’m not getting an iPod that would be silly. I mean, my iRiver still works…

So, a phone it (probably) is. But, as you might have guessed from what I have written above, I do not have the first clue about phones. So what’s what? Are there any particular good phones that I should go for? Any dodgy things I should know about?

I don’t want anything too swish — after all, that would make me look like a poserish iPod owner / Porsche driver. But I am looking for something that will allow me to check my email, Google Reader, maybe Facebook mobile and the odd news story. And I suppose I should join that mob of happy slappers and get a camera as well (although I don’t imagine you can actually buy a phone without a camera these days).

Of course, I could do the research myself, but I have actually tried and I really don’t know what’s what. Most of it goes straight over my head. So I would be grateful for any suggestions, should anyone be so kind as to pop into the comments.

Update: (Working my way through all the blog posts that I missed during the week) Blood & Treasure: i am a lonely node

Recently, the MP3 player started totally acting up. It did so on the same day I got my new PC, so that put a dampener on the whole day. I felt as though I was being punished for having the audacity to buy a PC.

Anyway, as you can imagine — I am a huge music lover — I was pretty upset about it. Eventually, I convinced myself that there was a silver lining. It provided the perfect opportunity to buy an iPod.

Yes, today I would probably buy an iPod. I would still feel like a bit of a posing prick with one, in much the same way as I wouldn’t suit driving a Porsche.

Most people are evil and superficial, and many point out the alleged “enormous” size of my iRiver. I don’t think it’s that big — I would say it’s chunky. But I really like its shape — roughly the dimensions of a cassette case. Fits very nicely in my pocket.

Somebody called outta stace left a comment recently explaining why they would “never get an iPod”. I wouldn’t say that I’d never get an iPod. But it explains well part of the reason why I like my iRiver.

But the iPod is tempting for two major reasons. One: gapless playback. I’ve picked up that you can get this for your iRiver, but only with an unofficial firmware upgrade, which I’m too much of a wuss to do. Two, and even more importantly: it Scrobbles.

(This is even more important at the moment because iTunes for Vista is buggy as shit, and the Last.fm software doesn’t play very well with it either — so most of my tracks are never Scrobbled.)

Still, as tempting as an iPod is, the price tag heading towards £300 pounds (I’d need to get the 80GB iPod as I have roughly 35GB of music) is a hefty hit on the wallet. I realised after a while that my iRiver was still under warranty, almost two years after I’d bought it (If my iRiver had died a month later, it wouldn’t have been — I was lucky).

I sent the player back to iRiver in Germany, who very promptly worked out the problem (HDD failure), fixed it and sent it straight back free of charge. I was impressed with the good service.

So now I have been reunited with my iRiver, complete with new HDD, but with all of the same external scrapes and bruises that have been inflicted on it thanks to two years’ worth of my usage. There’s a bit of life in my iRiver yet. Who needs an iPod?