About ten years ago I shunned music radio. It no longer reflected my musical tastes, so I turned to speech radio stations instead — all on the BBC. 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 […]
Gristleism: a different take on the Buddha Machine concept
I have written before about the Buddha Machine. It is like a mystical modern-day music box. I’m a big fan. 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 […]
Buddha Machine II
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 […]
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. […]
What I listened to in 2007
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 […]
F1 season review: podcasts
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, […]
Seeing what I hear
I am a big fan of the music discovery and social networking site Last.fm. I am also a lover of beautiful pointless graphs. So LastGraph was always going to be a winner for me. The existence of LastGraph makes me so happy. Like Andrew Godwin, who wrote LastGraph, I read this webpage a while ago […]
Oi, Fatty!
Steve Jobs did one of those presentations on Wednesday. You know the deal. He says all of this stuff, and the Apple fanboys lap it up. Sometimes I think that Apple fanboys would still love it if Steve Jobs just went on stage, turned round, dropped his trousers and exposed his hairy back crack. One […]
Phone help needed
Despite my frightening net addiction and general interest in techy stuff, I am a bit of a Luddite when it comes to mobile phones. I got my first phone only three years ago, which probably made me among the last ½% in the country. I have only owned two phones, including the one I currently […]
Thumbs up for iRiver
My iRiver is two years old today. It was a birthday present a couple of years ago (yes, today I am now officially, unfortunately, in the grip of adulthood… gah). 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 […]