My top ten albums of 2009

10. The Fiery Furnaces — I’m Going Away It wouldn’t be an end-of-year music roundup from me without something related to The Fiery Furnaces appearing on the list. And here it is: I’m Going Away. This is probably the lowest they have appeared in my end-of-year list since I discovered them. Not that I’m Going […]

My top twenty albums of 2009 — part one

It is the end of the year. I like music. That can only mean one thing: a run-down of the music I have bought this year, arranged into vague order of how much I enjoyed them. In this twentieth anniversary year of Warp Records, it has been a stonking year for the label in my […]

20 Warp albums — part 5

This is the final selection of my overview of twenty interesting Warp albums from the record label’s twenty years. To read the other parts of this series, please check the table of contents on the right. Jamie Lidell — Multiply Jamie Lidell is clearly a very talented person. His voice is incredible, but perhaps more […]

Where have the F1 video games gone?

Pitpass ran an interesting story yesterday about the deadlock that appears to have been reached between Sony and Bernie Ecclestone who are in negotiations to create a new Formula 1 video game. It is a shame that Bernie’s “hardball” attitude has led to this apparent stalemate. I have been a big fan of Sony’s Formula […]

It was war. It is war

Hello there. I’m still really busy at the moment. It’s the last week of teaching at university, and with that comes a deluge of coursework hand-ins. Still, they are all quite interesting so it doesn’t feel too much like hard work, so it is consuming a lot of my time. Typical that this would be […]

Ferrari’s yukky new livery

Regular readers may have noticed that I haven’t written about Formula 1 for a while. That’s because there is none of it around at the moment! Yes, it is the close season. For the motor racing fan at winter there are three options: Keep yourself occupied with the DVD of last season’s highlights Watch A1 […]

Obscure Pulp YouTube extravaganza!

Pulp has been one of my favourite bands ever since I was nine. Maybe that’s why I turned out so weird. To think that I grew up listening to that mucky man’s tales of debauchery. I can’t have known what he was on about until I was well into my teens. I remember asking my […]

Cancelled

Wow, is Haymarket station crumbling or something? I went to the station at just before 9am to find out that there was a signal failure at Haymarket which meant that no trains were going into or coming out of Edinburgh. Apparently the trains are only starting up again around about now (after 11am). Too late […]

The 11th of September

On the fifth anniversary of the attacks, I thought I would write a post about my memories of that day. This is partly because it is really the first news story in my life where I might be asked the question, “where were you when you heard…?” Well, there was Princess Diana’s death, but I […]

2006 Hungarian Grand Prix

Sorry I’m so late with this post on the most incredible grand prix of the year. I’ve been very busy recently, and when I’ve not been busy I’ve been tired. Anyway, from an early age — probably when I turned 4 in 1990 — I learned that everything bad in life can be attributed to […]