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I love this project, the Bop Spotter! This is my neighborhood and I love its musical landscape. Sometimes I add to it myself from a bluetooth speaker on my wheelchair, but more often I’m surreptitiously shazaming the music around me from others’ speakers, from cars, from businesses I’m going by on the sidewalk. This is a cool use of a old/low end phone – hooking it up to a little …

I was fifteen when King Crimson released Discipline. I fell for it by accident. I borrowed a friend’s home-recorded cassette tape of the band’s 1969 premier, In the Court of Crimson King, which was all my AOR-addled brain was interested in 1981. Discipline was the flip side, which I never played. Then I lost the cassette. Feeling ethically obligated to replace it, I borrowed the first album from another friend …

This week we are looking at a map of Leiden from the atlas Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Braun and Hogenberg. The map dates from 1574, during the Eighty Years’ War or the Dutch Revolt, whereby the Netherlands fought for independence from the Habsburg Empire, ruled by King Philip II of Spain. Map of Leiden by Braun and Hogenberg, 1574. Collection Universiteit Utrecht (public domain) 1574 is a key year in …

effective engineering teams should work *with* their product owner/manager, not *for* them

1. Photographing the Williamsburg Bridge RidersA few of my favourite shots from the <a href="https://www.instagram.

What's this? A slightly moist railway station in the West Midlands on a weekday? Are we back?We are.This is Bilbrook, on the line between Wolverhampton and Shrewsbury, and twenty four hours later trains would be unable to run on this route because the tracks at Wellington were flooded after torrential rain. For me, it was just a little damp, a bit soggy almost, as I went up to the road …

After Glasgow, York. This was a place we had both previously visited and loved, but not for well over a decade and not together. So we were curious to see if we would enjoy it as much now. Folly? Yes, but that's not important right now. It did in fact take us a little while to find our way back into loving York again, as it all felt a bit …

Last time in our look at Keeping Up Appearances, we saw Harold Snoad making a load of fake films for Onslow’s telly. But Onslow doesn’t just enjoy watching the offcuts of Snoad’s location shoots. He also likes a bit of sport. Real, actual clips of motor racing and horse racing, not fake stuff. But we get a little more specific than than that, surely? Motor Racing Let’s take a look …

As I have surely said on this blog plenty of times over the years, I will never go to any holiday or short trip without at least one meal booked that stands a better than average chance of being decent. This is partly just for the sheer joy of eating out (how sad must your life be if you don't like eating out) but particularly in the case of European …

Always sideways these days I totally tilted last week at news of a new Cure album and listening to the released first single threw me into darkIt's not that it sucks (though it isn't good), it's that it smackingly reminds me of me, old, hopeless, bemoaning my lost fecundity through new stale creation (though my self-imposed painting ban now in week two with no plans to end or not end …

Luscious 10-Minute Mentaiko Pasta with a creamy sauce of spicy salted cod roe is a quick, easy pasta that you can make in an electric cooker. READ: 10 Minute Meal – Mentaiko Pasta

Written by MichaelWay back when, in 1992, Westwood Studios tried something a little different. They had been known as competent designers of games, in all sorts of genres, but they hadn’t really had a big hit yet, and they were only ever credited as a designer while another company’s logo graced the box. But their acquisition by Virgin Entertainment opened a door for them. Now, they were able to distribute …

New film magazine Monochromator sets out to contextualize films in such a bold manner that even its editor-in-chief Alex Heeyeon Kil wonders whether it should be described as a film magazine. Alex is a writer and researcher who splits her time between Berlin and Seoul. She explains more about her beautiful new magazine Monochromator as she shares her influences and working week. What are you doing this Monday morning?Mornings are …

The Ware for September 2024 is shown below: This ware was a gift, but I won’t credit the donor until the solution is revealed, because the credit itself might give a clue about the ware. My first reaction to seeing this board is: “this thing has a high BOM cost”. My second thought is the engineers who put it together (hopefully) got a lot of free lunches and design advice …

Dirty old river, must you keep rolling, rolling into the night / People so busy, make me feel dizzy, taxi light shines so bright / But I don’t, need no friends / As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset, I am in paradise. Ray Davies (b.1944), Waterloo Sunset