Transistor Transformation

In the early sixties youth carried music around in the palm of it's hand in the form of transistor radio, stations playing the latest rock and roll hits to satisfy the "kids" . Phil Spector listenned to each song he produced with his tradmark wall of sound to ensure it sounded good on a transistor radio, because that was his sales window. If it sounded good on radio then the market would buy it.

Radio has progressed through MW to FM to DAB and portables are part of your average phone either i the form on an inbuilt tuner using the headphone wires as an aerial or streaming media , which is effectively data that your supplier will charge you for. So the kids are still listening to music on portable devices that can be held, it's just now they have a little more choice and control and they are paying for it.

Ironic ,fifty years on,that  a phone costing maybe seven or eight hundred pounds is being used for the same purpose as a cheap transistor radio. Though I am well aware that todays phones are actually very powerful computers but it's still quite amusing.

Not Maintaining Standards

Despite the fact I'm impressed with my iPad, Apple continue to flabbergast me with their continual ignorance of standards . Was recently at my mate Mark Tovey's had he showed an excellent Android Media player that I could install on my Samsung Note called BS Player. This works like a dream allowing you to play media from you network drives after connecting to wifi. Would love if it would connect over 4G , but lets not complain. It allows to set a home directory and then has fast negotiation of you network drive to play whatever media you want , video or music.

I thought the iPad is wifi based , but I can only do the sameby installing an Air Play server on my PC and have another Apply lump of bloatware slowing my system down. My big gripe with Apple is that device are not self contained. You need iTunes on your PC that you have to sync with your iPhone or iPad or both often ending up in horrendous autorisation knots. The softare on the device should do the job independently . Yes you can sync between machines but that should not be mandatory.

Oh yes and the iPhone 5 has a different connector to prior iPhones , when other manufacturers are moving towards a standard USB connector. So god forbid that you leave your charger at hone.

So I wont be using my iPad as a streaming player anytime soon , like I can do with my phone.

April Fools

Well it's a new month and new financial year and the school bullies (Cameron , Clegg , Osborne , Ducncan- Schmidt) have chosen the easy targets again (anyone on benefits). You can imagine them at school each September picking out the apparently weakest new pupils , then running home to mummy if they ended up with a bloody nose.

I'm lucky that I have a job and a house so am personally not affected , but was severely attacked under Thatcher , recieved no support when I had a hundred mile return commute when my daughter was severely ill in the Royal Manchester Childrens Hospital. I was helped through that by my bank manager at the Midland Bang in Tarleton who gave me the extra money I needed for petrol and said we'd sort when my daughter was better , which we did . The government gave no help at all bar still allowing the NHS to exist.

The current re organisation was tried fifteen years ago under the tories and failed then. It is designed for "private enterprise" to cherry pick profitable bits (often made profitable by tying the NHS intp extortionate contracts) . The last three governments don't seem to understand the concept of services and utilities.

The mass privatisations have just resulted in spiralling costs paid for by the electorate.

The government continually attack the low paid, the disabled and people on benefits while actively encouraging large corporations such as Starbucks, Amazon , Google  NOT to pay tax on monies earned in this country.

Benefit Fruad in this country is estimated ate 1.1 Billion though this site reckons it is more like 5.5 Billion. Corporation Tax avoidance (that we know about) is between 8 and 14 billion (see here) , yest this is not being addressed at all by this government . It's the school bully mentality , go for the easy target who cant fight back , and probably you will find that those companies are contributing to the government coffers. So even in the worst case scenarion Corporation Tax avoidance is 60% than benefits fraud.

I am not condoning either , but cutting benefits is the bullies answer. Providing living wage jobs and actually targetting fraud would mean that cuts would be minimal.

It's Still Easter

and I haven't had an Easter Egg. I'm sure that lots of people will make up for me though

Clocks Go Forward

and today for the first time in over ten years I ordered a new alarm clock. I suppose Easter weekend is an ideal time to put the clocks forward as it allows those of us who don't work in retail to easily absorb the lost hour of sleep.

One good thing about being in this digital and electronic age is you only have to adjust mechanical items such as clocks and non networked items. Phones and computers now do themselves spo to speak.

So tomorrow is time for Easter Eggs , Church Celebrations if you are so inclined . I shall just be mostly resting.

I was originally going to use Coldplay and The Buenavista Social Club's Clocks , but then remembered Marillion's Easter and thought that would be more appropriate.

A Little History Of The World

Every Home Should Have One

I've started reading this book by Ernst Gombrich and four chapters in I've convinced that any family that has children under ten should have a copy of this. It's written in a simple, generally jargon free manner and is likely to spark interest and questins from inquisitive minds.



It's nice to come across something positive for young children and also to able to promote it as I shall be doing on April 28th.




Books stimulate the mind whether on paper or in ebook format and all children should be encouraged to read from as early an age as possible even if teachers don't like it .



Both my daughters knew their alphabet and the use of upper and lower case by the time they started school and amazingly some teachers said this was wrong. Luckily their primary school in Sunderland encouraged their reading and both had finished the Lord of The Rings by the age onf 10. I only started on the Hobbit at that age!

Books and Records and Ali G

Well I've jusst finished the excellent Tony Benn biography by Jad Adams , discovering lots of things about someone who must be close on the most respected politician ever. The book is surprising readable obviously helped by it's subject mater or an caring idealist , a stunning orator who had the intelligence outspeak opponents without ever getting flustered. His encounter with Ali G / Sacha Baron Cohen  showed him taking matters seriously rather than pandering to sreotypes resulting in Sacha Baron Cohen writing to Benn thanking him for being the only person to react with skill and integrity to Ali G's inane stereotypical questioning.

Anyway this means I've started "A Little History Of The |World" by Ernst Gombrich which is the book I've chosen to distribute on World Book Night on Tuesday April 23rd 2013 on my train back from work between Darlington and Newcastle. The preface tells of the genesis of the book which is entertaining in itself , I was going to tell you about it but the copy on the Amazon page does that very well , so I'll include that here:

"In 1935, with a doctorate in art history and no prospect of a job, the 26-year-old Ernst Gombrich was invited to attempt a history of the world for younger readers. Amazingly, he completed the task in an intense six weeks, and Eine kurze Weltgeschichte für junge Leser was published in Vienna to immediate success, and is now available in twenty-five languages across the world. Toward the end of his long life, Gombrich embarked upon a revision and, at last, an English translation. A Little History of the World presents his lively and involving history to English-language readers for the first time. Superbly designed and freshly illustrated, this is a book to be savoured and collected. In forty concise chapters, Gombrich tells the story of man from the stone age to the atomic bomb. In between emerges a colourful picture of wars and conquests, grand works of art, and the spread and limitations of science. This is a text dominated not by dates and facts, but by the sweep of mankind's experience across the centuries, a guide to humanity's achievements and an acute witness to its frailties. The product of a generous and humane sensibility, this timeless account makes intelligible the full span of human history."

I've said it previous posts why I chose the book and have started reading it , and finding it well written , in terms a child could understand, really a book that should be in every household especially if there are young children. It is the sorting of book theat stimulates interest and inquisitiveness and will inevetibly have them asking "Why?" in a good way.

Three days before that it's National Record Shop Day which will mean long queues out of RPM , Reflex and Beatdown in Newcastle and bands playing and street entertainment and chasing limited editions onf vinyl artefacts worldwide.Every year it's getting bigger and better , and as for the demise of record shops , don't believe a word of it , the best ones are still with us . I was recently surprised to find excellent record shops in York and Bakewell , and as long as a shop is welcoming and able to adapt they will attract customers. Often people complain about the cost of music and I point outthis fact:

In 1975 Pink Floyd released Wish You Were Here in an unfeasible shrink wrapped plastic bag, containing postcards etc (maybe that was Dark Side of The Moon which did contain posters and stickers). Anyway I'd just left school and was geeting job seekers allowance which was £3.25 .... the same price of the new Pink Floyd album. Needless to say I didnt go out that week.

So if albums had kept pace with Job Seekers Allowance the cost of an album would now be around £60 !! I recently took deliver of The Blue Oyser Cult's Columbia Album box set (17 discs) which cost me £46 and that was funded by a MyVoice voucher and Hilton Honors voucher so I didnt rwally even pay for it. So music today is better value than ever.