One Book To Another

Well last night's visibility experiment was inconclusive, but I am doing another evening post. This time it's about  the books I'm reading. I've just finished the excellent "How To Be Right" by James O'Brien and I am following that up with "Mythos" by Stephen Fry.

"How To Be Right" was easy to read with decent sized type over 220 pages, but "Mythos" sort of gives me the horrors because it's over 400 pages of small type.

"How To Be Right" helps to prepare you for dealing with with, shall we say, the difficult people and situations of the modern world and has been great to read, if more than a tad worrying , but a lot of people I know fall into that category, who refuse to examine what causes their beliefs that certain situations are true and cannot be challenged. Their paper of choice is The Metro (published by The Daily Mail) because it's free. I really shouldn't say any more.

"Mythos" is a completely different ball game tapping into my love of all  mythology , though this one is hitting the Greek strand. As a kid I loved reading Norse, Celtic, Roman , Greek and further mythology, so despite the small print I am looking forward to it.

So I will not go with another Pete Wylie song, but this time I will go for "Jason and the Argonauts" by XTC from their album "English Settlement" as it does fit in with the Greek Mythology connection.

Six

I had a good reason for calling this Six , it does follow the wrongly named "Five" post but I've forgotten why I was going to call it that . This is also an experiment to see if I get more visits if I post at night rather than in the morning. In the morning the USA is asleep but in the UK evening the USA is awake. I'm not sure that will make any difference.

I've had Pete Wylie songs for that last two posts and this time I found a live take of "Four Eleven Forty Four" at King Tuts in Glasgow. A guy I worked with at Littlewoods , Dave Homan was a friend of Pete Wylie's , and Wylie has been responsible for some amazing tunes and should really be a much bigger name than he is.

Even his sketch songs and gorgeous and when I chose this, lots more came to mind, but I stuck with this lovely live take.

It's dark outside, it's Thursday night and maybe time for bed....

Five

So England will have five* teams in next seasons Champions League. Tottenham Hotspur, like Liverpool last night overcame a three goal deficit to win on away goals with a last minute winner at Ajax. I'd said to my friend Obi today, who was dismissive of any chance they might have, that they had Son and Lucas Moura , and if Moura played to his abilities they definitely had a chance.

So Tottenham conceded two early goals just to make life difficult, and set themselves a task they had not achieved since 2010 (against Arsenal), overcome a two goal deficit to win an away match, against a team that had disposed of Real Madrid and Juventus. That was no mean feat.

Lucas Moura score all the Spurs goals and you can see the match report here. Given what has happened over the last two nights God knows what will happen in the Champions League Final in Madrid, I wouldn't like to call it.

Basically, from the point of view of the English and Neutrals you have seen two amazing matches that go to the top of the scale for excitement, nerves and unexpected results. It is unlikely such a thing will ever pass again.

So a piece of music to celebrate this momentous occasion, I think we will go for another Pete Wylie / Mighty Wah slice of beautiful brilliance, the wonderful "Come Back" (which you can actually download for 99p) which Tottenham Hotspur can do with pride and their heads held high. There is no way I would disgrace this post with "Diamond Lights"

* Just realised it will only be five if Chelsea and Arsenal both win tonight.... we shall see

Liverpool is Liverpool

This is just to record the fact that Liverpool thrashed Barcelona last night is one of the most amazing turnarounds in modern sport. Statisticians had given Liverpool a 4% chance of progressing, they were missing their two main strike threats, although the final third of their strike force has hit the net 20 times this season.

Even Liverpool fans were resigned to going out , but I pointed out that Liverpool are not one man, Liverpool are Liverpool, they have a team, they have a brilliant engaging manager who most of the time gets it right and knows how to motivate people (loved the bear hug as he sent Daniel Sturridge on for the last five minutes last night, that is someone who cares). His Barcelona counterpart was stoney faced and immobile throughout the night.

Barcelona have Messi , Suarez, Coutinho and god know how many more, so the task was great, but last night was the stuff of Football legend. Jurgen Klopp's acquisition of Virgil Van Dijk has made their defence far more solid (though Newcastle scored two against them on Saturday) but Divock Origi and Giorgio Wijnaldum scored a brace each to take Liverpool though.

The match report is here.

An absolutely wonderful night and we will share my  (and John Peel's)favourite song about Liverpool to mark the occasion, Pete Wylie's "Heart as Big As Liverpool".

There will be a lot of happy faces in Liverpool this morning.

Six Minutes

One of my bugbears is waking up, wondering what time it is and seeing it's six minutes before your alarm is due to go off. You can't go back to sleep, or enjoy the few minutes you have left in bed so you drag yourself out of your put to start the day and take yourself off to whatever awaits you, work or whatever. I don't know whether it's worse after a Bank Holiday Weekend although the slight upside is that, for me, it's only a four day working week.

I think a four day working week for people like me would actually improve productivity and and work-life balance, although that imay not an option for one man businesses, or maybe it is. I remember the story of an American Tyre business who realised they got most of their business at the weekend, so they changed their working week from Monday to Saturday to Friday to Monday, so their employees got a four day week for the same pay and the company's profits went up. I know this is just an isolated example but it is something worth considering.

Anyway I think I'll just share The Stranglers "Five Minutes" with you before I set off for work.

Have a good Tuesday everyone.

You Have To Watch This In HD

A friend of mine asked me to watch something on a new Hi Def video player many years back and he enthused about the fact that in the space sequences you could see that the backdrop was actually a black curtain. I told him I don't want to see a black curtain I wasnt to see a great film.

Another friend told me I had to see "Taken" in HD. I recorded it in normal resolution and watched it and thought, it's just a typical Liam Neeson film.

I have a DVD set of the original Addams Family and put it on and the transfer to DVD is not that great, like a crackly vinyl record for the eyes, but five minutes into the first episode you don't see the white screen noise you nee the excellent acting the hilarious story and the great characters.

I recently watched "Dr Strange" on oddity from the new Marvel Studios which was absolutely excellent and the special effects, particularly the folding buildings sequences (stolen from Christopher Nolan's "Inception" ?) are the sort of thing that would probably benefit from Hi Def but looked great in normal definition.

Since we switched to digital transmissions, most transmissions are fine in normal definition but sometimes they get it by digital drop out and pixelation (which I don't remember from analogue transmissions) but it my be like DAB against normal radio, mostly DAB is perfect but it can drop out, whereas normal radio you get interference and fading.

A year or two back we had another 3D TV push which dropped off , "Watch Football In 3D" they said, go to a real football match I said. There's no 3D sports broadcasts no although still a lot of films. Again it's something for those absolutely ridiculous disaster / horror movies (examples here)

Basically if a film or program is worth watching the quality of the media becomes secondary, yes it's great if you can see the best picture possible, but I'd rather have a great film on low res media than a bad film on hi res media.

So I have to share The Addams Family dancing to The Ramones' "Blitzkrieg Bop", what's not to like?

Enjoy your Bank Holiday Monday.

Battery Acid

This is just a short post about problems that I was not aware of with batteries. I ordered a replacement battery for a laptop and Amazon delivered via their lockers in 24 hours. That was great.

However that battery was not for my laptop even though it was on the list of compatible items so I followed the return procedure. I had to put a label on that stated this was a hazardous item and should not be sent via post or airmail.

I then searched for couriers who would take batteries but couldn't find any. I thought I had found one, but the just used established couriers and were going to send via DHL who do not take batteries.

In my search I found that people said the carriers scan for batteries and if they find they they just destroy them and you lose the battery.

Because of the nature of batteries they could actually burst into flames, but are apparently ok if they are in the device that they power.

Personally I would think that would make them more dangerous.

Amazon then recommended Parcel Monkey , great name but they are very clear about batteries as they state here. . Another call to Amazon and they game me a refund and told me to keep or dispose of the battery, so all was resolved in the end although I still need to source a replacement battery.

I got a call from Parcel2Go who said I could send a battery through them but it wouldn't be covered for compensation, so I will bookmark them in case I need to send anything in the future.

So an appropriate piece of accompanying music would be "Battery" by Metallica though I could have chosen other songs by Hawkwind or Genesis.

All is good