Shakepeare's Birthday and World Book Night 2013

Today is World Book Night 2013 which has been set to coincide with William Shakepeare's birthday ( incidentally the day he died).  I have to thank my mate Mick for pointing this out on the bus to Central Station this morning.

Tonight I shall distribute copies of A Little History of the World by EH Gombrichon Darlington and Newcastle Railway Stations.  Will see if people are willibg to engage. I am sure they will be.

Still Fighting With My Left Hand, Record Store Day Highlights and What Is Good Music?

Well still the docs are looking for clues for why my left couple of fingers don't work properly , though it's coming back slowly I think. Today I had an MRI scan which is not very nice when you are a closet claustrophobe like me. I requested some music and got "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" by Pink Floyd that approximated the length of time of the scan punctuated by the undustrial techno soundtrack of the scanner itself. One improvement is they give you a little periscope so you can see that there are people about if you choose to look , but I can't recommend the experience. Still that one's over with so now wait for two weeks to hear what the prognosis is.

A lot of people have been saying how good the Daft Punk / Nile Rodgers collaboration "Get Lucky" is so I thought I should give it a listen. ... and it is very good , but really this what all mainstream radio should meet in terms of quality , however it didnt knock me off my feet , but is certainly a record I'd like to hear on the radio.


My biggest surprise was the Paul Weller single Flame Out! put out for National Record Shop Day. This DID knock me off my feet . Sounding like Public Image Limited with another singer , certainly not your average Paul Weller song , this is the sort of thing that we want more of . And the B Side is a fine song as well. That really did perk up my weekend.

Facebook Wants To Own The Internet

A short post this which may eventually cause be to close my Facebook account. The very fact that I'm writing this is giving more publicity to Facebook, and it's two instances of something that may eventually damage other products.

The first was Deezer. Luckily I had signed up before the current requirement that you had to sign up with your Facebook account. I dont like be told I HAVE to use Facebook.

This morning I used Babelfish because my German is a little rusty , being mostly gleaned from Amon Duul and Faust titles and lyrics, but it wouldn't translate unless I signed into to Facebook.

Again it's something I see happening more and more , you can't have access to this unless you sign up for that. It's pathetic really.  The thing is eventiually you give in , then you start getting junk email, texts and phone calls all because you couldn't speak a forign language.

I dont mind using Facebook but along with Google and lots of other things they just want complete contril you. No thanks , I'm not going to take it anymore

The Books Are Here

This is it for 2013

Just picked up my books for distribution on World Book Night 2013 next week. A slightly different documentation / tracking idea this year means I have to physically sign each one , though luckily there are only 20.

This is the first book I hadn't read before choosing it , but bought myself a copy and read it cover to cover. It's very easy to read an I learned some Chinese charaters as well as quite a bit of other  historical titbits.

It's a wonderful book for parents to read with children to pique their interest in history from the biginiing of the world to modern times.

It's generally jargon free and is very good in pointing people towards other sources for extra detail.




Anyway I need to now get my pen out and start signing the things ready for next weeks distribution.

Living In The Past

It's funny how we have a hankering for old things and things to remain as they were / are, when a lot of the time the new stuff is actually far better than the old stuff. I have a Samsung Galaxy Note phone , but I want an emulator on on it so I can play the games I enjoyed on my Amstrad CPC computer. I downloaded an emulator but it just crashes my phone . C'est la vie.

I bought an alarm clock that emulates Tetris , and believe me you dont snooze with it , that alarm has to be switched OFF.

A lot of the music I have on my players id the stuff of my teenage years such as Hawkwind and Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull. Having said that I am a hige fan of convenience. and use both the ridiculous 48 GB capacity , plus Deezer and Youtube to allow me to play what I want when I want.

There have been recent things about returns to cassette tape even . Cassette was brilliant in its time , but was fragile , didnt last , and I would never dream of using a cassette again except to extract so rare music or something. The good part is that you have to do it in real time , which is a lot more personal that knocking together a Spotify or Grooveshark playlist , but those platforms  enable you to share music and Grooveshark does let you upload stuff that it doesnt have. Any way heres some old Bok Demo's from the mid 70s.

Fighting With My Left Hand #2

Thought I would use my blog to document this. Been to the hospital and confused the experts even more. Everything seems to be OK that should be , but I can't grip laterally with my extended fingers of my left hand. Have an MRI scan being planned just to make sure my brain is still functioning , snd that's about it. Still can't do much with my left little finger either which makes it awkward putting gloves on and the like, but things seem to be slowly improving , although whether that's just me compensating I don't really know. I keep trying things with my left hand and then thinking .. "Could I do that with my left hand before this happened?"

It's probably diabetes related but we shall see how it progresses.

After the unfortunate derby result (well I suppose we have to let the Mackems have a little hope before they get relegated) I have Omid Djalili to look forward to this afternoon at The Stand . Only joking Sunderland folks !!

I shall keep you posted....

Omid Djalili in a Chelsea Top !!

Picture This

A short post this , but a number of people have mentioned that they enjoyed seeing my Instagram posts. I ditched both Instagram and Twitter because of the disposability of the posts on there , but have slowly come round to the thought that as long as you dont OD on the stuff then its OK to use , so I've decided to resurrect my Instagram feed.

My Twitter one is here.  My instgram name will be mikeydred96 so it may be here

So I'm just hoping I don't swamp peaople with pictures , but will try and post interesting things. Also the Samsung Note 2 has a decent camera and processor so should be interesting to see what I can do , maybe I'll limit myself to black and white , but we shall see.

I chose the Blondie video , because it's a great song and I nicked the title for this post . Oh and on May 4th Blondied are on the bill at the "Fake Festival" at Percy Park Rugby Club . Details here

There's video and music samples of them on the link above so you can try before you buy so to speak