Neil Young and Crazy Horse live in bed

Life does not get much better that this.

It had been a good Saturday evening watching a local band in a local pub then going to another local pub for a nightcap before settling in to bed around 2am.

Going to bed these days means a quick look at my new iPad (what are they going to call it when the next one comes out?) to check on my Words with Friends games and to check on the state of the world as reported on Twitter.

That was when I learnt from ThrashersWheat that a Neil Young and Crazy Horse concert was about to be streamed live from Austin, Texas. I followed the link and snuggled down in bed to watch the show.

I knew that it would be good but it was much better than that.

My previous experience of webcasts had been experimental and exciting for a technological perspective but somewhat lacking in terms of the quality of the music and video. This was completely different.

The technology has improved several fold since then. I now have BT Infinity broadband that delivers up to around 36Mbps (it varies by device) and an iPad with a retina screen to watch the bits on. The overall result was high definition picture and sound with not a hint of a skip or a pause.

With the technology working well that left me free to concentrate on the music. And that's how it should be, technology is at its best when it's invisible.

Neil Young playing live with Crazy Horse, what more is there to say? You know that means extended songs with Neil doing whatever he wants and the band following along as if it had all be rehearsed down to the last detail when you know that's not true. The first song lasted around 15 minutes, maybe more.

The concert offered up some of the expected classics (there are so many to choose from) including the most-played Powderfinger. It was also my first chance to hear some of the new songs and they sounded excellent, i.e. very much in the same vein as other Neil Young songs written with Crazy Horse in mind.

My only regret was the late hour and my lack of stamina. I watched for about an hour before the lack of sleep caught up with me and I drifted off very happy.

Ministry of Space by Warren Ellis and Chris Weston

I'll come to the comic in a moment but I want to start with the technology that made it all happen.

I treated myself to an iPad a couple of months ago (it's the so-called new iPad that followed the iPad2) and one of the things that I wanted to use it for was reading comics. The main reason for this is that it is easy to carry one iPad around with me but rather hard to carry the few dozen comics that are in my read pile.

The secondary reason is that it is easy to get complete series and back issues so missing issues ceases to be a problem. Digital comics are also cheaper that paper ones but that is a lesser reason for buying them that way.

I've read a few Warren Ellis comics over the years and I like his style and the subjects that he writes about.

I follow him on Twitter and was catching up with things after a busy day touristing in Amsterdam when he tweeted that his Ministry of Space, previously unknown to me, was now available digitally, and for the ridiculous price of £3.99.

It took but a couple of minutes to find and download it. This is frictionless commerce at its best. Previously I would have had to email my comic shop and ask them to get a copy for me and then go to the shop to collect it. Easy enough but that would have taken weeks rather than days.

Warren's own afterword explains the story's relationship to Dan Dare, to which it clearly pays homage.

Essentially it is a prequel to the Dan Dare we all know and love and it explains how Great Britain came to be the dominant space power in the 1950s.

Of course this is Warren Ellis so the story does rather more than that and it ventures in to dark places where power and gold play their part.

As does some decidedly unfriendly fire.

Then the last panel knocks you sideways with an unexpected ending to a story that you did not know was there.

Warren is his economical safe and words and their attendant balloons are few and far between.

This leaves plenty of space for the art which is a good thing.

Chris Weston was a new name for me and that's my fault. The artwork is clean, very detailed and very evocative of the original Dan Dare without in anyway being a copy of it. Here the monorail has some Frank Hampson curves and colours and the flying boys are a direct lift.

Ministry of Space is a delightful little comic (it was originally issued in three chapters) that takes you back to a different future and shows you the good and the bad of what might have been.

Three recent photos

For years I've always carried a camera around with me (and it has always been a Canon Ixus of some kind). Now I carry two. The Ixus 80IS is still in my bag but there is also a decent camera in my iPhone4.

I still take the vast majority of photos with the Ixus but here is a selection of three recent photos taken with the iPhone4.


Spring heralds that start of the Open Gardens season and that means lots and lots of photos.

I've chosen this one simply because I like the composition.

The trees stand proudly with their arms outstretched as if protecting the flowers beneath them.

These flowers cluster together and stick close to the trees as if seeking safety in number.

Overall I think that the photo gives an accurate representation of what makes this garden tick.






The second photo is very different and required a little trickery.

It was taken at the monthly BCSA "Get to know you" Social where I have developed the sad habit of taking photos of some of what I eat and drink.

Zlaty Bazant is a lovely Slovak beer made lovelier by the attractive bottle and glass that it comes in.

The extreme colouring is done by the Instagram app that lets you play with your picture before posting it to the internet.





The final picture is of Gloucester Road Underground Station and was taken when waiting for a Richmond train late one night.

Clearly the sense of movement is important here but I also like the line of old-fashioned lamps and the near empty platform that gives a sense of stillness that contrasts with the train.

I took the picture at the angle that seemed to work best for the subject, especially the lamps.

I hardly take any photos vertically these days!






I do not claim that any of these pictures have any great merit but there is something that I like in all of them and I thought that was worth sharing.

New Apple software saves time!

I am only just starting to get to grips with the latest version (3.0) of the software for the Apple iPhone and iPod touch but I am already seriously impressed.

Things like the large keyboard on all applications are cool and useful but what I really like are the changes made to the music player, after all listening to podcasts is the main use I make of my iPods.

At a Gurteen Knowledge Cafe in April this year I made the comment that one of the advantages of using audio to transfer knowledge is that you can play it at different speeds to suit the immediate need. Apple listened.

The symbol below the time remaining in this picture says that I am listening to the podcast at 2x speed. This may sound silly but it works very well.

The speeding up (or down) is done with software so you do not get the Pinky and Perky effect when playing speech fast, though it does make rather a mess of The Archers theme tune!

I listened to several podcasts at 2x speed on the journey back from Sheffield on Friday and it was a great experience. I was able to listen to a lot more that I would otherwise have been able to and the enhanced pace of the programmes made them more compelling.

I did a few timing checks and it looks as though the 2x speed is a guide rather than a promise. Most of the 30 minute programmes that I listened to were reduced to 20 minutes. That's not 2x but it is still a serious time saving.

I have around 60 unlistened to podcasts at the moment but now that does not seem such a daunting number.

Reading books on the iPod

The iPod touch keeps getting better and now I am using it to read books, something that I have not been doing much of recently.

There are several eReader applications for the iPhone/iPod but the one that I chose is called Stanza.

Stanza gives you access to several libraries where you can download thousands of books. Obviously I have only explored the free books so far but I have already found a few interesting ones that I am now reading.

A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde is already proving to be delightful. It's a collection of magical short stories about kings, princesses, mermaids, dwarfs, dreams and enchantments.

It rather reminds me of Neil Gaiman in both subject and style. And that is a good thing.


The Stanza software itself is both simple and clever. To move through the book all you do is to touch the screen on the right or left side. This may not sound much but it means that you can read the book with one hand (using your thumb to turn the pages) which is very useful when commuting.

Touching the middle of the page brings up the menu where the display settings can be changed. It is possible to modify the background colour and the font face, size, colour and alignment.

I have chosen dark green (teal) text on black as I often read in the dark. It works well.

What I really like about reading books on the iPod is that this means that I always have some books with me so, for example, I can read a chapter of The Time Machine if the pub is quiet.

Stanza has got me reading books again while pretending that I am just playing with cool technology. And that's why I love it.

iPod touch gets even better

Several of the enhancements made this week to the iPod touch software are cute but of minor interest, such as the calculator that is a basic calculator when the iPod is held upright (portrait mode) but when it is rotated to landscape mode it becomes a fully fledged scientific calculator. How cool is that!

Similarly, there are minor enhancements to email, contacts and calendar. All good but nothing to get really excited about.

What is worth getting excited about is the new App Store application which gives you access to a wide catalogue of new applications, several of which are free.

I quickly added new applications for some of the websites that I use regularly, i.e. Facebook, MySpace and Twitter. These are all good and give you much better access to the websites than Safari does (hardly surprising as that is what they have been designed to do).

I've also added my first game, Morocco (a.k.a. Othello), and enjoy demonstrating my mastery over the computer, though it beats me often enough for this to be a real challenge.

My favourite application so far is last.fm. This sounds like, and to a certain extent is, a radio station that plays your favourite music. But it is much more than that. last.fm makes it easy for you to find new music based on the artists that you like, to find gigs that you might be interested in, to find out what your friends are listening to and to find people with similar musical tastes.

The beauty of last.fm is that it relies on the input from the many users to create the links between artists and events etc. which is where the value of the service comes from. User content and networking is what web2.0 is all about and last.fm is an excellent example of this.

Watching TV on my iPod touch

The news that the BBC iPlayer has been made available for the iPhone and iPod touch is fantastic! I've only dabbled with the potential so far but must confess to watching an episode of Two Pints ... in bed last night :-)

The screen on the iPod touch is superb and I prefer wating vidoes on that to using a laptop (I have several) with a larger screen. It is also much more mobile so you can watch it, for example, when lying in bed or sitting in the bath.

The iPhone and iPod touch are dream machines and they just get better. Perhaps I should get an iPhone too ...

A happy early birthday present for me

Travel for work has rather got in the way of my birthday this year, as I'll be spending most of the day itself flying to Brazil, but the good news is that this meant that I got my main present early.

During a short play with an iPod Touch in the Apple shop in Kingston upon Thames, I managed to get a map and check the weather forecast for Sao Paulo (it is going to be very wet), send a couple of emails, spend my gold on Kings of Chaos and have a fun time doing all this. And in the few hours since owning one I have read some emails, checked the football scores and had even more fun.

I'll also use it as an iPod too and I have loaded my other present, Neil Gaiman reading his preferred version of Neverwhere, to listen to during my two long-haul flights this week. I'll also be taking my iPod Nano to catch up on some podcasts and my iPod Shuffle for the music!

It's open!

This is the Bentalls Centre in Kingston upon Thames and all the people queuing in the line were waiting for the new Apple shop to open!

We got there about ten minutes before the shop was due to open expecting to see about twenty other geeks waiting to worship at the technology shrine but found ourselves in a queue of a few hundred instead.

Still, we got there in a little under half an hour and got our free Apple t-shirts. They had 1,000 t-shirts to give away and they all went in about an hour.

The Apple Shop is fantastic!

This was meant to be a cultural day out in London and I did manage to get them to spend a little time looking at old maps of London at the British Library but the highlight of the day for them was the traditional visit to the Apple Shop in Regent Street.

The main attraction of the shop is the ample opportunity to play with various bits of Apple technology. This includes the iMacs with built-in iSight that allow you to take photos of yourself (like this one of my two boys) and email them to yourself.

The Apple Shop also serves as a popular, and free, internet cafe as all the computers are online so while the boys were busy taking lots of photos of themselves I was able to check my email and spend my gold on Kings of Chaos!

Musical journeys

It's two years now since I got my iPod Shuffle and I don't know how I managed without it! My journey to/from work each day takes about 75 minutes and this is now the main time that I listen to music and catch up with my favourite podcasts.

My regular podcasts are all from BBC Radio 4, and they are In Our Time, From Our Own Correspondent, In Business and The Now Show.

I can now listen to my new albums several times to get to know them and the ones currently on my iPod are the latest ones from Jarvis Cocker, Neil Young, Rammstein and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. I fill the iPod up with old favourites and at the moment I am listening again to Kingdom Come (pictured), Bjork, Placebo, Rainbow, Sparks and various others.

I always listen to my music in shuffle mode which means that 1) if it's a new album then I don't know which track I am listening to and 2) the tracks on an album get played a different number of times. I have evolved a practise which may seem a little anal but which works well for me. Once I have listened to a track from a new album 5 times, or from an old album 2 times, I remove it from the iPod and I add another album once there is space for it. This means that some tracks stay on there for several weeks before they get their 5th/2nd play which leads to a wide variety of music on the iPod but all of it specifically selected at some point.