I almost feel like I have to write something about the start of a new year. Even though I have no expectations that this year will be any better than 2021 or 2020. The world is still struggling with a pandemic and everything that brings.
In the past I have written about what I plan for the site and made somewhat vague commitments to doing things with it. Not so this year. I have no plans. If there is one thing I have learnt from the last couple of years it is that having a plan is a sure way to make certain that the plan will fail.
I have no idea what 2022 will bring, and I have no idea what I will do with this site. More than that, I can’t say.
For the most part it has been a horrible year and one that I am glad to see the back of. I thought that 2020 was bad, but 2021 managed to be worse. In some ways I want to think that 2022 will be better, but I think I am learning to have low expectations, and then lower my expectations further. That seems to be the best strategy.
I am very sad to say that my friend, Ian Rawes passed away in October. You might know of Ian from his amazing work at the London Sound Survey which he ran as an incredible archive of sounds from around the city.
Ian was a lovely man. He was knowledgeable and passionate about sound and field recording and I came away from talking to him always feeling as though I had learnt something new.
I first heard about Ian in a book called ‘In the field’, which I can thoroughly recommend to anyone who has even a passing interest in field recording. In it there is an interview with Ian which fascinated me and I decided that I had to contact him. That was back in 2016. We met for a drink and I found myself talking to a like minded soul who was generous with his time and knowledge. More than that he was a gentle man, and I miss him.
Ian also wrote, or perhaps more accurately, compiled a book about sound words. ‘Honk, Conk and Squacket’ is a great book to dip into every now and then to locate a word that you’ve probably never heard of before. Again, I can thoroughly recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in the history of sounds and how we have described them.
I’m glad to say that the last time I saw Ian, back in 2019, I asked him to sign my copy, which I will now always treasure.
You can hear a lot of Ian’s recording at the London Sound Survey, but also his recordings have been released by Persistence of Sound.
You can also find their music on bandcamp. I can thoroughly recommend this record. The recordings are superb and listening to them again recently gave me a great sense of peace about Ian.
I will miss him a great deal, but for me, he lives on in these excellent recordings. His work is his legacy, and those who knew him, those who’s lives he touched, will remember him for many years to come.
I went to this on Sunday as I was invited by a friend. I probably would have overlooked this event if it wasn’t for that. But it was good. Quite unique in fact.
I have always had a love of trains, or perhaps, to be more accurate, a love of being on long train journeys. So this appealed to me simply for that fact.
The films shown were of mixed quality. All of them showed different aspects of train travel in different parts of the UK. From busy cities, to the countryside and seaside. The one I liked the best was the first commuter inter city train. The film of that was very focused on the comfort and luxury of the journey. It was very business centric, but, as a piece of social history, very interesting. As was the music, which was live and performed by an ensemble of musicians from the guild hall. They had composed the score themselves, and whilst some of it was electronic and appealed to me a bit more, a lot of it was more generally contemporary.
Overall it was a very good experience. Well put together. Enjoyable. I would certainly go to something like that again.
Earlier this year my old walkman finally gave up. I had owned this walkman for a long time, and by that I mean a few decades. It was a lovely device, a lovely piece of engineering. It was barely bigger than a cassette itself and it would run for ages on just a single AA battery.
But it stopped, just stopped working one day and I have no idea why at all.
You might ask if I tried to repair it. The answer is no. The technology was so small that you’d have to have been a specialist to even attempt a repair. I knew that I wouldn’t be up for it.
But I have considered replacing it. I had a good look around eBay and I was amazed at the prices that a functioning walkman will go for. I’m sure that I had looked some years ago and they were going for next to nothing. My guess is that the prices spiked after the first ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ movie came out.
Anyway, so far I haven’t replaced it, I’m not sure that I will now. I still have cassettes. I still like them. So I expect that one day I will.
I have to admit that I only watched this because I like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and I thought that the premise was quite interesting. I finished it just the other day and overall I really liked it. I thought it touched on a lot of issues that people have faced over the last couple of years.
I also really liked watching him make music with a range of different devices, some of which I’ve used and owned in the past.
It was a shame that it was cancelled. I think that a second season of it would have been interesting. I know I would have watched it.
I posted a while ago that Big Finish were planning to bring out some more Survivors stories. Well they have, in fact, two have come out this week.
The first is ‘Ghosts and Demons’, which is a narrated story. Not that I particularly dislike a narrated story, at times they can be very good actually. This one is narrated by Carolyn Seymour, who is of course one of the main actors in the Survivors series anyway. I have listened to her narration before, and it is always great.
The second audiobook is a full cast drama with three individual stories.
I don’t know why I am such a big fan of the Survivors stories. I think it has something to do with the world being reset. Not always in a good way of course. Not always with positive outcomes. I find that I am drawn to these kinds of apocalyptic stories more and more. I don’t think that has anything to do with the pandemic in particular, although it does bring it home somewhat. But I always have enjoyed these kinds of stories.
I hope that Big Finish manage to keep Survivors going for some time to come. I had thought that it was done after season 9, but I’m always up for more, and I’m looking forward to hearing these.
It is somewhat amazing to think that this will be ten years of doing Movember! In many ways it does not feel like ten years, but it is. Once again I have a page for donations at the Movember site. You can find it here.
Here is the progress I made from last year. It was fun. Maybe I’ll make another one of these this year.
I bought an Apple Watch around half way through 2020, over a year ago now. It was a device that I had always been tempted by, but never got around to buying. Initially I didn’t like the Apple Watch because it was actually thicker than the Pebble Time smartwatch I had for a long time, but with the more recent series Apple seem to have made them slimmer, and to me, more acceptable as a watch.
There are lots of reasons why I got it. One major one was around data. Data about me, and being able to use that data to create music. But enough of that for now. It is a subject for another day at some point in the future.
When I bought an Apple Watch it was before OS 14, so some of the functionality that I now enjoy wasn’t there, but it was a series 5 watch so hopefully it will last a few years at least. I don’t expect it to have the same replacement cycle as an iPhone. Sadly, for me, they brought out the series 6 watch just under two months after I got mine, which was annoying, but never mind, these things happen. At least I will be able to time my next purchase a bit better.
The device itself is a nice piece of technology, and the connection between it and the iPhone is very solid. The health data is interesting and useful, and as a device for receiving, and in some cases acting on notifications it is actually extremely useful. Certainly more useful than my old Pebble devices.
However, what I really want, is for it to useful as a device in its own right and not just as an adjunct to other devices. That has been my aim with most of the wearables I’ve had over the years, and my expectation was that the Apple Watch should be the device that meets those expectations.
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A variety of smart watches I have had over the years
So far there are only a few things it does completely on its own. For the most part it is a companion to my phone, and, whilst that’s ok, it isn’t quite what I want.
The apps I am finding useful at the moment are:
Just Record – A very simple audio recorder, but a very useful app to have on your watch
Shazam – Finding tracks using my watch is very handy (yes, pun intended)
Wotja – Generative music controlled from my watch
Holonist – Music data created from my own motion and bio data
There are a few others too, but the above are things are use regularly.
I was skeptical about having an Apple Watch. It was an experiment, and, thankfully, one that paid off. Since buying it have used it every day and now I’m not sure that I would be very comfortable without it.
I expect I will write again about how I’m getting on with it. Probably in a few months. Well, maybe.
Which is great news indeed. I had been wondering if Big Finish were going to produce any more in this series, and they are. It comes out in February next year.
The previous episodes in the Big Finish remake have been good. Not astonishing, but good. Which is enough for me. Especially as the graphic novels appear to have vanished for now.
I am Ashley Elsdon 