David McCallum has died at the age of 90. I loved The Man From Uncle as a kid; it's a bit of a shock to find out that he'd just turned 90 quite honestly.

He seemed to disappear for a long time after that, only to return in Colditz. In reality only a few years later, seemed longer to me at that age.

I never liked Sapphire and Steel.

This wasn't the most picturesque view from our road trip along the North Coast 500 but for me, it was one of the most interesting sights. In the early '90s I worked for the part of Rolls-Royce that was responsible for designing and procuring nuclear reactors for submarines. The company used a test facility situated here at Dounreay, about 35 miles west of John o' Groats.

I had colleagues who flew up here from Derby regularly, but I didn't think I'd ever see the place for myself.



I always imagined the "onshore test reactor" (also called 'Vulcan') to exist in something like a big shed overlooking the sea, accessible only by Land Rovers along a remote trail. But this place is huge and easily accessible by an A road.

I'm not sure why but I always imagined the far north of Scotland to be a sort of wasteland, almost untouched by human civilisation. Maybe the odd farm or little stone cottage nestling in the hills. But (as some readers will already be aware, I'm sure) it has decent roads and medium-sized towns with Wetherspoons, Specsavers, pizza places etc etc much like anywhere else in the UK. We stayed at Wick on the way round.

Earlier we'd been to John o' Groats, where I took the obligatory tourist pic.

I always find these "trial by media" exercises involving historic allegations a bit troubling, I must say. There seems to be a presumption of guilt rather than innocence.

Apparently Laura Trott - not the celebrated cyclist, the government minister - was on the telly this morning praising the supposed victims who have come forward. Given that we don't know - and probably never will - whether these allegations are a catalogue of fabrications, that seems rather presumptuous, doesn't it? Meanwhile the BBC have let us know that they're carrying out "urgent investigations", as though his guilt is a given.

The male involved is always guilty, that seems to be the most important principle in these matters.

I'm always interested in the technology of the Space Race but I found this particularly interesting as an examination of historic computing technology, especially from 10 minutes in when there's an interview with Albert Hopkins, who gives an introduction to the onboard computer used for the Apollo spacecraft.

Even in 1965 computers were said to be "dominating our lives" - at a time when a successful large business or university might own two or three of them. No-one had one on a desk at work, or at home, or in their pocket.

Mr Hopkins explains how the necessary technology had been miniaturised for the space programme. He shows the reporter some core rope storage roughly the size of a modern printer toner cartridge, and a logic gate roughly the size of a drawing pin.

These days both of these things are manufactured into tiny slivers of microchip. A modern microprocessor chip might contain a few hundred million logic gates, and a 16GB stick of RAM contains about 20,000 times the capacity of the storage unit shown in the film.

Anyone else finding the indignation and outrage over Luis Ribales kissing Jenni Hermoso a bit ridiculous?

It's actually front page news on the BBC News site as I type, as you'd expect - I'm sure they're only disappointed that Jenni isn't black; if she was the story would run for weeks.

The gender baiters and perpetual offence takers are trying to turn this into Spain's "Me Too" moment. Literally equating an innocuous peck on the lips in public with Harvey Weinstein exerting improper pressure over young women to have sex with him.

This perpetual virtue-signalling victim culture so beloved of the BBC and others .. it really gets on my tits.

I thought we might have another Wordle competition to mark the last UK bank holiday of the year. In the past we've run two types of competition - one which runs over a fixed period (say ten days) and is points-based, and one which is a knockout contest with players being eliminated if they fail to get the solution in four goes.

Please vote only if you would normally take part in one of the competitions, or intend to take part in the next one.

Thanks!

As I've mentioned a few times I'm listening to the Rolling Stones' studio albums in chronological order this year. Rather than posting brief notes in other threads I thought I'd collect my impressions in a dedicated thread. Note: I listened to the UK releases.

1. The Rolling Stones (April 1964)

Sharp, spiky R&B covers in the main; Route 66 and similar. Not brilliantly recorded but the studio hardware wasn't so good back then (American studios were a couple of years ahead of the UK at this time). There's one Jagger / Richards composition, Tell Me. It's a deviation from the Blues tunes elsewhere on the album. Sounds a bit like The Hollies. Unexceptional.

2. The Rolling Stones No. 2 (January 1965)

Very similar to their debut, maybe a bit more light and shade. Definitely better recorded. But pretty basic R&B covers. It was released at the beginning of 1965. They were light years behind The Beatles in terms of imagination, songwriting, production, ambition, everything. All covers, no originals.

3. Out of Our Heads (September 1965)

Mostly R&B covers again. No original tunes. Certainly no recognisable Stones classics. They certainly took a while to find their voice (although to be fair I think they'd already recorded Satisfaction by this time, but that was released only as a single).

4. Aftermath (April 1966)

An extraordinary creative breakthrough after their first three albums of R&B covers. Their previous album, released less than a year earlier, had consisted entirely of other peoples' tunes but everything on Aftermath is a Jagger / Richards original. Equally importantly it's a much more eclectic and interesting record than the first three, with some really strong songs. Reminds me of The Kinks in places.

5. Between the Buttons (January 1967)

Really a very interesting, eclectic album. Definitely not a rock'n'roll record. Folky pop and ballads sit among the more uptempo efforts. All the tunes are written by Mick and Keith. Cool, Calm and Collected again sounds a lot like The Kinks - it has the cod-upper-class-English vocal and old-time music hall feel that McCartney was also fond of.  Who's Been Sleeping Here reminds me of The Animals. Dylan, even.

Certainly no household name songs on this one either.

Where to start?

This was my first 'new' Rush album - the first one to be released after I was indoctrinated to the cause, and I still vividly remember the anticipation before it hit the shops in 1977. On the day it was released, I literally ran out of my final class of the afternoon, and ten minutes later I had a copy in my trembling hands. I ran all the way home, too. I was so excited, and proud, finally to be part of a new Rush album from the very beginning. In those days my devotion to Rush was more or less an obsession. It was like a religion to me, still the closest I've ever come to religion thankfully.

I ran upstairs, closed the bedroom door. Somehow my shaking hand managed to apply the stylus to the groove and I sat down to listen to Rush's latest gift to humankind.

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear.

My anticipation and excitement was replaced with massive disappointment. I tried to like it - I was almost desperate to like it - but, I didn't (and I still don't). In the weeks following its release, I would wake up each morning, remember A Farewell To Kings, then feel sick and disheartened. I played it over and over and over again, hoping that I would grow to love it. No chance.

I have never quite forgiven Rush for A Farewell To Kings. It was a cruel blow.

It's not quite a stinker, but it's most certainly a dud. The songs are generally weak and at times it's unedifyingly pompous. More importantly, it has none of the purity of form, the passion or the finely-crafted edge of its magnificent predecessor - where 2112 was sharp, graceful, dramatic, assured, A Farewell To Kings is blunt, awkward and overblown. I admire their eagerness to develop their sound for the opening page of 'chapter two', but I think that - at least as far as this album is concerned - perhaps they were too ambitious. It's an experiment that emphatically failed.

Xanadu, I quite like. Admittedly, it takes what seems like half an hour to get going, but the guitar work is particularly strong, and it's a very imaginative piece. But even this suffers from an extended, pointless self-indulgent instrumental section. The bit where Alex and Geddy start practicing their scales in the middle - what's that all about? It's probably a five minute tune, padded out by mindless repetition.

But Cygnus X-1 - oh please. Indigestible chunks of thoughtless heavy metal riffola clash with sequences of overlong, repetitive guitar noodling that seem to have been lifted from an entirely different song. I wouldn't go as far as Neil Peart, who is reported to have said years later "I hate that song", but I certainly don't like it. It still beggars belief that the band who came up with 2112 should have been putting out nonsense like this a mere eighteen months later.

The shorter songs often work better, but are not particularly strong. Closer to The Heart is a perfectly inoffensive but ultimately not very stimulating pop-rock tune. The title track has a lovely acoustic guitar intro, then turns into something very jerky and brash indeed, with a wholly inappropriate instrumental section where Lifeson delivers a savage heavy metal solo while Geddy twangs away, pointlessly jumping octaves on a single note. I still wince when I hear the wanky major key lead guitar fills that pipe up every now and then in this track. Cinderella Man has a boring folk-rock verse, a nice chorus and (this time) a lovely, inventive funky instrumental break - but ultimately, it fails to convince.

More generally, Peart's lyrics - take "we turned our gaze from the castles in the distance" for example - are often as pompous and inappropriate as his selection of attire for the inner sleeve photo. And the production seems so very 'in your face', mostly graceless and crude instead of atmospheric.

I can't deny that A Farewell To Kings has a certain naive, inelegant charm in places, and the passing years have afforded it a patina of nostalgia that has made it slightly more palatable in retrospect. There are some good bits. There are some REALLY good bits - the lovely nylon-strung intro to the title track, Alex's lovely harmonic intro to Xanadu (although it gets a bit tedious after the first half-hour), its riff and its expressive guitar solo (it's actually a Blues solo, I wonder if Alex would have chosen the same approach a few years later), Cinderella Man's catchy, affecting chorus - but these are the icing on a tasteless and haphazardly thrown-together cake.

An interesting album, maybe. But not a very good one. It just doesn't 'gel'. It should probably have been an EP. Or a single.

Happily, Rush's next recording project brought forth an album which was a stunning artistic achievement, every bit a worthy successor to 2112, and which rekindled my faith in Rush to a bright, blazing flame.

But the copy-book was emphatically blotted. There's simply no denying that, in the late summer of 1977, Rush knocked out a clunker.

Still - it wouldn't be the last time.

I was sad to hear that Michael Parkinson had passed on. Many memories of watching his show in the '70s. Appearances by Bette Midler and Sammy Davis Jr stand out particularly, and Billy Connolly of course. Oh yes and Peter Sellers.

I remember an odd moment when he was sitting in for Barry Norman on Film 86. An overtly homo-erotic clip from Derek Jarman's film Caravaggio was shown. After it concluded, Parky gave a very disapproving look to the camera and did a little "I'm a teapot" thing with his right hand; a gesture that I think would be construed as homophobic today.

He did some rubbish daytime telly in the '80s and afterwards, so I was glad his old show had a comeback in the '90s. The very first one was shown on the first night of my seven years in London. I'd just moved out of my girlfriend's house (ie we'd split up) and I was staying at a little hotel in Golders Green. Tiny little room at the top of the house. I only stayed there two nights. There was a little telly, I turned it on the first night and lo and behold - a new series of Parkinson.

My stepdaughter met him, sort of, when she was at Nottingham Trent Uni. She was in the gym lying on the floor, and looked up to see Seb Coe and Parky looking down at her. Must have been an odd moment.

Quote from: Matt2112 on August 16, 2023, 01:55:38 AMA discussion specifically about Clockwork Angels is for another thread of course, but I thought it was a pretty remarkable swan song, with an at times quite startling combination of prog technicality and melodic songcraft.

There is not a duffer on it to my mind.

I think it was the best album they'd released since Hold Your Fire, and possibly even Signals. After the rubbish they'd served up over the previous few albums, I was astonished.

Headlong Flight is a real clunker though, awful. I'm not particularly fond of Wish Them Well or The Wreckers. Otherwise - a fantastic album.

When you think about it - much as we loved them, the music of Rush conformed to quite a limited format, didn't it? Although there are a few tunes in which additional musicians were used - perhaps most notably Andy Richards on Power Windows and Hold Your Fire and the strings on Clockwork Angels - mostly, it's a case of

Geddy - bass, vocal and crude keyboards
Alex - guitar
Neil - drums

Some bands have, or had a lot more versatility than this. The Beatles are an obvious example - all four of them sang lead vocals. Paul plays piano on some of the tunes. He plays the drums on one song! Which is where the oft-repeated quote that Ringo "wasn't even the best drummer in The Beatles" comes from, although he definitely was. George Martin played the memorable keyboard part on Nowhere Man and loads of their stuff has additional musicians.

10CC as well - again, all four sang lead vocals and some of their stuff, like the Beatles, is keyboard-based.

Even the Stones used Keith to sing the lead part from time to time. Bill Wyman sings on one early tune. Actually Bill doesn't play bass on all of their tunes; Ronnie Wood and Mick Taylor both play bass occasionally. They always toured with a keyboard player.

It's a bit late now but I think that Rush should, minimally, have hired a proper keyboard player as a touring musician some time after 2112. I actually think they should have added a fourth proper member of the band to play keyboards, sing, and write.

Is it an odd thought, to have someone in a successful band singing when he or she wasn't a member during their "classic" period? Perhaps it is but, for example, Timothy Schmit joined after Hotel California but he did (does?) sing lead vocals from time to time in The Eagles. Glenn Hughes obviously wasn't in Purple in their Machine Head heyday but he has at least one lead vocal I can think of.

My prediction for a 3-0 victory for City last night proved to be spot on, so I'll take a stab at the top of the table after the 38th game.

1. Manchester City
2. Manchester United
3. Arsenal
4. Liverpool

The organisation I work for has taken the unfortunate step of preventing people using company email or MS Teams except via company-assigned laptops. Previously I've been using my own, considerably more convenient and ergonomic Linux desktop for this.

I find Windows a horrible environment to work in. But one disadvantage of using the laptop is at least fixable. The screen lock kicks in after about 10 minutes of inactivity. I can't change this; it's tied down by a security policy. Because I'm still using a different computer for most of my work this is really inconvenient and irritating.

So I bought one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0BVG9K1KY/ref=ppx_od_dt_b_asin_title_s00

It plugs into one of the USB ports and mimics a mouse being moved around. Can be switched on and off very easily. Cost £7.99, although they're £8.99 now for some reason. Works really well.

We stayed at some great places during our Scotland holiday, but unfortunately there was a low point. While I realise that this won't be of particular interest to most visitors of this site, I'm going to post this here in the hope that a Google search might pick it up and help someone.

I've already posted slightly moderated versions of this review on Tripadvisor, and on Google.

We had a wonderful 10 days touring the North Coast 500 but our unfortunate decision to stay in this filthy place was by quite some distance the absolute low point.

I could write off the huge crack in the washbasin and the cracks in the windows as period charm. Maybe I could overlook the brown water that comes out of the toilet cistern. Perhaps it's recycled rain water.

But the dirty floor, the debris between the wooden floorboards, the grime round the window frames, the flapjack crumbs on the headboard shelf, the thin film of dirt punctuated by greasy fingermarks on the bedside lights, the matted hair in the washbasin plughole .. I could go on but I think you've got the picture by now.

Unlike everywhere else we stayed, there are no breakfast options. Just "breakfast". I have no idea what it was because I didn't want to take the risk. We didn't hang around to find out, we were out of there as early as possible. I couldn't wait to leave.

Hilariously, there's a notice in the room asking you to remove your bed linen and place it in a bag before you leave. At £165 a night for a filthy room, you can do your own housekeeping, thanks. I suppose it's encouraging to know that they do at least clean the sheets from time to time.

The staff aren't particularly friendly or welcoming, either.

The nearest restaurants and bars are a couple of miles away, involving a long drive along a muddy, bumpy track.

I wiped my feet on the way out. This is a very nasty, dirty, run down place. Don't let the shameless, dirty swine who run this shithole ruin your holiday. We were fortunate - we arrived in the evening, we left as soon as we could in the morning. I dread to think how soul-destroying a few days in a place like this would be.

I suppose this is a milestone, in that space is now accessible to tourists. Very wealthy or fortunate tourists.

https://news.sky.com/story/virgin-galactic-takes-first-tourists-to-edge-of-space-12937379

Yesterday's Virgin Galactica flight took its passengers to an altitude of roughly 88km above the surface of the Earth. For perspective, the very first human spaceflight in 1961 took Gagarin to an altitude of 301km (and he completed an orbit, as well). By one measure (the FAI definition) these people didn't quite make it into space, which starts at 100km from the surface. And even there there's still a little bit of atmospheric pressure.

https://news.sky.com/story/ancient-worms-revived-after-46-000-years-12929066

Imagine that .. born in the year -43977*, died in 2023. Creatures that were alive when the neanderthals roamed the Earth, alive in the present.

This was an extinct species to most intents and purposes, but now new worms have been bred from them.



*approximately

This is a Grauniad piece so I offer no expectation as to its veracity. However it certainly is an interesting read.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/21/c-of-e-vicar-michael-hall-spiritually-abused-parishioners-says-report

My view is that people who suffer from the delusion that they've been "called" to exert authority over others by a sky fairy are probably compensating for the lack of importance and authority they'd never had in real life. I think that's especially obvious here.

Parishioners described Hall as a bully "who used coercion and control to silence dissent, isolate the congregation, make them dependent on him and to exploit them".

The report said he "emotionally abused people and used scripture and fear of hell to control them". Some parishioners did not realise they were being abused at the time.

Just to let you know, although it shouldn't affect anyone who sees this - we have a lot more members, technically, than active participants. So over the weekend I will start deleting accounts for members who have:

• never posted, and
• not visited the site in the last nine months

Just housekeeping. Helps keep the site secure. Just to be clear, members who've never posted but do login to the site from time to time (we do have a few) are welcome and their accounts will remain unmolested.

Thanks
James

Tony was one of the great jazz / popular / swing singers of the 20th Century. Here's one of his finest moments; a song composed by Sacha Distel.

It's long been an ambition of mine to watch all four series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. I bought a complete series box set in Hong Kong about 20 years ago, but I only got as far as the second series.

I tried to play them on my PC recently but they're Region 1 and I couldn't get them to work.

Happily though the entire series has been restored, upscaled and digitally remastered for BluRay, and I have the first series in this format now.

It looks great. It doesn't look high definition and nor could it - there's a limit to what you can do with material mostly captured to videotape about 50 years ago. But it's comfortably better than the broadcast quality of the time and certainly better than my old NTSC DVDs.

There are in all 45 episodes so I should get through them by the end of the year, though I'm not going to commit to one per day.

Earlier this evening I watched the first one, "Whither Canada?".

God knows what the TV viewers of October 1969 made of it, but I loved it. Very solid start. As usual there's a surreal running gag running through most of it and sometimes the sketches are cleverly segued together. A piece about Picasso painting while riding a bike is possibly stretched a bit too far.

The very best bit is an animation created by Terry Gilliam from early 20th century monochrome photographs. Genius.