Stephen

YouTube video by Soft Cell - Topic First Hand Experience In Second Hand Love (Extended Dub)

RIP Dave Ball. There's the pioneering Soft Cell 12" singles obviously but The Grid's first album, Electric Head, I still play often - some terrific songwriting and quirky production. Liked the recent Giorgio Moroder cover too. www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUrg...

Posted it before, but this paper on the sound and music of fairgrounds is great: ledbooks.org/proceedings2... (PDF)

Oggy oggy oggy! The donk-tacular dance music of Hull’s huge funfair With 600,000 people attending, Hull Fair is the UK’s biggest – and has a thrilling but overlooked musical subculture. We follow the blaring soundsystems to meet the DJs and MCs facing off in waltzer b...

The contribution of funfairs to music culture is under-reported. www.theguardian.com/music/2025/o...

Also from the depths of the MGM library watched the not great Day of the Animals, which led to discovering that Wikipedia has a page on natural horror movies organised by species. More bees than I expected. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

A man stands waving at a departing train at (I think) Marylebone Station.

Two dressed up, out of place women in front of large machinery under construction in a huge factory.

Amazon's latest dump of films from the MGM archive includes Lindsay Anderson short The White Bus from 1967, which has some lovely composed shots.

Nótt, by Skurken 11 track album

Bandcamp Friday purchases... This from Skurken is rather good. touched.bandcamp.com/album/n-tt

Looking north along the Lee Navigation with canal boats on the right and an cleared for construction on the left behind temporary fencing. In the rear is the tower of the rubbish incinerator with clouds of steam and two large cranes.

Loop round past Tottenham Marshes this afternoon. Not much change in this view since the spring. Canal & River Trust had a gazebo at Stonebridge Lock where a woman sang decent covers of old soul tracks in the drizzle to zero audience.

Not a someone but a fox - apparently them chewing through the cables happens a lot round here. The engineer said there was a theory that they have a taste for the protective fibres surrounding the active fibre.

Someone at 4am decided to slash the fibre cable coming into my house so today is turning out to be rather on the boring side.

The overnight test and release scripts are modified versions of the the Perl ones you wrote two decades ago, though now wrapping Maven. They do what's needed so never been worth replacing.

Still have to maintain some of your Perl...

All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synth Pop 1978-1985, by Various Artists 24 track album

Nicely chosen new compilation of early, independently produced synthpop. Also discovered via this that the original of the Ultimate Warlord track, more famous in an Italo-disco style but actually German cover, was co-created by the lead singer of Uriah Heep. night-school.bandcamp.com/album/all-th...

Along the River Brede with a lock in the foreground, trees on each side and overhanging the river and some moored boats on the right of the river.

A pond with reeds mostly at the back while to the left a Ewe looks back at the camera beside here two lambs.

A small stream almost surrounded by reeds with trees in the background, some still in blossom.

From Winchelsea station looking east along the single track with trees at mid-distance and a blue sky at the rear.

Rye nature reserve then up to Winchelsea, yesterday.

The Muppets' Animal behind a drum kit with his arms raised.

Animal mural on (what's left of) Margate Lido.

A pond with a single duck swimming, another pair making their way down to the water, two lambs drinking and lots of sheep in the far distance.

Between Camber and Rye yesterday evening.

A colony of gulls around almost submerged rocks in a grey sea.

Swimming, flying and standing still.

A view from high up with skyscrapers in the centre, the harbour on the back left with a mountain behind and in front industrial buildings and wasteland with rows of parked cars.

Six years ago on the Ferris Wheel atop the Dream Mall in Kaohsiung. Ought to retake this next time I'm back to see what's changed.

On the edge of Broxbourne, trees overlapping the river with a small bridge in the distance.

Broxbourne pumping station, a brick building with blue doors and rows of horizontal and vertical tanks on the right. The river is in front with a large pipe entering the water to carry the water from the borehole inside the building.

A pair of swans on an island assembling a nest.

A bunch of duckings watched over by their dad.

Another chunk of The New River yesterday from Rye House to Cheshunt. A lot of walking past semi-suburban back gardens but some interesting and some more scenic bits as well.

Several times a day hacked Lime bikes go past the house with their alarms going, which have a pitch and repetition that's reminiscent of the sleigh bells in several Christmas songs.

A calendar page for 1 August with the main entry reading "Old Foulbreathe predicts for August: A complete stranger will enter your life - someone whose name you've never heard and whose face is totally unfamiliar to you. He will be guesting on the Muppet Show."

Been rewatching The Muppet Show and was reminded of this from Not The Nine O'Clock News' Not 1982 book.

Looking across the harbour with the sea in front and the edge of a beach, a breakwater behind then rows of warehouses and houses with the Radio 5 MW transmitter site behind against a blue sky.

Looking from the breakwater across the sea to Brighton, with from left rows of beaches divided by wooden groynes with warehouses and silos behind, the seafront buildings with the tall spike of Brighton i360 visible and chalk cliffs to the right.

Coastal wanderings... Shoreham.

Seven hours spent trying to fix a problem and all it needed was a single extra space in a configuration file. Worked fine without for the last 20 years.

On Saturday, there's a sound installation broadcast from five hidden transmitters across the Olympic Park, sharing rare recordings from 80s and 90s pirate radio interspersed with voices from the scene, with stations like Rave FM, Dance FM, Eruption, Friends FM and Kiss FM. eepurl.com/jbYdEI

Quality.

In 2025 London has had several much worse days for air pollution than today.

A view from Parliament Hill towards the City of London, with a light blue sky with a few clouds, tower blocks of the city in the background, playing fields closer in and a still-bare tree on the left.

Started work on a new product just as winter was starting. Finished version one just as winter is ending so took the afternoon off to sit in the sunshine.

A datacentre under construction, with a grey industrial building at the rear with pipes attached to its sides and cooling systems to the right. CCTV gaze down on the area and the river flowing past in the front.

A newly-built electricity substation with small elevated shed-like structures behind a black fence.

Also passed Google's new datacentre with its multitude of pipes and its own electricity substation.

A stretch of the New River, with a new (closed) footpath on the left and bright sunlight between the dark trees.

Attempted another stretch of the New River from Cheshunt going south, but two long chunks were closed while they put in new all-weather footpaths so ended up seeing rather more of the A10, its underpasses and the suburbs of Enfield.

Journey home delayed because the rail replacement bus driver refused to go with football supporters onboard...

First time giving a talk at a conference today. Seemed to go down okay. Also nice to put faces to people whose voices I knew so many decades ago.