Month: November 2019

I think it’s frightening how quickly the days and months of this year have passed. It’s supposed to be a normal thing as you get older but I think it’s also a symptom of being stuck in a rut. I recognise that in myself and will need to somehow shake things up a bit in 2020.

Read Guardian Daily Edition review
A lengthy review of the updated version of the Guardian's Daily Edition app for iOS and Android devices.

Trying to recreate the feel of a real newspaper in an app might be a bit old-fashioned now but the new layout of the Guardian app is horrible. The thing I miss most about the previous version is that you knew when the whole paper had been downloaded. The new one feels like a bunch of web pages being loaded in a browser.

Alice Cooper said on the radio that people in rock bands don’t make the effort to be stars anymore. I think he’s right. Most modern bands look like they just walked off the street and don’t project any bigger than life image. The idea of the "star" is exclusive to pop music now.

Replied to Cloudland Blue Quartet on Twitter (Twitter)
“What’s wrong with modern prog? Obviously it’s just my opinion but it’s the incessant looking backwards and aping, not quite as well, what’s come before... When I see a new act described as “sounding like” Marillion (and emphasising that’s Fish era Marillion) I just think “Oh FFS””

That annoys me too. All of the old bands sounded nothing like each other because they were all doing it for the first time. There’s a lot of newer bands I couldn’t listen to more than once.