little bits of everything

When I started riding a motorbike I took the Compulsory Basic Training - a day of training which you have to do before you are allowed out on the road. As we travelled to the car park where we do the training the trainer remarked "Have you heard that Joey Dunlop has died?". I hadn't heard of Joey Dunlop. If you haven't heard of him either, that's like not knowing who Ayrton Senna is. I am a proper biker if I don't know that? I do ride a bike to work almost every day normally, unless there's snow on the ground. Some "proper" bikers don't do that, but only ride when the weather's nice. I don't go to bikers' gatherings, watch bike racing, buy bike magazines or any of the stuff like that. I wonder if I come across a group of proper bikers if they'll want me to join their groups and only then will I be a proper biker?

"...and a little more!" Originally uploaded by paulmorriss This is the "mayor making" ceremony. The outgoing mayor and all his officials are weighed and their weights compared to how much they weighed a year ago. The town crier shouts out their name and "and no more" or "and a little more" if they've put on weight. If they have it's because they've taken advantage of their office and they are booed. My 11 year old son saw this ceremony and remarked the other day, "This fuss about the MPs expenses is the same thing isn't it?". Very astute.

A couple of quotes from an episode of the Museum of Curiosities on Radio 4 from Brian Eno. In response to the question, "Did you invent ambient music, is that your term?", he said: "Yes. Now it's a category in record shops, full of records I don't like." He also composed the Windows 95 startup sound, on a Mac. "I've never used a PC in my life, I don't like them."

Analogue cheese flavour? Originally uploaded by paulmorriss Is it any different to digital cheese flavour?

One of our pastors is on a sabbatical. One of the things he aimed to do during this sabbatical is update his blog English Pulpit . However he hasn't turned on any comments, so it's a bit of a one way conversation. Maybe he'll use some sort of tool like Technorati to spot inbound links from here and a conversation can start!

Following Martin Kelner's article on Children's Radio in Media Guardian last week I decided to put some questions to my own little focus group. I asked my children what they might want from radio for children. One suggested "theme tunes". Unlike Martin's daughter our children don't tire of commercial radio. They love the local radio station and so probably for them, radio = music. I introduced them to Go For It on Radio 4 and one of them loved it. Having a TV presenter presenting it probably helped. The same child that loved it also likes First News , the children's newspaper. My children have never heard of it, so if the BBC is thinking of cutting back, they ought to do a bit of cross promotion on children's TV to let children know that it's out there.

It's a measure of significance when something on the internet makes the BBC News at Ten, and that happened last week with Spotify . I downloaded it and saw what all the fuss was about. I've used last.fm on and off for years. However you can't necessarily hear every track. I signed up for some other music service the other week, but I haven't been back and I can't even remember what it was called. Spotify gives quick access to loads of tracks, with a very slick user interface. I immediately began compiling a couple of playlists that I've had in my head for years, including reconstructing a mix tape from Uni days which I must have thrown out years ago. There are a few holes in the coverage, so I couldn't add All Together Now by the Farm to my happy morning songs playlist. I could listen to whole albums by ELO, Kate Bush and Queen so that provided a bit of nostalgia on Saturday. I just hope that they can manage to keep some sort of free service for casual use...