The designer’s quest for timelessness

In the editorial to one of our print publications—not yet at liberty to say which—I show a 2004 cover of Lucire featuring Jennifer Siebel inset in the text. It got me thinking how, when I first designed the cover, with Jon Moe’s photograph, I was aiming for a classical timelessness. Now nearly 20 years on—in […]

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The missing second verse

The second of three verses of the Scots College school song appears to be missing from the web. I posted them once on Facebook, back when people used Facebook, so of course it doesn’t appear in Google. We sang it, but I understand that the generation before, and the one after, didn’t sing it. We […]

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The return of Van der Valk

I came across an old post of mine on Euston Films remakes, at the time the American version of Widows hit the big screen. My last question, after going through Minder, The Sweeney and Widows reboots, sequels and remakes: ‘Now, who’ll star in a new Van der Valk?’    Since local TV programmers and I […]

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Nostalgia: Money for Nothing

Money for Nothing—image from Amazon Prime, where, as of yesterday, you can watch a presumably cleaner copy than what’s on YouTube.   As a young lad, I enjoyed the Screen One TV movie Money for Nothing (1993), which aired on the BBC in the UK and TV1 here. Not to be confused with the John […]

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InShot Music Player is also forgetful, though it’s not as bad as the last two

One bug that creeps up at unpredictable intervals with InShot’s Music Player—though it is not as severe as the bug on Muzio Player—is that after a while, it forgets that it should shuffle the tracks and resorts to alphabetical order, starting from the top.    Considering this isn’t something that has affected any other music […]

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My 10 favourite Don Black lyrics

  I’ve bought Don Black’s The Sanest Guy in the Room, which is a great read—you know that it’s piqued your interest if you can do 110 pages in a single sitting. There’s more to go, and it’s entertaining learning a bit about the backgrounds to his songs, ‘Born Free’ arguably his best known. (I […]

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Cellphone apps: InShot’s Music Player may finally be the one; Über remains a total waste of time

Forgetful Muzio Player has been replaced by a program (or app) called Music Player, which isn’t the best brand name considering the many other apps out there with the same name. This one’s version 2.5.6.74 and its maker is InShot Inc., so if all goes well, this is the one Meizu users should go for. […]

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Facebook whistleblower gets fired; and a workaround for Meizu Music’s inability to find your SD card

This is a pretty typical story: find fault with Big Tech, try to alert the appropriate people in the firm, get fired.    Julia Carrie Wong’s excellent article for The Guardian shows a data scientist, Sophie Zhang, find blatant attempts by governments to abuse Facebook’s platform, misleading their own people, in multiple countries. Of course […]

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I can finally identify with the main character in a New Zealand TV show

While I care much more about when John Simm will grace our screens again (pun intended), it was hard to avoid the reality TV that gets beamed into our living rooms during prime-time. There is the disgusting Married at First Sight Australia, where I am speechless with shock that fellow Scots alumnus John Aiken appears […]

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When Sibelius started our TV day

If I hadn’t mentioned this on Twitter, I might not have had a hunt for it. When I first came to this country, this was how TV1 started each morning—I believe at 10.30 a.m. prior to Play School. I haven’t seen this since the 1970s, and I’m glad someone put it on YouTube.    I […]

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