Our elder son Isaac is fast approaching his fourth birthday but from an early age he has always […]
Author: Tim
It’s summer, and an unruly mob of teenagers are causing havoc. They rob people blind, accost them in the streets and ruthlessly grab whatever opportunities present themselves. No, I’m not talking about the London riots. It’s the return of the newly rebranded Young Apprentice. Yes, the Apprenti-Kids™ are back for eight weeks of puerile puns (and that’s just Lord Sugar), finger-pointing (and that’s just Lord Sugar) and unfathomably illogical decisions (and … you get the idea).
It has been three long months since the comforting strains of Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights – the theme music for BBC’s The Apprentice – were last heard on our TV screens. Three long months since our last weekly hour-long dose of bitching, over-inflated egos and unfeasibly stupid business ideas. Three long months since serial inventor – and Michael Sheen lookalike – Tom Pellereau surprisingly defeated runaway favourite Helen Milligan (and also-rans ‘Jedi’ Jim Eastwood and Susan Ma) to win the season seven final. (Although it wasn’t a surprise to me, as I had backed Tom for victory early on. *Smug mode*)
But fear no more. The man with the meanest finger on television – the incomparable Digit of Doom™ – has returned. The Baron of Business, the self-styled Britain’s most belligerent boss, Lord Sugar, returns to our screens to put 12 candidates aged 16-17 through their paces as he once again hunts for a Young Apprentice. (No, I don’t know why they’ve abandoned ‘Junior Apprentice’ either.)
Yes, the Apprentikids™ are back!
Steve Jobs died last night at the age of 56, after a seven-year battle against ill health which included pancreatic cancer and a liver transplant. The co-founder, chairman and former CEO of Apple and former CEO of Pixar was arguably the single most influential technologist of the last century.
Jobs was many things. A college drop-out. A control freak. A benevolent dictator. He was also one of the most intuitive marketers and designers the industrial world has ever known – a man who could shape the form and function of his products and use them to create new consumer markets. A true visionary.
*** WARNING: SPOILERS (naturally) ***
Five months after watching the Doctor killed by a space-suited assailant at Lake Silencio on the Plain of Sighs, we finally learned how the Time Lord cheated his destiny. The Wedding of River Song answered all (well, most) of our questions, set up new ones for next year and also managed to reset the series to move the Doctor away from being a feared God-like Time Lord Victorious, perhaps moving back to being the quiet adventurer he was in the Hartnell era.
This short series of posts takes a personal trip down memory lane looking back at my experiences with analogue audio. You can read parts one and two here and here.
In the previous two posts, I have taken a fond look back at three analogue audio formats – vinyl records, reel-to-reel and 8-track – which formed an indelible part of my childhood, around which a significant chunk of my relationship with my father was nurtured and developed. In the third and final part of this series, let’s take a look at the role of the humble cassette tape, which provided the soundtrack to my teenage years and beyond.
This short series of posts takes a personal trip down memory lane looking back at my experiences with analogue audio. You can read part one here.
Reel-to-reel tape
This magnetic tape system was the predecessor of the cassette, and essentially worked by spooling tape from one seven-inch reel to another.
I can trace my love of gadgetry back to the age of four or five when my dad used to entertain me by explaining the inner workings of a reel-to-reel system, which had the beauty of being both large and open enough to satisfy my young prying eyes and hands. Many a rainy afternoon was spent with dad demonstrating how the tape was brought into contact with the playing heads, how to clean the heads and threading a fresh tape from one reel on to another so we could start playing/recording on it.
I stumbled across this poster recently and – aside from the fact that you probably have to be of a certain age to understand why cassette tapes and pencils went together – it got me thinking about the various audio storage and playback formats which I have come across in my lifetime.
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