The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Mac Time Machine question

by 5 Comments

I need a little advice please. We have two identical 2009 Mac Book Pro OSX10.10.5 and my personal MBP which is 2015 OSX 10.14.6. My wife just pointed out that when she backs up her 2009 unit with time machine, when looking at the TM back ups, she can’t see the individual files eg 2019 invoices. This is the same on both the 2009 machines. Looking at the Time Machine back ups for my personal machine, approx 3 years old, I can see all photos, documents etc. The difference seems to be that on the 2009 units there is only a Shared folder rather than a folder named for the user, as on the 2015 unit. Is this normal? Are all the documents being backed up and just not visible?

Many thanks

Parcel Delivery: Two weeks in

by 37 Comments

I’ve been delivering for a well known online retailer for a couple of weeks now and it’s been a baptism of fire in some ways, not so much in others.

Induction was reduced to one short day where more time was spent telling us about how to drive a van safely than about how to use the delivery app which is now installed on my phone. The induction used to be 2 days, then 2 days out with an experienced driver but they can’t have people in such close proximity so we were just thrown in the deep end although given shorter “nursery routes” to help us get used to things.

I hadn’t realised that the rounds are staggered during the day. I’ve no idea what time the first ones leave but I’ve had 2 different time slots so far: enter depot at 10.10 or 11.20, queue to be moved onto loading area approximately 20 minutes later. During this time you are sent route details and you need to make a list of the order of the parcel bags so that the van is loaded in the correct order so as not to waste time looking for the next bag » Continue Reading.

Food Glorious Food

by 55 Comments

We managed to get some pasta about a week ago (just a couple of packets of spaghetti, my daughter lives on it). I’m more aware than usual of trying not to waste food as the store cupboard staples we are used to always having such as the aforementioned pasta, tinned tomatoes, baked beans etc, are currently hard to come by. Tonight, we are having spaghetti with a red pepper and passata sauce with a hint of chilli. I’m drinking the last of a poor bottle of red and I’m not sure I can be bothered to try and find any more as the wine shelves in t(e supermarkets are almost as bare as the dried goods and tinned foods aisles. I’m listening to Chris Isaak’s Wicked Game album as my daughter covered the title track for her GCSE music exam piece. How about you?

https://youtu.be/dlJew-Dw87I

Extinction Rebellion

by 86 Comments

I’m working in an office block behind Piccadilly Circus today. I “got in” last night so, although it wasn’t peak traffic, it was still pretty awful. Such is London but as I had a van load of equipment, I had no choice other than to drive. Today, I find that Extinction Rebellion, having been moved on from Trafalgar Square, are planning to disrupt the Tube as a way of further publicising their agenda. To me, this seems to be madness. Disrupting the journeys of 5 million passengers who aren’t driving will surely bring negative publicity won’t it or am I missing something? London has a mayor who has already made driving in London more expensive and doesn’t seem to be afraid to introduce unpopular measures around traffic and pollution so are Extinction Rebellion barking up the wrong tree or are they merely doing what’s needed to highlight the severity of the climate change crisis? FWIW, I’m broadly sympathetic and agree that change is too slow but I think their efforts would be better employed targeting cities that don’t have congestion charging or Low Emission Zones although Londoners seem to have got used to paying the charges and the traffic is » Continue Reading.

Defining moments in your life

by 45 Comments

Musing about my school days over on the 70’s thread, I realised that my adult life was pretty much defined by a couple of decisions I made fairly early on. The first was around the age of 11 when my parents asked me if I wanted to go to the local private secondary school. They didn’t do much beyond ask the question and I replied “no”, partly because money, while not really tight, wasn’t splashed around much, my parents having grown up between the wars in modest circumstances and I was aware it would be a considerable expense for them. I also had no idea what the school was like so declined the offer because of my fear of the unknown. What they should have done was taken me to the open day and let me make an informed decision. I might have liked what I saw and enjoyed my later school years rather than enduring the unambitious mediocrity of the school I actually went to. The second was the result of a casual conversation with a friend who had just started her first job after a government retraining scheme. I was in a dead end job, having given up » Continue Reading.

Trouble at Pledge Music

by 20 Comments

With artists increasingly becoming cottage industries, responsible for all the stuff that record labels used to do, such as fronting recording costs and organising tours, many have financed new albums by using fan funding site Pledge Music. Unfortunately it seems that, recently, Pledge haven’t been passing on the money they received on the artists behalf, making it difficult or impossible for projects to be completed. More info here https://www.billboard.com/articles/business/8494827/pledgemusic-crowdfunding-owes-artists-thousands-late-payments?fbclid=IwAR2pRRFqx69gLT1lo7z-nAzbflZMnJEe1_65OFSgNqOIk_A0ipMe_RW4_ZA

Songs about real streets.

by 48 Comments

Soundtracking my time in the kitchen tonight is Cock a Hoop, The latest album by The Men They Couldn’t Hang. They’ve always used real people, places and events in their lyrics and this album is no different. If you feel so inclined, please post songs that mention real streets. First up King Street Serenade about the street in Hammersmith.

https://youtu.be/Zt3QS-dCs0g

New stylus advice please

by 25 Comments

My elderly Acoustic Research AR EB101 turntable needs a new stylus. It was quite an expensive deck in its day (about £400 in the late 80s) and the last time it had a replacement was years ago when I had the motor replaced. since then, it’s been in and out of storage and I’ve neglected the stylus. Your recommendations please along with any tips for fitting and setting the weight. Instructions are long gone I’m afraid. Thanks, you lovely people.

GF Newman’s The Corrupted

by 2 Comments

For those of you who have the time to spare, the 4th series of The Corrupted is being broadcast on Radio 4 and is available on iPlayer Radio. Now into the 1980s, Toby Jones’ character, Joey Oldman, is sucking up to Thatcher while walking a tightrope by taking dirty money from Columbian drug barons and hoping he doesn’t get caught for arson and murder. This is a series as good as Our Friends In The North. The other 3 series are on You Tube if you need to catch up.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050z5cf

I Don’t Know How To Wuv Him…

by 4 Comments

Tigg’s Jesus Christ Superstar post set something weird going in my head. I had I Don’t Know How To Love Him as an ear worm but sung by Elmer Fudd. It went on for a couple of days and I began to wonder if I had actually heard it somewhere so off I went to Google. Elmer Fudd doing JCS isn’t actually a thing but I found a great New Yorker article about a conductor who has plays along to the great Loony Tunes cartoons that use classical pieces such as The Barber of Seville. If you can get past the New Yorker pay wall then the article is great. My favourite line was “I look at this serious, world-renowned orchestra and I see musicians singing, ‘Oh, Brunhilde, you’re so wuv-wy, yes I know it, I can’t help it.’

I wish someone would make great 5 minute shorts like these again.

https://youtu.be/Z2bilTTzO-g

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/wuvwy-music

They Might Be Giants On WTF

by 2 Comments

I know there are few fans of They Might Be Giants here. You may be interested in their appearance on the latest WTF podcast. Incidentally, Marc Mason seems to have mellowed of late to the point where I no longer feel obliged to skip his opening preamble.

From the podcast site: “John Flansburgh and John Linnell tell Marc the unlikely story of how a couple high school friends became a two-man band at the height of the New Wave performance art era in crime-ridden New York City and somehow carved out four decades of mainstream success as They Might Be Giants. The Johns also talk with Marc about children’s music, selling out, the early days of MTV, Malcolm in the Middle, and more.”

http://www.wtfpod.com/podcast/episode-902-they-might-be-giants

Sometimes it’s worth going to work

by 8 Comments

I just saw this on a friend’s Facebook page. Considering he spends most of his working life on corporate nonsense, this must have made his day.

Well it was a little job at the V&A, a couple of mics on a stage (with me just as a tech). Well Donovan turns up with his son and a band consisting of Danny Thomson and John Paul Jones (yes that John Paul Jones). During the rather talented solo guitarist that followed John Paul wonders over and has a chat (with me!) moments latter we are joined by Mr Thomson, a Mr R Daltry, Carl Palmer and Paul Weller… Truly we are not worthy!

Talking about Black Sabbath’s Ten Year War box set

by 14 Comments

Venue:

The Gibson Rooms

Date: 13/07/2017

Not quite a Nights In and not quite a Nights out…..

At The Gibson Rooms in Soho, I was part of a small group gathered together to listen, not only to part of the Master Quality Audio of Black Sabbath’s Ten Year War box set but also a Q&A hosted by Alex Milas who was talking to mastering engineer Andy Pearce, Tom Allom, who engineered the first three Sabbath albums and MQA’s Spencer Chrislu. Before the event started, we had an opportunity to use some Android based portable MQA players provided by Pioneer Onkyo which are quite chunky compared to carrying a phone. Preloaded with the box set, the players sounded pretty good, given that the basement room was quite noisy. The audio files appear on the player as FLAC but MQA retain as much of the audio data in as small a file as possible so that If MQA files are played back on non MQA equipment then they should play at better than CD quality. Also on display were a selection of the vinyl discs (pressed in “splatter” vinyl) along with the covers. The box set contains the eight albums with » Continue Reading.