Back to this world [346]

Greetings from my shed...

Fresh from a dog walk and back on track.

---

#TheAction

Last week there was a hiccup in the numbering of these posts. I blame user error. I also took Substack’s advice and posted what I was reading. This resulted in me filling in a weird template I thought was a normal post, but what in fact was an email type thing that would not be archived. So I resent it as a ‘proper’ dispatch and hoped you wouldn’t mind getting two emails. Most of you didn’t.

Outside of making a hash of things, between the last post and this, I got to visit Meridian HQ, held the 16th #1984Symposium, managed to complete Audio bloggers month without missing a day, and was back in The Wirral documenting stories.

The 1984 symposium often sees more people attending in spirit than in person. George Orwell is one of them. All but one person this year arrived by motorbike.

And of course those passers-by who dropped in. As it was a weekend there were quite a few. Next year the meet up falls on a Sunday and Richard Blair should be in attendance with the Orwell society.

click pic for audio

Another highlight this week was getting to experience an anechoic chamber for the first time. It was wild.

---

#ThePictures

A little while ago Robert from Fully Charged got to fly in the worlds first commercial electric plane. This is a future I’m really looking forward to and it’s staggering to think it’s been 138 years since the first electric powered aircraft flew. I love this modified 60 year old seaplane project linked below as it shows that even with the current inefficiency of storing energy in batteries compared to fuel, like with Robert’s experience with the flight school plane, there are use cases where electric planes are already making commercial sense.

---

#TheWords

David Charles asked if I’d read The Dharma Bums and we could compare notes. It’s been on my to-read list for about 30 years I’ve just finished it. I’ll share our thoughts in a subscriber post. Here is a recent subscriber only post you might have missed. More to come this week.

---

#TheSound

Audio Blogger’s Month is over. Check out the hashtag #AudioMo on Twitter and have a listen. Here are my posts:

Day 01 (thankful) / Day 02 (preparations) / Day 03 (print) / Day 04 (amateurs) / Day 05 (gravel) / Day 06 (song) / Day 07 (attention) / Day 08 (rose) / Day 09 (whisky) / Day 10 (writing) / Day 11 (cycling) / Day 12 (airport) / Day 13 (taco) / Day 14 (stories) / Day 15 (witches) / Day 16 (bowels) / Day 17 (pants) / Day 18 (radio) / Day 19 (shops) / Day 20 (tree) / Day 21 (spider) / Day 22 (invite) / Day 23 (motorbike) / Day 24 (sound) / Day 25 (Orwell) / Day 26 (nerds) / Day 27 (butterflies) / Day 28 (screaming) / Day 29 (waterside) / Day 30 (tech).

This is my most listened audio post. (Did you click on any of these links?)

No need to stop posting social audio if you don’t want to. You can use #Audio365 to continue dropping audio into the community.

---

#TheConsumed

The secret to a great tasting burger…

This special sauce M&S produce emulates the kind of sauce some burger chains use.

---

Reading this about Borsch reminded me of my Nonna always cooking it.

---

In The Dharma Bums ‘Old fashioned Slumgullion’ is made with “nothin but scrambled eggs and potatoes all scrambled up together."But If I search for the recipe I get a more modern ‘American Goulash’.

---

#TheThings

Thanks to meeting @Desf4 at a party in the park I got to see behind the scenes at Meridian Audio.

Meridian famously build all their audio tech in the UK and back in the early 80’s were the first British company to manufacture a CD player. I remember staring at Meridian audio tech in the hi-fi shop ‘Sounds Expensive’ in Rugby. It was somewhat out of my budget. Most of it still is. I’m really grateful to have got to see how they assemble and test their circuitboards and even experience their flagship speakers. At £75,000 a pair I wondered just how good they could possibly be. It was mind expanding. I was experiencing songs I had listened to hundreds of times. But the tracks sounded new to me. More depth and clarity than I thought possible. Ok this was in a treated room in perfect conditions. Probably not something I could easily achieve without going 110% audiophile and building a special place to house all this tech. But I can now see why some people do this. Would you notice the difference between their £3000 in-wall speakers and their £75,000? Absolutely. But having now also heard their DSP640.2 performance in-wall speakers I have something to aim for. They are also a huge leap on anything I have owned. If we ever move to a detached house they will be purchased for the multimedia room.

---

#TheWeb

• I’m sending love to @SoloBassSteve. Please do the same. He’s a wonderful human.

• Flaws in Strava are exposing the identities of Israeli solders.

• I was just looking at the Documentally community map to see who might live en route when travelling Lands End to John O’Groats. ;-)

• Stick ‘Reddit’ at the end of your Google searches and you might get what you are looking for.

• Did I ever tell you about the time when stood in a queue, a well known fitness band employee confessed to me he knew how much sex users of their tech were having? In other news… Your Fitbit has stolen your soul.

• Ukrainian whose startup de-aged Luke Skywalker on stopping deepfake disinformation

• Nordic walking is pretty badass actually

---

#TheEnd

Thanks for reading.

Despite prices going up elsewhere, full subscription to this despatch is still akin to buying me one nice coffee a month. There is no better time to subscribe than now. I’m also around should you need story building or podcasting workshops, training or consultation. One to one or for groups. Please get in touch.

---

“...and I shambled after as usual as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"" ~ Kerouac

---

Recover.

See you out there.

Over…