Yet another means of distraction has presented itself to me. It’s called Google Earth and will no doubt become the next big thing on the net, until the next big thing after that comes along. If you haven’t discovered this yet, basically it’s like a virtual globe, which uses keyhole satellite pictures of varying magnification [...]

Ok it’s now definitely finished. Two acknowledgements must here be made: Firstly Andy who helped me out with a CSS problem which was totally spooning up my pages in IE/Win. Secondly, Bruce Lawson’s personal site has a couple of very useful articles on WordPress and accessibility, many suggestions from which I have incorporated into my [...]

Here, after a couple of hours’ wrestling with a recalcitrant FTP client, is my new-look, renamed, WordPress-powered, complete-with-go-faster stripes blog. You may have noticed the URL has changed (you were automatically redirected here). This is in preparation for the launch of the rest of my personal site at a later date, so I would suggest [...]

His Saxophone Is Silent, His Life Is in the Balance Michael Brecker, one of jazz’s most influential tenor saxophonists over the last quarter-century, has been forced to stop performing by blood and bone marrow disease and is searching for a stranger to save his life. Mr. Brecker, 56, was recently found to have myelodysplastic syndrome, [...]

I’m currently having fun with WordPress, which is a truly fantastic piece of blogging software. Once I’ve got to grips with the nuts and bolts (and there are many of them) I’ll be relaunching this blog on it, with lots of shiny new things. I have the TV on in the background, and have just [...]

I’m working on an arrangement of the Siegfried-Idyll by Richard Wagner, a work I don’t know as well as I probably should, but has me mesmerised, in much the same way as the sort of book you can’t help but read from beginning to end in a day. The introduction has an almost continually unfolding [...]

Only a year ago, we and the United States were part of a coalition against terrorism that was wider and more diverse than I would ever have imagined possible. History will be astonished at the diplomatic miscalculations that led so quickly to the disintegration of that powerful coalition. The US can afford to go it [...]

I have done almost nothing for the past 5 days. Having finally got through July I have a few weeks of relative peace and quiet (apart from an audition in Lucerne and a concert in Worcester Cathedral) before it all kicks off again in September. I’ve been turning my attention once again to web design [...]