Chirpy chappy

My right eyeball and the dark blob is, according to the lovely people at Moorfields Eye Hospital, a very average and benign chirpy (CHRPE = Congenital hypertrophy of the retina pigment epithelium). It’s a bit like a birthmark on the inside of your retina, has no effect on vision and, having been checked out, isn’t growing into the eyeball or cancerous. The kit they have for checking it out is really impressive to – my favourite being the laser scanner. Nice.

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Much Ado About The Girl

Thanks to Mr Gardiner for spotting the BBC casting myself and the Girl in the BBC Bitesize version of Much Ado.

Artistry vs Artefact? Artistry wins.

The death of the music industry? Online services undermining the purchase of music? Rubbish.

To the doubters of audio streaming with services like spotify (ad funded or subscription) or last.fm, a personal anecdote: I opened spotify, put in the music i’d like to listen to – in this case Muse. Hadn’t heard them for a while, my iphone only has one of their tracks on it and the last album of theirs I bought is on my clunky old ipod which is a bit knackered.

I had no idea about Haarp. It’s a fantastic live album based on the concert tour from a couple of years ago which included some nights at the new Wembley which I went to. And four tracks into the streaming through spotify, I went onto iTunes and buy the album.

I’m not interested in the artwork or the cd. The artefact has no meaning for me. It would give me a moment of ownership and then sit on the shelf ignored. But I would rip it and play it out through my various devices.  So I cut out that desire for artefact and move straight to the artistry.

Yes, there are plenty of people who will still want the CD on the shelf but they grow fewer by the day.