Possibly one of my favourite songs.

Elbow's One Day Like This is a piece of music I have loved since the first time I heard it.

Browsing YouTube, I found a performance of this song with the band and the BBC Concert Orchestra and Choir. This performance is absolutely awesome and moves me every time I hear it. Take a listen and see what you think.

Some places I've been lucky enough to visit over the years.

Over the years I have been lucky enough to travel and visit some of the most amazing places in the world. Here are a few photographs.

The Hoover Dam

The Grand Canyon

Monument Valley

Bryce Canyon

 The Canadian Rockies

The Grand Teton Mountains near Jackson Hole

Arches National Park

Canyonlands, Utah

Camps Bay, Near Cape town

South African Winelands

Hoyt's Bay

All I can say is take the time to wander and explore, there are some amazing and beautiful places in the world take the time to appreciate them!

It made me laugh anyway!

I know I've fallen for the dancing pony advert on TV for 3 mobile, but I did find it very funny. In the original the shetland pony manages to moonwalk like Michael Jackson.

You can make your own dancing pony too, here's my effort the punk pony with the fabulous Teenage Kicks by the Undertones as the music!

Click here to watch.

Neil Armstrong RIP

I was nine months old when Neil Armstrong took his first steps on the moon and immortalised the words "It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." This  probably was and is man's greatest feat of exploration to date. It culminated almost a decade of effort, millions of man hours of work and it meant NASA completed John F Kennedy's dream of landing a man on the moon before the decade (of the sixties) was finished.

During my childhood and throughout my life I've been fascinated by space travel and exploration, I have read many books about the astronauts and the space programme, and have been amazed by the shear vision, sense of purpose that led to the landing by the crew of Apollo 11 in July 1969. It amazes me that this happened and that we managed to get there. I'm even amazed by the shear scale of the technology, the awesome power of the Saturn V rocket, the fact that the average smart phone has more computing power than the computer in the lunar lander.

It was with sadness that I heard on the radio that Neil Armstrong died last Saturday following complications after heart surgery.

If you want to read about the amazing effort of getting men to the moon. I would recommend two books, A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chailkin and Moondust by Andrew Smith.

Let's hope these won't be the only footprints we leave on the moon. 

Love this version of the Keep calm and Carry on Poster

This year has seen the rise of the Keep Calm and Carry On poster.


I think this version is possibly my favourite!

Something I like!

Apparently this card is given to anyone who starts working for Apple. As a statement of values and intent I think its brilliant. 


So I thought I'd post it here.

A little late but my thoughts on The Masters.

The Easter weekend also marked the playing of the 2012 Masters at Augusta.


Once again the Augusta National looked as pretty as a picture and some amazing golf was played over the four days.

Once again there were high hopes that a British winner would happen with either Lee Westwood or Luke Donald breaking their duck in majors. Westwood was in contention eventually coming third, Donald didn't seem to get the pace of the greens and his short game wasn't up to his usual immaculate standard.

Anyway to follow up, here are three amazing shots that got the crowd shouting and hollering.

First Phil Mickelson on Day 3. An amazing wedge shot into the 15th green.

A double eagle (albatross) for Louis Oosthuizen. An astounding second shot into the par 5 second hole.

And finally the shot that won the Masters for Bubba Watson, an astonishing recovery from the rough in the sudden death play off. (I can move a golf ball like this too but it is never a planned shot!)

Music. So when was the last time you listened to a whole CD?

I was thinking the other day how in recent years the way we listen to music has changed. My thoughts were prompted when I realised its been more than 2 1/2 years since I've listened to a CD. Thinking about it, the only CD player I now have that works is in my car.


So what has changed for me? I was a fairly early adopter of MP3 players. Over six years ago I bought a Creative Zen Touch MP3 player, the idea of being able to carry my entire CD collection around in my pocket appealed to me.

It was at this point I stopped listening to whole albums and started to play my music on the random shuffle setting. I love listening to music like this because tracks get thrown out from the darkest corner of my music collection, and sometimes these long forgotten tracks are absolute gems.


MY zen MP3 player lasted over three years, but when I converted from PC to Mac at home I discovered my trustee MP3 player wouldn't connect to my mac and there was no mac compatible software for the device. 


So sadly my zen touch was retired and I converted to my iPod classic.

I love my iPod and via iTunes I have over 4400 tracks. I think my music consumption has changed, I tend to buy one or two tracks off albums now but via digital music stores I can access tracks from bands I loved as a teenager, guilty pleasures like A Flock of Seagulls, Visage, Gary Numan and Ultravox. My 80's music collection was mostly on cassette and it great to be able to rediscover how good (and naff) some of this music was.

I hope you don't think me as a philistine for on listening to my iPod on shuffle but as I said I love it when I get to hear a track I haven't heard in ages. Two recent favourites thrown out recently were Broken Land by the Adventures and From the Stars by White Lies.

Some Apps for iPad that are cool!

Here are a few apps for iPad that I'd like to recommend.


First up there is Flipboard, this works on iPad and iPhone. Imagine looking at your social media feed from Twitter and Facebook and getting them displayed to you as a magazine. You can also get clips of articles from your favourite magazines such as Wired or Golf Digest to name but two, there are many more to subscribe to but these are a couple I'd choose.

Next up I would recommend a couple of eReader apps, iBooks and Kindle. I have both on my iPad. Personally I think that I prefer Kindle but both are good. I don't mind reading on an iPad ( I know some prefer to read a real book) but its great for holidays, you can take loads of books without exceeding your baggage allowance. By the way these aren't mine :-)

The Kindle APP

iBook APP

Finally, I love Evernote, this allows me to clip and store content and sharing it across all my devices. My mac, iPad and iPhone. This maybe photographs, emails web clips, even voice clips. There are free and paid versions of Evernote. There is a monthly allowance for data you can share and you organise the uploaded files via your Mac or PC.

Some movies I'd like to recommend.

After not going to the cinema for quite a while, here are some recommendations for films I've seen recently.


First I'd like to recommend Senna. a documentary about the racing career and the ultimate death of Ayrton Senna, the great grand prix driver. This a superb film, it had a limited cinema release but if you can see it on the big screen, do so, its superb big screen experience. It is told via a series of clips of races, interviews and film of Senna released by his family. Even if you don't like Formula 1 it is still worth seeing. Hearing the sound effects and the noise of the crashes are shocking! Here is a clip of the trailer.

Next I'd like to recommend X-Men First Class. This is a reboot and return to form of the X-Men franchise. This is done in a similar way to the Star Trek Film directed by JJ Abrams. Really enjoyed this after the disappointment of X-Men 3 and X-Men Origins- Wolverine. Great effects and a good cast, particularly Michael Fassbender as Magneto. Very cool visuals, reminiscent of Sean Connery era James Bond films. Occasionally struggles with the number of characters but definitely a good film.

Finally, yesterday I went to see the final part of the Harry Potter film. A great movie, it is amazing how these films have developed over the year, v enjoyable and coming to the film without reading the book interesting and surprising. Sad to see the end of the franchise. Also, a degree of applause in the cinema as the film ended.

A quick website recommendation.

This website is really great it is NASA's Astronomy Pic of the Day.


Each day a picture of skies, planets and other amazing phenomena in our universe are posted, along with a quick explanation by one of their scientists.


Today's picture is of Mesa Arch in Canyonlands, Utah and can be seen here. What is really cool is that I have been here, stood on top of this rocky outcrop (see my profile pic), here are my pictures taken when I last visited Canyonlands.