Dr Ben Horner

I couldn't possibly comment.

You're not interested in my fascinating ex-BT international operator chat? Why tho
I once spoke to Sean Connery YES I DID

If someone called in who couldn't reach an international number, we would call through to the country concerned and ask one of their operators to test the line for us. Ten internet points if you can guess which country had the rudest operators on the English-speaking network.

When I worked on operator services a colleague had the most amazing mental arithmetic skills. He could add/multiply/work out the square root of the telephone numbers in the time it took to type them in. I thought he was pulling my leg until one day I took a calculator into work and, my god. Skills.

Ex-BT international operator reporting. Leading digit tells the exchange where to send the call: preceding 0 for out of current area code; preceding 1 for operator services (100, 144, 155 (where I worked)); 2-8 - local lines within your area code; 9 - emergency services. Designed for exchange speed.

Ex-BT international operator here, can confirm this is correct. More precisely, the call is going somewhere nationally but outside your own area code. Dial 00 first for a *very* outside line.

I needed to read this. Thank you x

Try Radio 6, it's really good and staffed by folks who actually know and care about music. I like it.

Terrific album!

These live radio feature docs I make are done with realtime music improvisation with amazing musicians responding to the material they hear. The interview clips are pre-edited and cued on Ableton Live so the shape of the show is set, and the live Announcer and poet(s) are cued in by me "conducting".

Screengrab of podcast artwork. It's available wherever you get your podcasts, folks.

The last episode of the Goodwin Sands Oral History project is up. This isn't your usual dull and worthy oral history ep - this is a hauntological radio feature doc about the sea and how it changes us. Broadcast from a wrecked ship in the Channel, it was recorded live in 2024.

Same re Seinfeld! Just couldn't get on with it at all, and the twangy synth bass interstitials sealed the deal.

Really not a fan of the wind. Why is the air in such a hurry? Where is it going? It's already outside, where else does it need to be?

Milo the Sausage braved it by sheltering in an alleyway, Millie the Jack Russell toughed it out by hunting for cats until suddenly she had a moment of clarity and started crying and scratching at the front doors of random houses we walked past to get home!

Could have helped with this if only they'd asked

www.etsy.com/uk/listing/4...

Imaginary tubemaps, I make 'em

The level of unprofessional behaviour in this I think is shocking.

But this won't be the only example.

Let me tell you something, a friend of mine with MS had her nurse specialist in clinic asking ChatGPT to help choose her next medication cycle. These medications can be dangerous and have risks, not least that they might not work and you relapse and accrue disability.

Maybe this is the driver of all this nonsense, the fact that we are not taught to research and use our evaluative skills, or maybe we are just so pushed for time that it's easier to let a bunch of idiot coders make a machine that *looks like* it can do it for us (but doesn't, and can't).

Why would anyone be using that service to do research when it is often wrong (sometimes wildly wrong), and you have the entire Internet available like a giant bookshelf? Pull the books down, read, interpret and understand for yourself. Like a grown up.

See theaudiosphere.com for both. And my latest podcast production project is called Shipwrecks, Sailors & Lost Souls and is available on the usual channels, that's a documentary series about the seaside folk of the south east coast, done in a creative and interesting way (I hope you'd agree).

I've found that applying for arts funding costs a great deal of time, and if you worked out the hourly rate and the chances of actually being awarded anything, you might as well not bother. So I don't any more. I just make some work which (hopefully) sells and use that to fund the stuff that won't.

I still have some Garfield books but my faves are the Perishers, a love inherited from my mum. Have loads of vintage books of these

If you don't hear back, well, you know.

I'm going to Wells-Next-The-Sea in a few weeks to specifically cosplay Paxton (Peter Vaughan) yes I'm taking a big coat and a spade I wanna see what happens when I start digging

Trump looking out of the White House window.

The hideous revenant that is William Agar, pursuing Paxton across Aldeburgh Beach in a Warning To The Curious (Lawrence Gordon Clark, 1972)

Yes this is correct. Unfortunately it's difficult to make some of them actually turn up.

Like you two chaps would miss an opportunity for a gag

Really enjoying the book, it's really excellent, many congrats x

Really like the Merrieland album which uses that as the artwork. Not a single track in 4/4, nice

Yay! Tomorrow's World!

Man that track is awesome. The orchestration, arrangement and playing are all ace, I really love the drums when it goes all cymbal splashy towards the end

It's a shame filmmaking is such a collaborative endeavour that there's not a Bandcamp-type platform