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Gadget Man – Episode 159 – James Hazell Mix Tape Part 4 – Two Tribes – Frankie Goes To Hollywood

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This morning was the final of my Mix Tape tracks played by James Hazell on BBC Radio Suffolk. I’ve attached the YouTube playlist yet again below which will play the interview followed by the track.

Two Tribes, by Frankie Goes To Hollywood, is a truly incredible track which absolutely blew the music scene away back in 1984 and launched the band into super-stardom.

“From the railway station in the distance came the sound of shunting trains, ringing and rumbling, softened almost into melody by the distance.” – H. G. Wells – War of the Worlds

 

Transcript of the interview is below.

James Hazell: The mixtape all this week has featured Matt Porter, our very own gadget guy from Matt Porter web design. We’ve been chewing the cud of technology all this week and the fascination with gadgetry and life in the future. Is there one thing, Matt, we talked yesterday about, uh, where the technology may have gone down the wrong route.

Is there one area where you think it might be behind and needs to pick up? The pace of it? Is there. A strand of life that technology

Matt Porter: has yet to improve. I’ve got very poor eye sight to where we’ll go out very thick glasses for years and I now wear contact lenses and therefore when I use things like a virtual reality headset, so when I play with them, unless I’ve got my contact lenses in, I can’t because I’ve got a pair of glasses that get away in all of this sort of stuff.

And it seems like a first world problem. I think that they’ve, there have just been developments made in. Putting displays on building displays into a contact lens, and when that finally becomes mainstream, that would just be amazing. I mean, I’ll wear contact lenses and have anyways on use to put in them in my yard.

James Hazell: It’s odd, isn’t it? Wearing glasses does seem very. Victorian almost way beyond that. We’re still doing it. That can be, I’m not, all right. You can have a call, Tina Mark three air filter over your face like they haven’t stopped. Yeah. Yeah. Apart from that,

Matt Porter: Yeah. I think that it’s, that would be super, but I think that you know, I absolutely love the fact that I could, um, uh, shut my eyes and watch your film.

James Hazell: Um, it feels like it’s a natural extension to the smartphone.

Matt Porter: I mean, I, I was, I had a, a virtual reality headset on. I can a head-up display. I had a hit. I actually had a headset on, um, a couple of years ago, and I was looking for stuff that supported it so you could turn your head around and it would. Turn your head around and it would, um, uh, move accordingly.

And, um, and I was watching these things and YouTube supports it. If you say you’ve got a headset on, it’ll show you stuff. So you can see it will move things around. And I remember sitting there and, um, suddenly. It was a, it was someone doing yoga and I didn’t know what could do with myself and where to put myself because suddenly I’m looking like real.

Yeah. I’m looking at this woman in some strange yoga position and I couldn’t cover my eyes because they were covered by this. Certainly. If it’s done well, you know, it’s fantastic. And yes, so contact lenses with built-in displays would be, that’s the future

James Hazell: Right there. Alright. We’ll wrap up with a set of questions, which we may have borrowed from a certain TV show.

We don’t need to go into that. So, Matt Porter, uh, your all-time favourite word.

Difficult. Yeah. We never tell guests about these questions.

Matt Porter: Um, sarcasm. Sarcasm.

James Hazell: Okay. Your least

Matt Porter: a favorite word or least favourite phrase is “This One”. Really? Yeah. Everybody seems to be putting pictures on social media and saying had a lovely afternoon. People

James Hazell: refer to

Matt Porter: people as this, this one. Yeah.

James Hazell: What would you say was your best

Matt Porter: quality?

I’m very caring. Very caring.

James Hazell: Good for you, and your worst quality.

Matt Porter: Um, I don’t pick up some social cues when it’s time to stop and go. Yeah. So from around someone’s house. Yeah. Don’t get that social cue that it’s now they’re standing there in their pyjamas, within the lights out,

James Hazell: and I’m still

Matt Porter: talking like that.

James Hazell: Uh, ‘Trek or ‘Wars. Careful how you answer.

Matt Porter: Well, isn’t it? Isn’t it? It’s so divisive because they are so entirely different.

James Hazell: They are entirely

Matt Porter: Different because in fairness, Trek is, is utopian.

James Hazell: Trek is a nice place.

Matt Porter: Yes, utopian, clean air, pleasant, a bit more space, that’s why Star Wars is all kind of dirty and used.

So it’s difficult to say, Oh, I’ll say Trek at the moment, because there’s a particular because a Picard’s just come on and it’s nice to see it back.

James Hazell:  You’re right. Yes.  A sound that you love?

Matt Porter: Trains Passing in the Night in the Distance! That’s a great noise! Oh my God!

James Hazell: Always loved the reference in Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds.

Uh, trains, uh, in the distance, softened almost into melody by the disc. that’s a lovely phrase.

Matt Porter: I used to hear the trains at night when I was young and I think I did actually look it up. And apparently it is a ‘thing’, most people find than the sound of trains passing in the night calm.

James Hazell: It is a thing. Yeah. Most surprising.

A sound or noise that you hate. That ‘dong’ that windows used to make when something went wrong.

Matt Porter: The Blue Screen of Death. Yeah.

James Hazell: Uh, and if heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates. Do we need a website?

Matt Porter: No, God. Oh no! That’d be the worst thing! I’m glad you are here. My computer’s got a problem. Yeah., I think, um, uh, you’ve done a great job.

James Hazell: You are a caring guy.

Matt Porter: Welcome and great. Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Yeah.

James Hazell: Matt Porter. Great to catch up. And you will know that, again, beyond the show with us talking technology as the weeks go by of Matt Porter Web Design, final song. is an app salute stonker, it’s Frankie Goes to Hollywood and Two Tribes, for what reason, Matt?

Matt Porter: Um, when Frankie Goes to Hollywood, appeared, it was in 1984, 83-84. That time was quite frightening for people. Eh, you know, we have scary now because we’ve, it’s all to do with the doomsday clock, and we’re closer than ever now.

But back then there was a real, uh, it seemed like it could happen. There were broken down relationships between the Soviet Union and the United States. Reagan had just come in and he was quite boisterous at the time. Um, and. It was a scary time. It really felt I think there were a few movies came out, threads the day after they all kind of nuclear war movies, which are quite frightening.

Threads were very, very scary because it was so much more real. Um, so there was this feeling of impending doom that we really didn’t have much time.  summed it up, some great lyrics in it. Um, and. I, it was a tough time around that time for me. You know, I’d have, we had a bereavement. My sister died a year or so before.

And, uh, it was pretty tough going and, and you kind of become involved listening to particular music and really, really enjoying it. So it was kind of a bit of escapism listening to this band. So. It was, and this track, you know, it was one of the first ones to be sort of heavily remixed and different versions.

James Hazell: 4 different mixes?

Matt Porter: Different 12” version, Annihilation, Carnage, Hibakusha and Cassette and things like that.

It was a fantastic, fantastic track. Nine weeks at number one, and I actually speak to, a couple of the members of the band as well now. Yeah. Um. Holly Johnson, not so much now. I used to have a bit of communication with him on Facebook. Brian Nash, the guitarist, he’s a real, real, real nice guy and had a few conversations with him as well.

James Hazell: Interesting. Mark O’Toole. He was another one was

Matt Porter: Mark O’Toole was the bass player. He lives in America. He’s kind of quite out of the public eye now. It doesn’t really have much to do with anything social media.

Paul Rutherford was the backing singer. He lives in New Zealand. Yes, Ped was the drummer who lives in London. I think I’m friends with him on Facebook, but he doesn’t say very much. His son’s quite an avid, surfer.

James Hazell: But back in the day, they all got together with the help of Trevor Horn of course.

Matt Porter: Trevor horn, who

James Hazell: did a remarkable job.

Matt Porter: I went to his house, actually. Yes. So to his house for a Christmas party, 27 years ago. Yeah. So, one of my friends, her uncle. Worked for Stiff Records, right. And stiff was bought by ZTT Records, which was owned by Trevor Horn and Jill Sinclair, they were invited to his Christmas party, which was a place called Hook End Manor in Oxfordshire, right, which was owned by Dave Gilmore, he had just bought it from Dave Gilmore.

James Hazell: You hang about with all the big guys don’t ya!

Matt Porter: They said, we know you’re a great fan. Will you drive us? My friends and her family said, you drive us and you can come along. So, I did. I drove. I drove out, and it was, um, Wendy and Lisa were there from Prince and the Revolution.

Yeah., and Wendy, I think Wendy or no, Lisa Coleman has got a twin, so she was there as well. So there were sort of two Lisa’s and then there was Lol Crème.

James Hazell: They are big mates.

Matt Porter: Stephen Howe from, Yes. Was there, there was a few other people’s, Seal was meant to be there, but he didn’t come. Um, same record label. Of course. Yeah. He was, yeah, he was time. Uh, yeah, it was, it was, it was

James Hazell: It was a great night that was?

Matt Porter: Day. Yeah, a whole day thing. Yeah. Well, playing table tennis in the recording studio and played pool and snooker.

There you go.

James Hazell: Final song from Frankie goes to Hollywood with the genius of Trevor Horn behind it and Matt Porter on the mix tape. Great to speak to you, Matt. We’ll speak soon. Thank you.

 

BBC Radio Suffolk, Gadget Man, Matt Porter, Technology, The Gadget Man

Gadget Man – Episode 158 – James Hazell Mix Tape Part 3 – Coldplay – What If?

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“I think that there are great ideas which sometimes are rolled out by the wrong people.”

This morning was the third of my Mix Tape tracks played by James Hazell on BBC Radio Suffolk. I’ve attached the YouTube playlist again below which will play the interview followed by the track.

This is a track which I find I go to when I need to wind down and relax. It’s great reflection music, good to chill out to.

Transcript of the interview follows.

James Hazell: The mixtape. All this week featuring Matt Porter of Matt Porter Web Design our gadget guy, who regularly is on the show talking about technology and the like. We spoke yesterday about, cars and autonomous vehicles and, and changes in our attitude to technology. Matt. It’s everything. Is every advance in technology, in your perspective being a welcome and violence?

Are there routes that we’ve gone down that have not sat come to me with you?

Matt Porter: It’s a very interesting question. Rarely. Yeah, sure. I think that,

James Hazell: right. Obviously medical technology is always to be applauded and you know, any technology, I guess that makes our lives easier. I just don’t know if it’s all been..,

..in the right direction.

Matt Porter: I think that there are great ideas which sometimes are rolled out by the wrong people.

James Hazell: That’s a good response.

Matt Porter: They don’t necessarily understand what the implications of fact technology is or the decisions about which equipment to use may not have been made for the. Right reasons, rather than our thought maybe a financial reason.

So you might not be getting the best results that you could be because of their strengths of budgets and other things. So

James Hazell: You think of the gaming, which is massive in this country, in many countries in the world, the gaming profession, which it is. but many people are now citing that. As the reason behind obesity in children not getting exercise and daylight and friendships.

Would that be an example of where technology has let us down a bit?

Matt Porter: I think so. I think one of the things that. Many of us would agree with that, although they’re all seem to be a double edge sword to everything and smartphone technology, mobile smart technology is an amazing invention. However, the, negativity, negative sides of, there are so many people becoming so antisocial through something that’s meant to make you.

So it’s almost as if you’ve channelled your…

James Hazell: Towards bringing out personal something in us rather than the technology itself

Matt Porter:  into something and like, yeah, so you’re sitting there with a phone stuck against your face, ignoring people whilst talking to somebody else who’s a hundred miles away or a thousand miles away, and it’s actually caused this seems to have caused people to become less social.

People are less happy to pick a phone up and speak to you. They’d rather message you, or they’d rather send a, a text message. And I did actually watch it. It was a  documentary or a piece of a news piece about, the traditional telephone effect that people aren’t using plugged in landline, no, no phones anymore.

And they interviewed people and, and people were, people were saying, well, actually making phone calls makes me anxious, so I’d draw this and now what happened there? You know where I think it

James Hazell: Probably always has. Some people just don’t like going on the telephone and do the button. So if there’s, and I don’t suppose there ever was a real alternative, so they had to do it.

Matt Porter: I think that now there is that telephones are fantastic. Voice communication is fantastic, that you don’t have to have this tech tennis match of emails and texts me example conversation. You can hear somebody how they actually mean something. You don’t have to look at it and try and read into what they’re saying.

And then through

James Hazell: Arguments in the workplace are caused by, so, you know, text, not conveying a smile.

Matt Porter: Communication beats. Exactly.

James Hazell: Yeah. Okay. When you see documentaries about the future and obviously into Sci-Fi stuff, there’s always a dystopian kind of future that we seem to be headed for. Because we become slaves to technology.

Do you think that’ll ever be the case where we become so entwined with it that

Matt Porter: Actually without it, we stop

James Hazell: Functioning as a, as a species?

Matt Porter: I mean, you

James Hazell: Could argue that

Matt Porter: That day is already around you. I was going to say, I think that we, I think we might’ve even passed that tipping point now where we become so reliant on, on this technology that we would struggle

James Hazell: to without,

Matt Porter: without it, that a dangerous place to be.

I think it probably, yes, I think he is. I think

James Hazell: That one CME from the sun, all the power goes off and we’re back to the stone age. Well, that’s very

Matt Porter: True! And we’ve seen that to a smaller extent where you have power cuts and we had a power cut last year and trains stopped running. Everything just stopped running.

Whereas, you know, there was a time when there were power stations running specifically to back up the electricity on the railway and the underground systems in London and things like that. Purely for that reason, that reason. and we had a situation where people just suddenly didn’t know what to do.

And the first. The alternative they had was to be angry and upset and stamp their feet and say, why am I late home now? This is not on. Well, it’s what would happen if there was a, an outage which wasn’t quite as easily read. It didn’t have such an easy remedy as, yeah, it’s a failure in some, protects, it was a test that went wrong and shunned down.

So, yeah. How would people cope without these things? I think we would struggle. I guess

James Hazell: We are the last generation who can remember life before the internet.

Matt Porter: Yeah. So we could

James Hazell: Probably just about, you know, go back to our child. I think, well when we were child children, this is what we did.

Matt Porter: Yeah.

James Hazell: But children now have no idea of life without the internet.

And it just worries me that they’re not such suggesting for one moment that it will ever all go off. But you don’t know. You know, that could be a major, massive fault one day, and all of a sudden. It’s off for a week and you wonder how people are going to cope.

Matt Porter: I always, always think of the Truman show.

Yeah. The film, the Truman show where if anyone hasn’t seen it, where it’s like a giant, almost like a world, a town-sized, version of big brother really isn’t aware whereas someone’s born and grown up in a, in a reality show and doesn’t know they’re in that reality show. But has, I, I think.

Feeling they might be. but the thing that always made me chuckle is at the end of that,  then effectively, it finishes and that’s the end of the show. They switch it off and everybody just carried back to something else. Went back to their normal lot. Alex

James Hazell: Is on the telly. Yeah, exactly. Oh, right. A song choice for this Wednesday.

Matt Coldplay. What if for what reason?

Matt Porter: This is, Interesting one, because I used to take our children to nursery when they were younger, and one day, I particularly liked the album that this distracts on. but I remember dropping them off one day. My wife taking them in and I was standing outside the car and it was quite a sunny day and the doors were open on the car, and then this came on and it kind of grew.

Echoed around the street where we were parking, but it was kind of quite a nice, it was a lovely, lovely song. and this particular verse in that, in this song, which is really thought-provoking, you know, it, it’s one of those songs where you could read into your, something out. You could put something out of your, something that’s happened to you in your life, and maybe draw it out of this song.

“Every step that you take
Could be your biggest mistake
It could bend or it could break
That’s the risk that you take
What if you should decide
That you don’t want me there in your life
That you don’t want me there by your side”

I think it kind of encompasses everything. And my son James has a sleep disorder. bless him, terrible trouble getting him to sleep since he was born and he’s nearly 10. We used to have sleepless nights over and over again. And one of them, if I look at my playlists on, on my phone, I, it shows which track has been played the most.

We used to play music, all kinds of music, but this one, this one’s just this one has been played about 796 times or something to him. it’s a great track. Yeah. “What if?” by Coldplay? Brilliant. Yeah.

 

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Gadget Man Episode 157 – James Hazell Mix Tape Part 2 – Energy 52 – Cafe Del Mar

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This morning was the second of my Mix Tape tracks played by James Hazell on BBC Radio Suffolk. I’ve attached the YouTube playlist again below which will play the interview followed by the track.

This is probably one of my favourite pieces of music ever, I don’t know quite where I first heard it, but it is a very, very, very popular dance track.

I went on holiday with my parents and some friends in Portugal. We had a villa and I brought this CD that someone had lent me, which was free on the front of Ministry Magazine, Hooj Choons.

I took that with me and it was a beautiful Villa and I went in and dragged the stereo system out beside the pool and put this on and had it blasting out sitting by the pool, and it was, it was like being in Ibiza when I was 20. It was fantastic!

Great Tune!

This doesn’t include the abrupt ending broadcast today on air!!

Below is a playlist which includes the track after the interview.

 

 

BBC Radio Suffolk, Gadget Man, Mix Tape, Podcast, Technology, The Gadget Man

Gadget Man Episode 155 – James Hazell Mix Tape Part 1 – The Beloved – Satellite

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This morning was the first of my Mix Tape tracks played by James Hazell on BBC Radio Suffolk. I’ve attached the YouTube playlist below which will play the interview followed by the track.

The transcript of the interview follows below.

Gadget Man Mix Tape – Part 1

James Hazell: The mixed tape all this week features the gadget man himself, Matt Porter of Matt Porter web design, our regular guide. You man. Now choosing tunes for us. Matt, great to see you

Matt Porter: Great to see you as well.

James Hazell: How are you?

Matt Porter: I’m alright, I’m good, very good. Thank you.

James Hazell: Now you’re a man. Of course. We know now is very much involved in the latest technology and all of that. You regularly report for us on the latest by way of gadgetry and all that. Have you always been that “guy”?

Matt Porter: for technology, I suppose I have. Actually, when I was at school, I had a Commodore VIC-20. That was interesting because the budget for that present was the Commodore VIC-20 on its own without the tape drive.

So, I would spend a lot of time programming and writing programs to do things. Either leaving the VIC-20 switched on because if you switched it off, it’s gone forever. So, it was a good way of learning to program because you kind of had to memorize a lot of what you did or write it down.

So, when you wanted to do it again, you had to re-type it all in. It was a painful thing. But, we’re not talking about writing a copy of Microsoft Word, there was a very limited amount of memory in a VIC-20, so the programs were never that long, but it was still a good start.

James Hazell: So, what was it, 10 PRINT “HELLO”, 20 GOTO 10?

Matt Porter: With Commodores, it was POKE 36879,22 or something like that!

James Hazell: Yeah. We’ll talk more about this as the week goes by, but we want to find out more about the man himself. So, Matt Porter, who are you? Are you a local? I get the sense you’re not Suffolk born, are you?

Matt Porter: I was born in Hitchin in Hertfordshire. I lived in that area for around 33 years and then I met a young lady on an online dating site called Udate, which is long gone. I met her on Udate and we got to know each other and fell in love.

I then sold my house in Bedfordshire at the time and moved to Ipswich to be with her. We got married and we had two children and we’re still together.

James Hazell: It’s good to hear of an online success story because they can be frowned upon in use by some people,

Matt Porter:  Certainly and as usual, I have to jump into something right at the beginning, it was good.

James Hazell: You were one of the first, I reckon, cause I had no doubt.

Matt Porter: Yeah, it was 2002 or 2003

James Hazell: That’s got to be early days. It’s got to be pioneering!

Matt Porter: So there you go, that’s what brought me here.

James Hazell: So your Missus must’ve been on it as well, so I suspect she’s a bit of a tech-head as well?

Matt Porter: She’s not actually, she’s not massively, almost certainly she’s not a tech head. She’s not as enthusiastic as I am, but we run Matt Porter Web Design together.

James Hazell: She won’t go out and buy a gadget just because it’s just been released by somebody.

Matt Porter: Absolutely not. No, she’s not interested. Her smartphone battery will last for days because she doesn’t use it that much.

James Hazell: When you moved to Suffolk, was there a concern with your technology minds that you’re moving to a place it’s not, shall we say, renowned for technology. It wasn’t at the forefront, I guess?

Matt Porter: I guess not. Yeah, it turns out I ended up having an office on, on the BT campus for a number of years, and it’s a super place, not many people know what a vibrant technology community is there.

But when I came here, actually, I handed my notice in for my full-time job in Hertfordshire and sold my house. I came here and started Matt Porter Web Design when I arrived, which was madness. I didn’t know anybody personally or in business.

James Hazell: So, you’ve come here this week to choose some songs for us. You’re going to start with Satellite by The Beloved.

Matt Porter: This track came out in 1996 and at that time I was house-sitting for somebody in Stevenage. During the time of the housesitting was Euro 96, which was England played absolutely amazingly! It was one of the most fantastic tournaments with classic players.

James Hazell: We were supposed to win that one!

Matt Porter: It was an amazing tournament. But I was house sitting there. So obviously I remember, watching the games and every time we scored, I think we played The Netherlands winning 4–1.

Every time we scored, I kept ringing my mate up and screaming down the phone. At that time, they also had satellite TV with MTV, and I was watching that and hadn’t really watched it before. This particular video for Satellite by The Beloved came on and it’s quite memorable. If you ever watch it on YouTube, it’s quite a memorable video, quite groundbreaking I guess, and the song’s fantastic as well. I actually have contact vaguely with Jon Marsh, who’s the singer with The Beloved by being a member of The Beloved Facebook Group. He regularly posts on there. It’s quite geeky, I guess.

(Cue Satellite by The Beloved)

 

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Gadget Man – Episode 152 – Hyundai Drive Different Test – Radio Interview

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This week I travelled to London to take part in the Hyundai Drive Different Test. In my previous post, I provided details on the thinking behind this initiative.

Today, I spoke to James Hazell on BBC Radio Suffolk about my experience and what I think made driving each car different.

Listen to the stream above and view the cockpit videos below to see some of what I experienced during the day.

Hyundai Drive Different Results for Matt Porter
Hyundai Drive Different Results for Matt Porter

[videopress h9uiJhtw]

[videopress 35zbNsRv]

[videopress DsOjCdKO]

 

 

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The Gadget Man – Episode 149 – Virgin goes from EE, via BT to Vodafone, Britbox launches and Drone Registration is now compulsory

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Welcome to Episode 149 – It’s all go again with the mobile phone market in the UK, the confusion surrounding Mobile Virtual Network Operators and actual network operators becomes confusing again! Virgin Mobile is currently carried by EE which in turn is owned by arch-rival BT, so now Virgin is moving to Vodafone. It shouldn’t affect your service, but you should check your coverage as EE and Vodafone may differ!

Britbox has now launched in the UK, although it was launched in the USA some time ago. Britbox offers BBC and ITV material and will also offer Channel 4 and Channel 5 stuff to in time.  It becomes confusing when much of the material is still offered on BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4 and My5, you can even pay for some of these services to remove the adverts with ITV Hub+, 4+. I’ve signed up to check it out, so more on this later. I’m not terribly sure it has room to operate alongside global players such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple TV.  Time will tell.

UK Drone registration is now compulsory for anyone flying an aircraft over 250g.  Operators have until the end of the month to register their drones. It requires the payment of a £9 annual fee and you must affix your Operator ID to any drones you choose to fly.

Listen in to the stream to find out more,

Matt

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The Gadget Man – Episode 148 – Better Late than… Matt got cut off, Three was down, Vodafone had billing problems and Samsung’s Fingerprint Sensor was bust

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Yikes!!! From a few weeks back! Here is Episode 148 where I spoke to James Hazell about Three, Vodafone and Samsung… Oh, I also got cut off from Facetime during the conversation.

All the issues are resolved now, but it should make informative listening.

From Thur 18th October 2019

Image Credit: By comedy_nose under CC BY License

 

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Gadget Man – Episode 138 – Universal Music and the Importance of Backing up Your Data

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Keeping backup copies of your data has never been so important and only this week it has been revealed that a fire at Universal Music has resulted in the loss of the original master tapes of some of the worlds most famous artists.

To compound the issue, the backups were kept in the same vaults and seemingly perished resulting in the total loss of the original recordings of the likes of Buddy Holly, Eminem, Sheryl Crow, Tupac and Tom Petty (to same but a few!).

With digital photography now the primary method of capturing images, it is now more important than ever that these sometimes precious images are also kept safe. Hardware failure or loss of devices is more common than ever before, so multiple backups are extremely important!

Hardware failure is a real and present issue
Hardware failure is a real and present issue

Today I spoke to James Hazell on BBC Radio Suffolk about backups and my experience of how to keep your data safe.

To find out more, listen into the stream above. Don’t forget to Like, Subscribe and Comment with your experiences of backup successes and failures.

See you in the next episode!!

Matt

BBC Radio Suffolk, Gadget Man, James Hazell, Matt Porter, The Gadget Man

Gadget Man – Episode 125 – What to do if you are involved in a car chase

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Some 30 years ago, I was inexplicably drawn into a high-speed car chase across my home town of Hitchin.

When I left The Bird in Hand in Gosmore on that rainy night in 1987, I had no idea that the following 10 or so minutes would stay with me until now.

In my case, I managed to ‘lose my tail’, but it has always troubled me how the Police would have viewed my plight at the time. Back then, we didn’t have mobile phones in order to call the authorities, so I took it upon myself to try and outrun my potential assailant. If the same had happened now, I would have driven to the nearest Police Station whilst calling them on the way.

Suffolk Police Officer
Suffolk Police Officer

Now, thirty-two years later, I have my answer (sort of), in the form of a Police Inspector from Suffolk.

In the above audio, you can find out what happened to cause the chase, how I evaded them and what the Police’s view is three decades later.

Don’t forget to LIKE, SUBSCRIBE, SHARE and COMMENT, see you next time!!

Thanks to James Hazell for chatting to me about the chase and for contacting the police about it!!

Matt
The Gadget Man

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The Gadget Man – Episode 119 – Technology to look out for in 2019

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Another year passes and as we move into 2019 we can look forward to another year of unstoppable advances in technology.

If I was able to predict upcoming tech, I’m happy to suggest that my number one for 2019 will be the folding mobile phone with potential devices from LG and Samsung already breaking cover in various forms.

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Both companies have already demonstrated their flexible display technologies and with the Mobile World Congress in February coming up soon, we should expect demonstrations of foldable, rollable or bendable screen tech from these companies.

Artificial intelligence is sure to continue its unstoppable march towards self-awareness (I jest!!), but all the same, we should be seeing multi AI ‘bots’ training directly with each other very soon! Who could forget the Facebook AI bots which invented their own communication language shortly after being switched on! More of this in inevitable, hopefully with the necessary safeguards in place.

The big 3 tech companies continue to advance home-based smart technology with integration into every part of our lives, add to this more AI and who knows what we should expect from the likes of Amazon, Google and Apple.

Holograms are a little way off, but augmented reality is making leaps and bounds with more advanced filters on spectacles providing with illusionary-holographic images a reality soon.

Phone batteries continue to provide us with more and more screen time and further advances in battery and charge technology will give us even more excuse to distract ourselves on a daily basis.

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This year we look forward to the beginnings of the 5G roll-outs, giving us impossibly fast download speeds, but also extending decent internet speeds to rural areas of the UK.

Ultimately, we are not about to be overrun by killer robots and 2019 will be bringing some pretty astounding new technology, strap yourselves in and enjoy the ride.

I talked on air with James Hazell from BBC Radio Suffolk about my predictions for the coming year. Have a listen and don’t forget to  Like, Subscribe, Share and Comment and I will see you very soon.

Matt