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Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. He is as fond of a pint as the next man, but six quid?! Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk I live in Camden Town, close to the Regent’s Canal, down which I can walk in ten minutes to King’s Cross. The area around this great railway station used to be squalid and dilapidated, but a couple of decades ago renovations began that would turn it into what was briefly dubbed “The Knowledge District”. The British Museum in Bloomsbury was already close, so it was decided to move its famous library to a new building (one that so famously drew King Charles III’s ire). Soon followed King’s Place, an avant garde glass pile containing concert halls, art galleries and the Guardian newspaper. Then came the Francis Crick…

I have written before about my love for Roon, the music management and streaming platform, but for those who don’t recall a little recap is probably in order. The first thing to recognise is that the problem with most streaming tools is that they have poor metadata and file-handling support. It isn’t unusual for items to be mis-tagged, have the wrong artwork and be a pain to locate. This can be even worse when some streaming server platforms don’t handle items such as the Composer tag correctly. Worse still, integrating an online streaming service such as Qobuz or Tidal into a local database of ripped material can be an exercise in utter futility. That’s where Roon comes in. It has a server component (Roon Core), apps to control the system and…

At the CST Group office, we’re spoilt for choice when it comes to connectivity. The building sits midway between two BT telephone exchanges and so we had fibre installed to both of them, entering our building at different points for proper resilience and redundancy. In addition, there’s also fibre from Virgin and other providers either entering into our building or passing right by it. The local infrastructure maps look like knitted spaghetti. The result of this plethora of connectivity options is that we’re able to get internet connections from several different providers and telcos, chopping and changing to work around planned maintenance windows and unplanned outages. It’s wonderful. Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for me at home. Until recently, my only options were a fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) service via Openreach…

One of the advantages of doing this job for over 30 years is that you have a somewhat different perspective to the whippersnappers. I’m acutely aware that people in their 20s have grown up with the internet as an integral part of their lives. That Google has always been there. And why wouldn’t you use online services to order everything from today’s lunch to your underwear? To them, it’s natural that all of this can be done from their phone, which they carry with them at all times. There is no point trying to describe what it was like Before Internet, because they simply cannot comprehend it. It was an entirely different world, as alien to them as suggesting that Channel 4 was a big deal when it first appeared because…

Think about your technology and then consider how miserable life becomes when it breaks. Wouldn’t it be fantastic if you could repair it yourself and extract a few more years out of your investment? We discard more than two million tons of electrical waste each year in the UK and the horrifying reality is that most of it isn’t very old. With access to the right tools and spare parts, much of it could be fixed and reused. The UK has some of the worst electrical recycling rates in the world, despite the irrefutable humanitarian and environmental cost of the gadgets we buy. Our ability to fix products has been slowly eradicated by manufacturers that view repairs as lost sales. And it’s not only you and your screwdrivers who have been made…

@njkobie Whenever my local council posts anything about Covid-19 or vaccines to its Facebook page, one guy comments with lies and stupidity about the jab not being tested and other anti-vaxxer nonsense about 5G and Bill Gates. The comments always stay up. The council is either too lacking in tech nous to delete them or just can’t be bothered. Even when I report them, Facebook does nothing. We’re in a pandemic with mass vaccination the only route for escape, and we’re still letting this bogus propaganda stand. But not for long. Facebook has finally caught up with the daily news headlines from 2020 and declared it will remove dangerous vaccine misinformation. At the end of last year, Facebook started to remove Covid-related lies, telling users they’d been shown incorrect information. Now, the list…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor. She managed to find a local independent retailer that makes a mushroom cardigan; it’s as ugly as you’re imagining and even more fabulous. @njkobie Shopping can feel like an act of creation. Finding the perfect item, be it for yourself or a gift, takes careful consideration. That’s what Pulitzer-prize-winning Canadian novelist Carol Shields describes in her novel Unless. The main character, Reta Winters, has a spare afternoon in Georgetown and sets out to find the perfect gift for her daughter, traipsing through 20 boutiques to find a Paris-inspired scarf. Reta recalls the story of the search to a literary-minded friend that afternoon. “Finding it, it’s almost as though you made it,” the friend replies. “You invented it, created it out of your imagination.” That once-romantic idea…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s futures editor. Did she mention she had a baby? She did and she’s the best baby in the world. Fact. @njkobie While I was recently on maternity leave, my phone sent a notification that I’ve never previously noticed, alerting me to the fact I’d spent upwards of seven hours staring at the screen the day before. Apparently that was down from the previous week. Does that alarm you? Does it sound like a lot? It did to me, at first. And no wonder, given the many headlines I’ve seen shrieking about smartphone addiction. The New York Times ran a story in February offering advice on cutting down; according to Newsweek even a zoo gorilla is obsessed with smartphones. To help us, a Berlin-based startup called Not Less But Better…

Marcella new TUE 26 January, 9pm & 10.05pm ITV Drama All eight episodes will be on ITV Hub and BritBox after the second episode airs Anna Friel’s troubled detective Marcella has moved to Belfast, where she’s living under a new identity and called ‘Keira’ in this third series of the crime thriller. Amanda Burton joins the cast as Katherine Maguire, the matriarch of a tough criminal family Marcella is trying to infiltrate. Ray Panthaki returns as DCI Rav Sangha and Hugo Speer is back as Marcella’s handler Frank. FULL STORY P11 Holby City TUESDAY 26 January, 7.50pm (Scotland, 8.20pm) BBC1 Drama Beka’s been given the all-clear and is now ready to leave Holby after it was discovered her dad Sacha’s lover Jodie had been poisoning her. However, an anxious Sacha is reluctant to discharge Beka, fearing…

@bazzacollins String me up on charges of shooting fish in a barrel if you will, but I’m 99% sure we’re all sick of paying subscriptions for software. There’s a feature showing you how to avoid subscriptions on p42, and I wouldn’t mind betting you bypassed this column to read it first. I hope you can live with yourself. Two companies having no trouble living with themselves are those who arguably swung the pendulum toward subscriptions in the first place: Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe first launched Creative Cloud in 2013, moving from the big one-off cost of Creative Suite to a subscription model, since when the company’s income charts have looked like a Tour de France mountain stage. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s latest set of financials reveal that Microsoft 365 Consumer subscriptions have increased by…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro. He wanted an Anarakite Amulet for Christmas, but all he got was a cloak of invisibility. Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk One year ago I wrote about three technical breakthroughs that were announced in late 2020: an mRNA vaccine against Covid-19, Alphafold 2 solving the “protein-folding problem” and Apple’s M1 chip. My picks for 2021’s trio of late breakthroughs are equally profound – one in neuroscience, one in space exploration and one in quantum computing – but they’re perhaps a little more difficult to explain. The neuroscience discovery is at least simple to state: the human neuron appears to be several orders of magnitude more computationally complex than silicon ones used to emulate it. Given each neuron’s number of axon connections, this means the whole brain is…

Dick Pountain is editorial fellow of PC Pro and definitely lives in a “house” in Norf Landan. Email dick@dickpountain.co.uk I was born and schooled among the coalfields of northeast Derbyshire, but I no longer have much of a regional accent. I came to London as a student and have been here ever since, three-quarters of my life. I haven’t acquired a Norf Landan accent, but you could still detect my vestigial Derbyshire one were I to say, for example, “there’s a duck in my bath”. I’ve written here before about my fascination with human speech, especially using computers to recognise and simulate it, but my interest runs deeper than that. As a writer, both spelling and pronunciation matter to me: not because I do a lot of public speaking, which I don’t,…

Don’t miss… THE BOY, THE FOX, THE MOLE AND THE HORSE Gather round the box this Christmas for an animated adaptation of Charlie Mackesy’s bestselling story The Boy, the Fox, the Mole and the Horse. Many of us first encountered Charlie’s exquisite illustrations during the pandemic, their simple messages of hope catching our imagination. Idris Elba stars as the voice of the fox, Tom Hollander the mole and Gabriel Byrne the horse in this heartwarming fable about the search for home. This is the Christmas cheer we all need. On BBC One and iPlayer. MEET THE… Lord OF Misrule Throwing a Christmas party? You might like to employ a Lord of Misrule to oversee festivities. This jolly Christmas character first appeared in the 14th century – in the guise of a farm worker in…

William Shatner foot-launched a paramotor for his 13th and final time in 2002. It was part of his last official act as Captain Kirk. He did this flight primarily for fun, but it was also his entrance into a charity paintball match between the Federation and Klingons (from the Star Trek franchise). And it required a dead-calm forward inflation which he pulled off nicely, albeit with help. There’s a remarkably low-budget production called Spplat Attack available on Amazon, complete with some of my aerial footage of him in flight. He was 72 years old and not exactly a paragon of fitness. He explained that if we could help him launch, he’d be fine on the landing, probably landing on his butt, which he did. Your fitness I’m of average fitness but recognise its benefits,…

As I get older, my patience for dealing with idiots is getting shorter. Perhaps that’s because I’m aware I have considerably less time remaining on this planet than I’ve enjoyed so far. Whatever the reason, I’ve noticed I am becoming hypercritical of the vacuous nonsense that politicians spout on an almost daily basis. It doesn’t matter which hue they are; the low quality of the content is beyond worrying. So imagine my annoyance when I read this: “Large language models like ChatGPT offer huge potential. In the future they could help us live longer, healthier, wealthier lives. I want us to invest now to reap the benefits of this innovation; in healthcare, manufacturing and public service delivery.” Who spouted this drivel? None other than Michelle Donelan MP, secretary of state for…

new Craig and Bruno’s Great British Road Trips WEDNESDAY 14 July, 8pm ITV Factual See Strictly judges Bruno Tonioli and Craig Revel Horwood like never before, as the car enthusiasts put on their driving gloves and travel around the UK, from Cornwall to the Cotswolds, in an array of different motors. Their first trip is to Cornwall in a red Mini. With the two pals regularly taking the mickey out of each other on Strictly, we can definitely expect some serious banter! FULL STORY P7 it’s the final! Euro 2020 SUN 11 July, kick-off 8pm BBC1 & ITV Sport All footballing eyes in Europe will be on Wembley, where a crowd of 60,000 fans will be allowed in to cheer on the two Euro 2020 finalists after a spectacular month of action in stadiums around the continent. Last…

My grandmother, Vanda Gréville, was a force to be reckoned with. A film actress in the 1930s, she was married to a French film director, Edmond Gréville, and lived on the Champs Elysées in Paris until the war. She was a legendary hostess and cook and entertained extravagantly. I remember sitting in her kitchen while she prepared delicious food: chestnut and brandy mont blancs, rum babas with alcohol-steeped fruit, creamy blanquette de veau and all the other dishes she’d discovered in France and made her own. My sister and I would help her chop herbs and roll marzipan chocolates as she recounted stories of riding with maharajahs in the Bois de Boulogne or filming scenes where she fell from the Eiffel Tower in Abel Gance’s 1931 disaster movie, La Fin du Monde…

I first met Stella in 1996, back when I lived in New York; then, when I moved to London, we became friends. An absolute individual and highly intelligent, she was the sort of person you felt you wanted to know – and sometimes when you want to know someone, if you’re lucky, you get to. The thing about Stella was that she was so much more than a model. She is an indelible part of fashion’s vocabulary – she inspired the best designers, the best photographers – but beyond her role on set or on the runways, she was a liberated working mother who had figured out a way to succeed in this business while living in Scotland and holding on to her own identity. She may have been born into…

LITTLE MEANS MORE to me than comets. While in the sixth grade at Roslyn School in Montreal, I delivered the first of more than 2,500 lectures I’ve given in my life. The subject I chose for this first talk was comets, and it’s amazing to me to compare what we knew about comets then with what we know now. For example, all those years ago, we knew of a few hundred comets; now we know of at least 4,000. The most famous of all comets, Halley’s Comet, last rounded the Sun on Feb. 9, 1986. Twenty-one years before that, on Dec. 17, 1965, I began searching telescopically for comets. On Nov. 13, 1984, I discovered my first. I’ll never forget my view of a brand-new comet that no one else had…

Internet scammers are becoming increasingly sneaky. In the past, I grew used to regular phone calls claiming to be from Microsoft. They would tell me, in a stern voice, that my computer was infected with viruses and that and I needed to follow their instructions to remove this malware. Immediately. At first, it was easiest to hang up the call. But when this happened for the fourth time one morning, I decided it was time to switch tactics and waste as much of their time as possible. I would respond with an appropriate, “Oh no, I did wonder why things were going so slow” and play along with their script. The goal was to get to 30 minutes, at which point I would just hang up. Or the systems manager to…

Barry Collins is the co-editor of BigTechQuestion.com. His favourite chord is F minor, since you didn’t ask. @bazzacollins How’s your midlife crisis going? Mine involved buying a piano, on the basis that I couldn’t afford a sports car and how hard it can be to play like Elton John anyway? Spoiler alert: it’s unbelievably hard. The good news for any 40-something Elton wannabes is that there’s no shortage of ways to learn piano in the information superhellscape we now live in, and I’ve tried most of them. I started off with piano teacher apps, after getting a free trial of Skoove with my piano, but that soon fizzled out. The app is very clever, using the phone/tablet’s microphone to listen as you play, pointing out when you’ve hit a bum note and giving you…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor and she’s more than a little annoyed to have invested in blackout blinds and curtains only to find the irritant coming from inside the house. @njkobie It was probably about 3am when I lost my mind. As the parent of a one-year-old, my sleep is often interrupted, but what’s worse than being woken in the dark hours is the inability to fall back asleep. This time around, my temporary insomnia wasn’t due to an odd pain in my body or too much post-lunch caffeine, nor even the dramatic disruption to my sleep patterns leaving my brain confused. No, it was a series of bright flashing lights right next to my face. Like many in London, I don’t have a spare room to use as a home…

Barry Collins is the co-editor of bigtechquestion.com, and no, you can’t borrow any of his spare bandwidth. @bazzacollins Iam never knowingly undersold. When I first signed a mobile phone contract back in the late 1990s, I made sure I went for one with something like 20,000 call minutes, even though every month I’d still have 19,935 of them left in the bank. Hello, Mum. Yet here I am, with Virgin Media begging me to take a gigabit broadband line, dangling the prospect that it will be boosted to 2.2Gbits/sec before 2022 is out, and suddenly I’m not for turning. I’m all bandwidthed out. Granted, Collins Towers has two broadband connections: a 65Mbits/sec FTTC Zen Internet one for the main house and a dedicated 200Mbits/sec Virgin Media connection for my home office. They run independently…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor and she wrote this column while waiting for a Sainsbury’s delivery to arrive, with her feet propped up on an empty Amazon box. @njkobie There’s no question that Amazon is convenient. For shoppers, the ability to make nigh-on anything arrive at your door tomorrow – if not sooner – is unquestionably appealing. But as useful as the service is for customers, it’s not good for everyone. Amazon is accused of (and generally denies): overworking warehouse staff, with some delivery drivers urinating in bottles rather than taking a break (pcpro.link/331bottles); chucking returned and unsold items in landfill (pcpro.link/331destroy); nabbing sellers’ ideas to rebrand as its own products (pcpro.link/331data); failing to prevent the sale of dangerous or contraband items (pcpro. link/331contraband); and using tax-avoidance measures so that little…

This has to be the most evocative approach to any classic car showroom in the world. Once you’ve been buzzed through the main gates of Brooklands – the world’s first purpose-built banked motor racing circuit – you turn right, along the time-worn concrete that was once the last section of the Finishing Straight. And then, suddenly, you roll onto the bottom of the famous banking, which rises above you in Planet of the Apesstyle dereliction. It’s been disused since 1939 and yet, as you turn right again towards your destination, it’s hard to resist an instinct to flinch against the oncoming spectres of prewar racing cars, the thumping Bentleys, snarling Rileys and buzzing little Austins, that you sense might appear at any minute around the dramatically soaring curve. Dismiss such foolish…

new Ant & Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway SATURDAY 20 February, 7pm ITV Entertainment The boys are back for their live Saturday-night fun with the usual singing, dancing, celebrity guests and games. Hidden-camera pranks during the seven-part series involve the likes of Jamie and Harry Redknapp, Davina McCall and Sir Mo Farah, and there’s a new mini-drama, Double Trouble, in which Ant and Dec are cloned and come across celebs such as Prue Leith, Bear Grylls and Alison Hammond. Fleur East returns with a brand-new segment, as does Stephen Mulhern. FULL STORY P7 new The Wall Versus Celebrities SATURDAY 20 February, 6.40pm BBC1 Entertainment Danny Dyer is back hosting the popular BBC1 game show featuring those dropping balls! Celebrities will be trying their luck and skill again, so who’ll be winning or losing against the Wall this time? Angela…

McDonald & Dodds NEW Sunday, 8pm, ITV Drama Jason Watkins and Tala Gouveia head back to Bath for a third series of McDonald & Dodds. The pair play the bumbling yet brilliant DS Dodds and the ambitious DCI McDonald, and in their first case, they must solve the mysterious murder of a woman who was found still smiling on a deckchair in a busy park. Former Corrie star Catherine Tyldesley plays a single mum hiding a secret while Alan Davies is George Gillan, a linguistics professor who lives in a mansion with his cantankerous mother (Dame Siân Phillips). P13 Sherwood Monday & Tuesday, 9pm, BBC1 Drama The former mining town of Ashfield is still in shock following the murder of Gary Jackson, and DCS Ian St Clair and his partner DI Salisbury are convinced his killer, Scott…

It’s that time of year again, when we prepare ourselves for the epic stories of Christmas – and by that I don’t mean the Virgin Birth. I’m referring to the unforeseen events that can so easily hijack our best-laid plans. You know how it goes: you’ve posted the cards, ordered the food and wrapped the presents. You’re feeling rather smug (if exhausted), priding yourself on your amazing organisation, when – bah humbug! – something comes along to throw a spanner in the works. It can happen at any time and is hardly surprising given the pressure we pile on ourselves to get everything just right for the big day. My Christmas calamities often seem to involve trees. I’m not a fan of the ubiquitous, non-needle-dropping blue spruce. I understand the convenience…

For her For him For kids For teens For home For gardeners For foodies For hosts TAPER CANDLES, £26 for a set of 2, Originals Studio…

“Dark denim worn with bold gold jewellery is such a striking statement – and ideal for dressing across the seasons”DONNA WALLACE, FASHION & ACCESSORIES EDITOR“Crisp and clean, Ami’s skirt suit presents a modern rendition of ’90s minimalism”OLIVIA SINGER, FASHION NEWS DIRECTOR Short & SHARP Thanks to chic tailoring, thigh-skimming minis are no longer reserved for after dark Knit ONE When it comes to comfort, there’s nothing better – or cooler – than knitwear “How to wear fulllook knitwear? Proenza Schouler’s crochet halter dress”LAURA INGHAM, FASHION MARKET DIRECTOR“Whether you’re going grunge or elegant, the elongated sleeve adds a modern touch to your look”LAURA INGHAM, FASHION MARKET DIRECTOR All day LONG Take your comfort clothing from the sofa to the streets with the snuggly super-sleeve Fom Acne’s dreamlike duvet dressing to Raf Simons’s grunge-tinted enveloping knits, an array of designers…

new Ghosts MON 9 Aug, 8.30pm BBC1 Comedy All six eps will be on iPlayer after the first ep airs The doors of Button House creak open for a third series as Alison (Charlotte Ritchie) and Mike (Kiell Smith-Bynoe) return for more spooky fun with their resident phantoms. While the arrival of a documentary crew attracts the attention of neighbour Barclay and brings Headless Humphrey into the spotlight, Scoutmaster Pat is perplexed by the sense of humour – or lack of one! – displayed by stuffy Lady Button and the Captain… FULL STORY P11 Casualty SATURDAY 7 August, 9.30pm BBC1 Drama The second instalment of Casualty’s two-part wedding special reveals how Fenisha and her ex, Matthew, came to crash on to the train tracks in last week’s terrifying cliffhanger. This week, Lev and Matthew race against time…

As the festive season approaches, I am taking this opportunity to make a request. Please think twice about buying me a present. Before you cry, “Bah, humbug!” let me explain. I love receiving gifts; I just don’t want any more ‘stuff’. I have all the tealight holders, floral notebooks and knick-knackery a woman could ever need. I have no wall space left for pictures or shelf space on which to cram any more vases. And I certainly don’t want any more gardening books – I never get around to reading them. I’ve reached a stage in my life where I’m shedding belongings rather than acquiring more. So I’m asking, please, for gifts that don’t last. Food and drink are ideal, as are toiletries. I now understand why elderly aunts always asked…

Symmetrical gigabit broadband for £25 per month? We often warn you of deals that are too good to be true in PC Pro, but I have just signed up for such a deal with one of the 100+ full-fibre providers that are springing up all over Britain. From the Highlands of Scotland to the villages of Cornwall, Britain is in the midst of a full-fibre frenzy, with dozens of smaller providers – so-called altnets – running fibre to consumers’ doors. It’s a massive land grab and, with companies keen to please investors, they’re offering stupidly fast broadband at stupidly cheap prices to attract customers. But can it last? Will these cut-price fibre providers be able to compete with giants such as Openreach and Virgin Media over the long term? Or will the…

Central cryptoheating The negative consensus assessment of cryptocurrencies in last month’s issue (see issue 324, p26) isn’t strong enough in my opinion. They are nearly useless as currencies because they do not have sufficient transaction capacity and the value is too volatile. As assets, they are a pure Ponzi scheme. Unlike gold, the energy consumption used to limit the supply of cryptocoin is not recoverable. By contrast, the so-called “fiat currencies” are backed by the tax-raising powers of the governments that issue them. The farmer who uses biomethane to generate electricity for cryptomining isn’t being green. He is releasing just as much stored carbon into the atmosphere. Instead, he could sell the electricity to the grid, thereby substituting fossil carbon. On the other hand, it’s increasingly green to switch from gas heating to…

If there’s an underlying theme to this column, which may be doubted, then it’s the difference between the physical and the digital worlds. I can sum it up in an aphorism I’ve employed far too many times: “You can order a pizza online, but you can’t eat it online”. I’ve been living in this gap between worlds for 40 years now: my first toe in the digital water was via a Commodore PET in 1981 at the start of the personal computer revolution, though it wasn’t until the coming of WWW that we all got properly connected together. Of course, I was born into the physical world, and inhabited it with increasing curiosity throughout a childhood filled with Meccano (I built the travelling gantry!) and model aeroplanes with glow-plug engines (I…

Nicole Kobie is PC Pro’s Futures editor and she has deleted most of her tweets. It’s for the best. @njkobie Twelve years ago, Paul Chambers was frustrated by flight cancellations that threatened to keep him apart from his girlfriend. To vent, he posted the following message to Twitter: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!” No-one in their right mind would have read that tweet and thought Chambers was going to do any such thing, and indeed when the message was spotted by an airport manager a week later, the threat was deemed “not credible”. Despite that, the airport called the police, sparking a two-year long legal battle. Chambers was initially found guilty of sending…

There is much talk these days about managing our homes better, about making them more environmentally friendly. Double glazing, upgrading loft insulation and filling up cavity walls are all good things that can and should be done wherever possible. I have recently been looking at solar panels for our home, and at a Tesla Powerwall to act as a giant UPS for the house, in much the same way as Paul Ockenden (see p113). It would allow us to run the house electricity from a battery during periods of high demand, which will soon turn into high cost, and to recharge at low demand/low cost times. Solar panels, though, are old technology. Far more exciting, surely, is the arrival of evermore IoT devices to give us a whole slew of new…

Barry Collins is a former editor of PC Pro and a longstanding dweller on Ofcom’s naughty step. @bazzacollins Have you got fibre broadband? It turns out you might not have, even if the word “fibre” appears in the name of your tariff. Regulator Ofcom has finally cottoned on to the fact that most “fibre broadband” lines – the ones within reach of 96% of the UK population – aren’t really fibre at all. They’re fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) lines, and as pedants such as me have been pointing out for over a decade, the final leg of those connections runs over speed-sapping copper cable. Nevertheless, broadband providers have sold FTTC lines as fibre since the technology first emerged. And though we knew it wasn’t the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, even here…

new The Drowning MON TUE WED THU 1-4 February, 9pm Channel 5 Drama Jill Halfpenny plays Jodie, a woman who catches sight of a teenage boy, Daniel, and becomes convinced that he’s her missing son in this roller-coaster four-part thriller. It leads her on a dangerous and obsessive path that takes her to the edge. Jonas Armstrong plays Jodie’s brother Jason, Deborah Findlay is her mother Lynn, while Rupert Penry-Jones stars as Daniel’s father Mark. FULL STORY P13 Holby City TUESDAY 2 Feb, 7.50pm (Scotland, 8.20pm) BBC1 Drama With the hospital in lockdown due to a hostage situation, Cameron and Jeong find themselves trapped in an operating theatre trying to save a patient – despite being out of their depth! Cameron calls Nicky to talk him through the procedure. Later, back on the ward, Cameron tells Josh the…

Every repairer has a favourite fix. One which is a cut ’n’ dried, slam dunk, A-list repair guaranteed to bring joy to a customer while dropping a few quid into the till. My penchant is the thoroughly unexciting desktop PSU replacement. Dead machine arrives, new PSU in, 20 minutes of frenetic re-cabling with zip-ties and snips, and a fully working machine leaves the shop with the tantalising promise of a decent review on social media. Bosh! That’s the ideal. If the faulty PSU atomised every component with an unexpected delivery of 240V, then I’m in for an uncomfortable conversation akin to confessing about a tragedy involving the client’s cat and their new lawn scarifier. Technology is a fickle mistress who blows hot and cold. Mainly hot, though. Harvey was a keen amateur…

The Red Bull X-Alps has announced its line-up – with 17 rookies joining 18 veterans for the 2023 edition of the race. The line-up also includes five women, the most ever entered in one edition. Seven-time winner Chrigel Maurer (SUI1) will be under pressure. Hard on his heels will be Maxime Pinot (FRA1), racing for the third time, and Swiss teammate Patrick von Känel, as well as Simon Oberrauner (AUT1) and Aaron Durogati (ITA2). Plus, look out for “two new distinct generations,” says veteran race watcher and former X-Alps pilot Tom Payne. “There are those who cut their teeth in the last two races. Damien Lacaze (FRA2) was top rookie in 2021, and Yael Margelisch (SUI3) who not only took the highest ever female position but was also third rookie overall. They…

The news that Insteon, purveyors of IoT smart home products, has suddenly shut down will come as an unpleasant surprise to its erstwhile customers. The servers are gone, as are the website’s support pages. There is some hope that it will be possible to resuscitate the service to a minimal level, if only to allow customers to migrate data to a different service, but that remains a hope at this stage. Sadly, I’m not surprised it has come to this. Any product that relies on an intimate relationship with a cloud service to function is at continual risk of that service failing or disappearing altogether. But we might wonder how this situation has come about. There’s no intrinsic need for a cloud service to be involved with the core operation of an…

Windows 11 woes What a disappointment Windows 11 has turned out to be! On all new installations of Windows for as long as I can remember, one of my first actions is to drag the taskbar from the bottom to the left-hand side of the screen and change the settings to show “Small buttons” and “Never combine buttons”. I find this a much more productive arrangement because, especially on a wide screen, I appreciate the extra height. More importantly, the taskbar now shows individual buttons and names for each of the documents I’m working on. No need to hover over the taskbar button, wait for the pop-ups to appear and then try to work out which one I need to click on. On my HD screen in Windows 10 I can have 15…

Standard weightshift is used to give a nicely coordinated turn, especially when thermalling. If you are thermalling right then you use right-side brake and apply right weightshift, which means putting more load on the right side of the harness seat on the side where you are braking. If you are thermalling left, you apply left brake and weightshift left. A nice combination of weightshift and brake will help you to make a more efficient turn and improve your climb rate, especially in a tight core. This technique is used by all pilots and is a fundamental part of good flying. Opposite weightshift Sometimes pilots use another completely different technique in certain situations, which I call ‘opposite weightshift’. I have not heard of pilots discussing this often, but once I pointed it out I realised…

new The Masked Dancer SAT SUN HOL MON TUE THU FRI 29 May-1 June & 3-4 June, times vary ITV Entertainment The hotly anticipated spin-off of The Masked Singer finally arrives with 12 celebs performing unique dances while dressed up in yet more bonkers costumes. Look out for Flamingo, Beetroot, Frog, Rubber Chicken and Knickerbocker Glory among the disguises. Strictly’s Oti Mabuse joins the panel alongside Jonathan Ross, Davina McCall and Mo Gilligan, while Joel Dommett is back as host. FULL STORY P13 new Call the Midwife: Special Delivery SUN 30 May, 9pm BBC1 Entertainment Fans of TV’s emotional period drama will love this special marking a decade of life in Poplar. The cast share their memories of the past 10 series, from cases involving abortion and racism to the social changes of the 1950s and 1960s. Look…

1 We assume you’re head chef at home at Christmas? I always roast the turkey and make the gravy. My husband Paul and I might host the children and grandchildren here in Henley, Oxfordshire, or we might go to them. If it’s the latter, I roast the turkey in the morning, cooking it to perfection two to three hours ahead. Then I wrap it in foil and swaddle it all in clean towels or a coat and pop it in the boot before we set off. It works a treat. 2 How did you celebrate Christmas over lockdown? Annabel, our daughter, delivered lunch to the back door for Paul and me. We were totally happy. We had each other, we were safe and we counted our blessings. 3 It can’t always be that calm.…

@njkobie The nationwide working-from-home project has sparked some odd ideas: Zoom parties for socialising with colleagues, fake “commutes” to help separate work from home when both happen in the same place, and oodles of wellness gadgets and widgets that allow bosses to track how their workers are feeling. The latest one to raise eyebrows is the Moodbeam, a wearable silicone wristband that connects to an app on the employee’s phone. When they feel happy, they tap a yellow button on the wristband; when they aren’t happy, they tap the blue one. That data is tabulated up and spat out into a dashboard for managers to watch over their staff’s mental wellness from afar. This gadget raises a few questions. To start, why does it need to be a wristband when an app would…

The Larkins new SUNDAY 10 October, 8pm ITV Drama This new adaptation of The Darling Buds of May stars Bradley Walsh as Pop Larkin and Joanna Scanlan as his wife, Ma. Set in the 50s, the six-parter follows the couple and their six children living off their land, but battling authority and snobbish villagers. Other stars include Peter Davison as the local vicar, and Bridgerton’s Sabrina Bartlett as Mariette, who catches the eye of tax inspector Cedric ‘Charley’ Charlton (Tok Stephen). Will everything be ‘Perfick’? FULL STORY P15 Holby City TUESDAY 12 October, 7.50pm (Scot, 8.20pm) BBC1 Drama Holby boss Henrik Hanssen is thrown by the impromptu arrival of an old colleague, Russ, who asks him to mentor a young doctor with ‘limitations’. After some convincing, Hanssen reluctantly agrees – and gets a big surprise when the…

LIVE SHOWS BEGIN! Strictly Come Dancing Saturday, 6.45pm, BBC1 Entertainment Stepping out to perform with their pro partners for the first time, the celebrities will be waltzing, whirling and wiggling their behinds live in the studio as they hope to catch the judges’ eyes. There’s no elimination in this first week of competition and the scores will carry over to the following week. P12 NEW Taskmaster Thu, 9pm, C4 Entertainment Greg Davies is back at the helm for the 14th series, with show creator Alex Horne once again setting absurd challenges for a new bunch of comics – Dara Ó Briain, Munya Chawawa, Sarah Millican, Fern Brady and John Kearns – hoping to become Taskmaster champion. Hocus Pocus 2 NEW From Fri 30 September, Disney+ Comedy In this sequel to the 1993 Halloween comedy, Sarah Jessica Parker, Bette Midler and Kathy Najimy…

live! National Television Awards THURSDAY 9 September, 7.30pm ITV Awards Joel Dommett hosts the big TV celebration, live from London’s O2. Line of Duty stars Adrian Dunbar, Martin Compston and Vicky McClure go up against each other for Drama Performance, facing David Tennant for Des and Olly Alexander for It’s a Sin. In the New Drama category, Netflix’s Bridgerton and the BBC’s sleeper hit Normal People are hoping for success, while Unforgotten, Line of Duty, The Crown and Call the Midwife vie for Returning Drama. The soaps are doing battle once more in the Serial Drama field, while many will be looking to see if Ant and Dec can snag the TV Presenter gong for the 20th year in a row! FULL STORY P13 Casualty SATURDAY 4 September, 9.30pm BBC1 Drama Stevie’s secret revenge plans step up…

Sat10 Sun11 Mon12 Tue13 Wed14 Thu15 Fri16 I Can See Your Voice new SAT 10 April, 7.20pm BBC1 Entertainment Paddy McGuinness helms this bonkers music game show, which is the opposite of The Voice – contestants win by guessing who can and can’t sing from a group of lip-syncers. Jimmy Carr, Amanda Holden and Alison Hammond make up the celebrity panel helping to whittle down the singers until there’s only one left. Will the last person standing be tone deaf, or have the voice of an angel? FULL STORY P11 The Great British Sewing Bee new WED 14 April, 9pm BBC1 Entertainment Twelve stitchers are out to impress judges Esme Young and Patrick Grant with their super sewing skills as a new series gets under way. Host Joe Lycett will be keeping a watchful eye on the contestants…

WHEN COURTNEY AND MATT WINSLOW DECIDED to move back to their hometown, they really doubled down. Both were raised just outside Rochester, New York, and each stayed nearby for college, which is when they met and started dating. Soon after graduation, they headed west, trading cold, gray winters by Lake Ontario for sunny Santa Monica, California, where they had their first son, Cash, now 12, and spent the next decade. In 2009, a job opportunity for Matt brought the family back east, to Brooklyn’s Park Slope. But when their daughter, Mae, now 9, arrived a year later, the couple—much to their own surprise—felt the pull of the suburbs and their loved ones. Suddenly, they were Rochester-bound. “We knew right where we wanted to live, and looked for a newer build that…