Charles Valentin Alkan

I bet you haven't heard of this composer. Neither had I until this morning. But he is an eye-opener - or should I say ear-opener. He was a neighbour of Chopin and contemporary of Chopin and Liszt. Have a listen. His organ music should be interesting. He composed funeral music for a dead parrot 100 years before Monty Python! He sadly died pinned to the ground by a falling umbrella stand.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00k121z

Rory Bremner

I am a great fan of Rory Bremner because of the way he combines humour, impressions and political satire. You can see his blog here: http://en.wordpress.com/tag/rory-bremner/

I have just found this videoclip I have not seen before.

Mahler's Resurrection Symphony

Members of the Alveston Singers and Thornbury Choral Society are joining the Cardiff Philharmonic Chorus in a performance of Mahler's Symphony No 2 ("Resurrection") on 20 June. See Cardiff Philharmonic for details of the concert. This piece is 97th in this year's Classic FM Hall of Fame. It should be near the top - a truly inspirational work. Here is the fifth movement in which the choir will be singing, divided into 4 parts on YouTube. The choir starts to sing at 1 minute into the third part.

Lunar eclipse

The next lunar eclipse is on 21 February at about 3am! See wikipedia for more information.
Here is a YouTube film of the one on 3 March 2007 taken from Bristol!

Pancake Day is on Tuesday!

Something I found in a YouTube news item on the BBC website:

Look up other videos by Provster Productions - hilarious.
You might like to look up this website as well: http://www.welovepancakes.com/home/

Satmap Active 10 GPS

At last a dedicated GPS with OS mapping! See here.
Here are two reviews/discussions: here and here.
It is also reviewed by Trail Magazine here:


You can win one here at outdoorsmagic.com.
You can subscribe to YouTube channels Trail Magazine and Country Walking Magazine for more useful videos.