This list is in no ways definitive and certainly reflects my musical tastes rather then any sense of being canon.
They also don’t necessarily represent records I’d like to add to my collection. Just tunes that deserve a listen now and then and perhaps a little more recognition.
Reparata and The Delrons – I’m Nobody’s Baby Now
The Blossoms ~ Lover Boy
The Marvelettes – The Day You Take One (You Have To Take The Other)
The Cookies – Chains
The Exciters – Blowing Up My Mind (proper old school northern soul)
As the World Championships get into full swing Tony Martin, the German time trial specialist, has announced his retirement from racing.
He is the second big name, big character rider to announce their retirement in recent weeks. “Crosswinds” Dan (Martin) announced his retirement on the eve of the Tour of Britain.
Typically it would be easy to describe the pair as stalwarts of the peloton. But they were far more then that.
Tony is completing his racing carer at Jumbo Visma were he changed his role from time trial specialist to that of reliable, level headed domestique. He was also something of an elder of the peloton.
In comments to the press over the weekend he flagged his disappointment that rider safety had not substantially moved on over the last decade.
Tony Martin has yet to indicate whether he intends to remain within the world of cycling.
Like Tony Martin, Crosswinds Dan has been one of those riders who has achieved plenty on the road. Throughout his career it has been a privilege go and go again. His stage six win on the Muur de Bretagne of the 2018 Tour De France is one of my all time favourites (not least because I had sloped off to watch the stage on TV).
Dan has continued to ride in a lead role for Israel Start up Nation. He is one of the great characters of the peloton, renowned in part for his “moaning” though given his success it seems this pessimistic blanket covers a heart that beats with optimism.
The Chiffons were formed by three Bronx/ New York teenagers in 1960. Originally consisting of Judy Craig, Patricia Bennett and Barbara Lee they were joined by Sylvia Peterson in 1963.
They are best remembered for their number #1 hit Sweet Talking Guy.
One Fine Day
Artist: The Chiffons
Vinyl 45
“One Fine Day” is one of those songs that bounces you into feeling good. The Chiffons have just the right amount of youthful joy to make this work. While Kings piano keeps the song moving forward.
The story is that King and Goffin wrote the song for Little Eva and you can hear the connection with “Locomotion”. However, they struggled to get the arrangement to work and so handed the song on to the The Tokens who then created this arrangement for the Chiffons.
As an arrangement it regularly features as one of the greatest pop songs of all time. It is one of my favourite girl group hits.
Performers:
The Chiffons, Judy Craig, Patricia Bennett and Barbara Lee
It seems safe to say that The Shirelles are best known for their version of the Carol King /Gerry Goffin song “Will you still love me tomorrow”.
As a single “Are You Still My Baby” holds true to their (almost) naive sounding voice, perfect harmonies and all set off against what are sometimes highly charged lyrics.
This track is a rarity (in that it barely seems to register on their catalogue). It has a familiar doo-wop feel and lush string accompaniment. It is also feels as though it sits across genres. A little bit doo-wop, a little bit soul and dare I say a hint of country? It’s in my collection as a “girl vocal rarities”, overlooked and undervalued at the time it is a hidden gem apparently composed by Charlie Rich while he was at Sun.
It seems safe to say that The Shirelles are best known for their version of the Carol King /Gerry Goffin song “Will you still love me tomorrow”.
As a single “Are You Still My Baby” holds true to their (almost) naive sounding voice, perfect harmonies and all set off against what are sometimes highly charged lyrics.
This track is a rarity (in that it barely seems to register on their catalogue). It has a familiar doo-wop feel and lush string accompaniment. It is also feels as though it sits across genres. A little bit doo-wop, a little bit soul and dare I say a hint of country? It’s in my collection as a “girl vocal rarities”, overlooked and undervalued at the time it is a hidden gem apparently composed by Charlie Rich while he was at Sun.
Phil Spector was certainly a despicable man whoes musical legacy can mask his cruelty to Ronnie and the fact that he was a murderer. Ultimately the music he produced is not his but the musicians and they deserve the recognition for what is some of histories greatest music.
Footnote 2
Look up the Wrecking Crew’s Carol Kaye she is one of the eras most incredible of characters. A guitarist, not a singer when the majority of women performing were singers.
Footnote 3
Only Ronnie sang on the record, Estelle Bennet and Nedra Talley don’t feature.
Be My Baby
Artist: The Chiffons
Vinyl 45
The opening to this song is timeless while the song itself is one of the greatest 3 minutes of pop ever. And it is the guilty pleasure that tells us that guilty pleasures are simply pleasures. Be My Baby is the first 45 I bought. It feels like a privilege to own such a part of musical history.
The first time I heard this was sitting around a fire on a beach. At the time I was listening to Brit pop, drum and bass, Led Zeppelin and I lacked the confidence to ask what the song was. Later a friend played it again and declared it “our song”. I wasn’t sure, it wasn’t really me. Nearly 20 years later I took my partner to see Ronnie Ronnette. It is a song that I listen to regularly. Sometimes just to let it wash over me, sometimes to hear the production and nuances of Ronnie’s incredible vocals and the Wrecking Crews amazing musicality.
The insistent, off canter beat at the heart of Be My Baby holds the listener, driving the song on. It’s the musical equivalent of a cliff hanger. The opening beats come deep from within, reverberating and echoing out. Perfectly mirroring Ronnie Ronettes yearning vocals.
The wall of sound instrumentation is so complete it engulfs and lifts you up. Through out Ronnie is in complete control, ramping the emotions up.
There is a recording of a performance given by the Ronettes. With perfect co-ordination and immaculate tailoring they look all powerful, completely in control. Towards the end Ronnie gives it the raw emotion that Spector never allowed; her “oh, oh, ohs” becoming a primal call. (The story is that after the show Spector was unhappy, physically attacking Ronnie.)
The Dixie Cups were one of the original girl groups. Perhaps only remembered for their hits Chapel of Love and Iko Iko, this song is a reminder that it is always worth looking further at an artists catalogue.
You Should Have Seen the Way He Looked at Me is my favourite. It encompasses the joyful, uplifting feeling that perhaps shows the roots of soul and its singers in church and gospel music.
Artist: Dixie Cups
Performers: Joan Marie Johnson, Barbara Ann Hawkins, Rosa Lee Hawkins,
Can Garmin be trusted with your (very) personal data? Probably not! The cycling press has covered this hack fairly extensively. But it doesn’t feel like the seriousness of the databreach has been appreciated. One commentator described the data as being “ride data… that is anonymised”. (They did go on to acknowledge that the acquisition of lots of data meant more data points and so greater exposure but they still suggested the risk to individuals was low.)
The reality is that this was a very serious breach and given the lack of evidence to the contrary we must assume that all of the highly personalised data held by Garmin has been affected.
In answer to a FAQ asking “Was my data impacted as a result of the outage?” on their website, Garmin state that:
We have no indication that any customer data, including payment information from Garmin Pay, was accessed, lost or stolen.
https://www.garmin.com/en-GB/outage/
And given the nature of the attack and the vast amount of data concerned this is plausible. However, the data is still sensitive, personal data. It is this particular question I want to address.
What is the personalised data that Garmin collects?
Location:
GPS location points/ mapping
these can easily be collated to give an exact fix on an individual property.
these can be used to show personal routines (visits to the gym, shopping, and affairs).
work and home locations.
ride and running/ walking routes. (including start and end points). These points alone are not anonymised in any meaningful way. This has been repeatedly demonstrated. And expose highly personalised behaviours.
Health
Power output – strengthen and condition (health) Cadence – condition, speed (general pshysical wellbeing, health)
Additionally with the Watch: Heartrate, Training stress level indicators, Steps, Sleep pattern,
Gym sessions – weights and related metrics.
Fluid intake – I use this feature to measure track my fluid intake periodically. Again this is an indicator of health but also how someone cares for themselves.
Whether these metrics are as accurate as the maker would like us to believe is irrelevant as they give a perceived indication of underlying health and collectively expose sensitive personal information.
Financial health
Kit record: The watch, app and bike GPS all record kit. Taken together and like it or not this information is a good indicator of your income bracket!
Your activity type (ski, fish, run, walk, hime, mountain bike, road bike etc etc) – Revealing your interests and income bracket.
Conclusion
This is a non exhaustive list of data collected by Garmin in the outdoor and fitness field alone.
The health data points are many and when combined are sufficient to tell someones general physical well being. The location data is enough to expose either their home address or at least the postcode (income bracket), exposes work address and potentially whether they are self employed or employed, shopping habits, extra-marital habits. The kit data exposes spending patterns and income. While the data collected by the watch and app altogether can show a picture of health. The collective data will also reveal likes and dislikes and information about your holiday habits!
The data collected by Garmin exposes far more about ourselves then I think most of us would be comfortable with. And even just a few of these data points put together can identify individuals.
Ubuntu’s snap is intended to aid the user experience. It doesn’t always do so.
If you have ever tried to open a file from the web in Ubuntu and had the error message “file not found”/ “file does not exist”/ or “permission denied” the culprit could well be SNAP.
With the release of Ubuntu 20.04 Canonical has made some major changes from it’s last significant offering of 18.04 (19.04 wasn’t really worth much). All in it’s a release that has some worthwhile features but also a few annoyances. I’m going to outline one of those annoyances.
The annoyance
When you install Libre Office from the Ubuntu Software centre it will install in snap.
Issues can then arise when attempting to open documents or attachments that are not saved locally (Ie that would typically be temporarily stored).
For Example, you receive an email with a word doc attached and think “I’ll click to open without saving”. You click and watch as Libre Office seems to do it’s thing only to be presented with an error message telling you that the doc you tried to open doesn’t exist.
This is clearly quite frustrating.
So what’s happening? Well it seems that SNAP doesn’t allow temporary access to files opened online. Fair enough, but it’s very annoying and the implications are not obviously documented. There are a few solutions floating about online. All basically tell you to do the same thing, namely change the location of your tmp dir.
Personally I think this is wrong and side steps rather then solves the issue. My solution (though perhaps equally imperfect as it sidesteps some of the protections SNAP is intended to offer) is:
