Mike Riversdale

A long long time ago I was staying in  Monmouth , no not last year, I mean a long long time ago, and at the now moved Chippy playground was a little bit of graffiti (well, just graffito really). I took a photo of the word "Smile" and it's been the cover image for my "Street Art" photo album ever since. Imagine my delight dear reader (well, just reado really ;) when I spotted this last year in the Monmouth underground pass. I like to imagine that this was created by the offspring of the original 🤔😁

"The best thing since sliced bread." - but when was 'sliced bread'? On Saturday July 7th, 1928 , the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri , made history by selling the first pre-sliced bread using a machine created by Otto Frederick Rohwedder . So, everything since July 7th, 1928 is "since sliced bread".  Many sources say the first record of the idiom is thought to be in 1952, when the famous comedian Red Skelton said in an interview with the Salisbury Times: “Don’t worry about television. It’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.” However, one source found it used in The Northern Whig (Belfast, Ireland) of Thursday 8th March 1951, which quoted the American journalist Dorothy Kilgallen (1913-65) writing in the New York Journal-American about British film actor Stewart Granger. In the article, Kilgallen’s sister is quoted as saying: “He is the greatest thing since sliced bread!”  [source:  Origin of the Phrase ‘The Best Thing Since Sliced Bre

A Christmas decoration on Monnow Street in the country town of Monmouth in Wales.

I've gone all in and you can subscribe to a podcast of my NotebookLM created audio summaries of specific large blog posts, currently 4 episodes. You can use whatever podcast app you want, from the popular Spotify, Apple, Amazon, and Pocket casts, but the choice is you.

I first saw an animated GIF of the above a few years ago and was charmed by it, as was creator of the following video, John Liebler , that inspired it.   I make my living creating art and animation of the beautiful and often surreal world that exists within our living (and sometimes dying) cells. Although I've been doing it since the late ’90s, It was in 2006 that The Inner Life of the Cell brought my work to the widest audience on Earth: Youtube. Originally planned as a classroom tool, Inner Life takes the viewer through many of the inner workings of a leukocyte (or white blood cell) showing many of the cellular structures and organelles along the way. I spent about a year and a half creating about eight and a half minutes of animation under the guidance of Dr. Robert Lue and Dr. Alain Viel. As the footage was rendered, we started to get a feeling that this was something special. When it was finished, I thought that the visuals could stand on their own to show the wonder of the c

Yes. Mike's Audio Summaries , is a YouTube podcast experiment. I've published three at time of writing this and they have caused much amusement, confusion, and conversation. So how does each episode get produced, here's the complete run down of how I do it. 1: Write a blog post It all starts with me having an idea of blog post that will be lengthy, something that will take me a while to write as it is fact heavy, has many sections, and needs me to actually do some research.  The posts I use for the AI audio summaries are definitely not based in my usual posts, they just don't have enough in them. 2: Use NotebookLM Once I've written my post and it is published I then go to Google's NotebookLM: https://notebooklm.google/ NotebookLM (Google NotebookLM) is a research and note-taking online tool developed by Google Labs that uses artificial intelligence (AI), specifically Google Gemini, to assist users in interacting with their documents. It can generate summaries, e

And it's a real pint as well. I only now notice it says, "Try before you buy", I don't know why as I got a full pint for that price in Monmouth's Kings Head (a Wetherspoons).  At those prices no wonder Britain is constantly drunk 😂

A drunken and wrong argument from me with a patient and honest mate left me thinking, "How long could Aotearoa New Zealand actually last if the boats, planes, and Internet couldn't arrive?" Let's imagine Aotearoa New Zealand suddenly and unexpectedly cut off from the rest of the world, you can choose your disaster of choice, limited nuclear war ( global and we're all fucked anyway ), a massive weather something, zombie outbreak overseas, or Winston Peters drops his trousers and does a dump on the main UN Assemble table  and no-one wants to play with us anymore. The reason isn't important but what is, suddenly and for the foreseeable future, is that we are no longer connected - the event has happened! Note: I don't have access to any insider information that say the Government hopefully has, so this is all gonna be a bit 'finger in the sky' using stuff I find on the Web and it'll be an exercise in averages, "sort of"s and even my own

You've seen the top looking down, well here is from the bottom looking up.

New / bigly updates to photos albums: Romesh Ranganathan (2024) St James Theatre, Wellington Bulls, New Zealand Oh, my 2022 trip across the top of Australia hasn't been shared in albums, doh! Darwin Litchfield National Park Jabiru Anbangbang, Cooinda Lodge Kakadu, and Edith Falls Katherine Kununurra, and Lake Argyle Halls Creek, old cemetery, and Palm Springs Derby Broome

Oh how I would love RNZ here in Aotearoa New Zealand, or BBC Radio in the UK to start such a glorious item as the Swedish Summer & Winter in P1 (site is in Swedish let your browser translate it for you). ‘The last campfire in Swedish society’: Sommar i P1, the radio show that unifies a nation  brought my attention to it: [Such candour] has become expected from those who are chosen as Sommarpratare (summer speakers) on Sommar i P1, an annual Swedish radio institution in which guests are given 90 minutes to talk about a subject of their choice and play music. To be selected is considered such an honour that it’s been described as the Swedish equivalent to a knighthood. It's been an annual event since 1959 and begins each year on Midsummer’s Day and runs daily until the middle of August, featuring 58 different guests, ranging from politicians to artists and actors, chefs, sports stars, scientists and teachers. Sounds so interesting, if a scientist isn't your thing don't w

It's been on that roundabout since forever but I have no idea what it is, why it's there, or even how old it actually is. Let the Googling begin ... Tapping the map 'inside' the photograph takes me to Google Maps where it's called, The Cross, Monmouth . On there it has a link to a British Listed Buildings website that calls it Overmonnow Cross , now we're getting somewhere. Maybe, apart from telling me where it is all the site really tells me is that it's a Grade II listed Building, classified as "Religious, Ritual and Funerary", and that the details come from Cadw ("Cadw is a Welsh word meaning ‘to keep’ or ‘to protect’. .. working for an accessible and well-protected historic environment for Wales.") . Ok, let's head over to Cadw before doing some more Googling if needed. Voila! History   Partly medieval cross, probably C15, which was rebuilt in 1888 incorporating the socket stone and possibly the base of the shaft. The cross was d