Author: Toby Shapshak

I hated the original Sonos Roam so much that I gave it away. That the recipient loved it didn’t make me feel better about myself. I might be willing to admit that my hatred was partly caused when I tried to pair it with someone else’s phone while on an overseas holiday. Who knew it would sever all connections and then fell afoul of Sonos’s insistence that you connect its Bluetooth speaker to your home Sonos network first? The rest of the two-week trip happened without music, sadly. I was therefore a little reluctant to try the Sonos Roam 2…

I lost count of how many times the two lead actors of The Wire use the word “fuck” in one of the greatest scenes in television history. For nearly four minutes, Detectives Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) and Bunk (Wendell Pierce) walk around a murder scene, reconstructing what happened when a gunman shot a woman through a kitchen window. It’s really good television and a prime reason why The Wire is rated by most critics as the best TV show of all time. If you haven’t watched it yet, you are in for a great treat. Set across five seasons of…

With Jodie Foster in the main role as the police chief investigating a strange murder, you can expect a strong performance and a captivating TV show. Given the high standards set by Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson in the first season, it’s no ordinary challenge. Foster pulls it off, obviously, imbuing her surly character with the requisite surliness and smarts to solve a puzzling murder – while battling the small-town politics in Alaska and her own difficult teenage step-daughter.  Each season of the True Detective series is a self-contained crime that is presented, and later, solved. Collectively it is a…

I have stuck to the original hard-plastic AirPods from Apple for a variety of reasons. The shape worked for my ears, and I liked how they worked with Apple products. I have been a dutiful—and happy—user of Apple’s AirPods since generation one and was thrilled when the new AirPods 4 had an upgrade to active noise-cancellation (ANC). I also liked them – this will sound foolish, I know – but they are more compact than the AirPods Pro range. I fall asleep listening to Audible, so I prefer the smallest earbuds. I used Sony’s excellent (and flat) Linkbuds for years…

While researching their blockbuster movie Saving Private Ryan director Steven Spielberg and star Tom Hanks kept coming across references to Easy Company, the legendary US paratroopers who featured in every major battle of World War II. It led to one of the greatest war series about one of the greatest units in the history of war. In the pantheon of good war films, there is a special place for this 10-part miniseries about the remarkable exploits of the parachute battalion of American airborne infantry who took part in all the major battles of the Second World War, from Normandy to…

I watched Chernobyl twice when it came out and a third time to write this review. I lived through the Cold War and years of the threat of mutually assured destruction (MAD). Nuclear weapons were the world-ending threat I grew up fearing. And then a nuclear power station had a meltdown. I lived through Chernobyl, watching the news broadcasts on SABC with my family. I was 15. As much as the Cold War threatened a Soviet nuclear attack, such an invasion never came to pass. But ultimately, Russian nuclear weapons crept across the border into Europe, through the Chernobyl accident.…

“Have you bought an eSIM?” I asked an older friend who was taking a cruise with her husband. “Not yet,” she replied. So I bought them both eSIMs and sent the QR codes to her phone. Let’s call her Heidi. Then I stopped and thought, they’re both at the airport, how will they scan the codes? So, I sent my friend’s eSIMs to her husband’s phone so she could just scan them off his (and vice versa). When you buy yourself an eSIM, it’s easy to scan, especially if you buy it on your computer. But how do you scan…

You forget just how desperate the state of Springbok rugby was a mere 18 months before the 2019 World Cup in Japan. It would end so dramatically and with such triumph, sure, but it began at rock bottom. Losing 57-nil to the All Blacks in 2017 was the nadir of Alistair Coetsee’s ill-fated reign as Springbok coach. In came Rassie Erasmus and his partner-in-genius, Jacques Nienabr. They would go on to revolutionise South African rugby, turn around the fortunes of a top-tier but depressed team, scandalise world rugby with the innovative bomb squad of replacement forwards, and win a World…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KNakJa4iEE Dell’s path to sustainability Computer industry veteran Doug Woolley says sustainability is now a key focus. Woolley, the vice president of sales for Southern Africa and a director of Dell South Africa, tells Stuff editor-in-chief Toby Shapshak how Dell has made significant strides in sustainability.

If you wanted to identify the stage in the golden age of television that we are living through right now, I think we’re in the prequel phase. Or, what happened before what happened. The star of the prequel phase is House of the Dragon, the prequel to arguably the greatest fantasy TV series ever, Game of Thrones. Who was the first dragon queen? Why are there ongoing feuds amongst the great houses of Westeros? What happened before Hodar, before “Winter Is Coming”? (For what it’s worth GoT scored 9.2 out of 10 on IMDB, to its prequel’s 8.3. IMDB may…