Alex James – författare

I was the Fool-king of Soho and the number-one slag in the Groucho Club, the second drunkest member of the world's drunkest band. This was no disaster, though. It was a dream coming true.'For Alex James, music had always been a door to a more eventful life. But as bass player of Blur - one of the most successful British bands of all time - his journey was more exciting and extreme than he could ever have predicted. In Bit of a Blur he chronicles his journey from a slug-infested flat in Camberwell to a world of screaming fans and private jets - and his eventual search to find meaning and happiness (and, perhaps most importantly, the perfect cheese), in an increasingly surreal world.

This is the story of Alex James’s transition from a leading light of the Britpop movement in the 1990s, to gentleman farmer, artisan cheese-maker and father of five.‘I was hanging around the pigsty in the way I’d previously hung around at The Groucho Club. I felt wonderfully connected, grounded in the real world, standing in pig muck’Following fifteen years in Blur, Alex James did two wild, unexpected things. He fell in love and he bought a farm.Moving into a rambling, chaotic farmstead in the beautiful Cotswold countryside, he decides the best way to learn about farming is the same way he learned most about music: by jumping in and doing it. As his family settles in, he discovers the unexpected joys that country life abounds in: finding the first egg from your very own chicken, coming across a bramble bush laden with blackberries, roasting home-grown pears on an open fire, before stumbling on a new venture – making cheese.Wonderfully warm, witty and perfectly observed, this is the story of what to do after you’ve been the bass player in one of the best bands in the world, and a life-affirming tale of just how much fun growing up and settling down can be.‘A joy to read. Prose flows and weaves and curls itself into pleasing rhythms…He can write like a god.’ SPECTATOR

A raucous, behind-the-scenes account of the year Blur got back togetherThere is nothing that can touch the sound made by a close-knit group of people who have been playing together for years and years and years, playing as though their lives depended on it. For many years, all our lives did, and actually, I’d suddenly realised, they did still.One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run.This is the story of what happened next. Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex describes how the band made a surprise – and emotional – return, recording an acclaimed album and playing sold-out shows around the world, from Colchester to Colombia and beyond. Plus: how he went on a crash diet to fit back into his ‘Britpop Trousers,’ somehow organised an entire festival of his own, and tried to perfect the recipe for a giant Frazzle. Over the Rainbow is a heartfelt and hilarious account of what it feels like to be catapulted back into the limelight with one of the world’s biggest bands. It is a love letter to Blur, to friendship and to music. And it shows us all that, however old – or hungover – we might feel, nothing’s ever truly over: it’s always just the start of the next thing.

‘Joyfully chaotic … a memoir of Blur’s comeback year’ Guardian‘Warm and funny … a gorgeous book’ The TimesA raucous, behind-the-scenes account of the year Blur got back together'There is nothing that can touch the sound made by a close-knit group of people who have been playing together for years and years and years, playing as though their lives depended on it. For many years, all our lives did, and actually, I’d suddenly realised, they did still.'One winter’s night, Alex James received an unexpected call. Blur had been invited to play their biggest gig ever: Wembley Stadium. The only trouble was, he and his bandmates hadn’t spoken to – or even shouted at – each other for years. And he now had five children, an out-of-control menagerie of cats, and a sprawling farm to run.This is the story of what happened next. Taking us behind the scenes of a raucous, rollercoaster year, Alex describes how the band made a surprise – and emotional – return, recording an acclaimed album and playing sold-out shows around the world, from Colchester to Colombia and beyond. Plus: how he went on a crash diet to fit back into his ‘Britpop Trousers,’ somehow organised an entire festival of his own, and tried to perfect the recipe for a giant Frazzle. Over the Rainbow is a heartfelt and hilarious account of what it feels like to be catapulted back into the limelight with one of the world’s biggest bands. It is a love letter to Blur, to friendship and to music. And it shows us all that, however old – or hungover – we might feel, nothing’s ever truly over: it’s always just the start of the next thing.

This book is a straightforward guide for researchers, engineers, and technology enthusiasts interested in memristors. It covers the fundamentals of memristors, including what they are and how they work, and explores different materials used in them, like binary oxides, perovskites, and new materials like transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs). It also explains how memristors are made using methods like physical vapor deposition (PVD) and electrochemical deposition.The book also shows the different types of memristor devices such as non-volatile, spintronic, ferroelectric, polymeric, and molecular memory devices. The book discusses important things like how well memristors work over time, how consistent they are, and how fast they can switch on and off. It also talks about where memristor technology is headed in the future, beyond what's possible with current computer chips.