Who is ArtSiren?

My Bass Lenses 

Bass Playing Styles

So you play bass guitar. Well, are you a slapper? Or a tapper? Do you play with your fingers? Or do you pick with your pleccie? Whether it is slap bass, tapping, fingerstyle or plectrum playing, let me know your favorite bass style. This lens showc...

Alembic Bass Guitars

Alembic is a small bass and guitar making company specializing in high quality, handcrafted instruments. The whole process of making Alembics is done by hand - except for placement of the fret-slots, which needs precision. About 1500 instruments are...

Mark King (aka Thunderthumbs)

All about the drummer turned bass player, and singing frontman of Level 42. The king of slap bass, Mark King. Mark joined Mike Lindup, and Phil and Boon Gould in 1979, forming Level 42. Over the last 30 years, the band has seen many line up changes...

Jaydee Bass Guitars

Jaydee basses are custom hand-made basses by English luthier John Diggins (aka JD). They have a great sound and are responsible for the early Level 42 bass sound. George Anderson of Shakatak also plays Jaydee basses. Starting out by customising othe...

Top 20 Bass Guitars

Whether you are a bass player, or just a bass fan, what's your favorite? What's the BEST? Fender Precisions and Jazz Basses are classics, or what about Alembics, or Status basses. Here's my list of 20 bass guitars, who plays them and which models ep...

My 'SIREN' Lenses 

Sir John Harvey-Jones

Sir John Harvey-Jones was one of the UK's most well-respected industrialists. He had a no-nonsense approach to business which turned a floundering, debt-ridden ICI into a multi-million pound profit-maker in under five years.

Great Business Start-up Books

When you're starting up in business, sometimes you need a little help. I've compiled a list of some of my favorite business start-up books. Some are very practical and others are designed to make you think. For example, 'Is going self-employed right...

The Hidden Truths About Money

Take a look into the murky upside-down world of money and economics...or should that be Freakonomics? See the world in an entirely new light with answers about life from parenting to politics, and why the gap between rich and poor countries is so gre...

UK Investing

New investors can find themselves confronted with a bewildering choice of investing methods and investment vehicles. These range from index tracker funds and mutual funds, to individual company stocks and shares, to the riskier securitised derivative...

My Arts Lenses 

Writing For Competitions

Writing for competitions can be great fun, whether you are writing short stories, poetry or playwriting, and whether writing fiction or non-fiction. There are also cash prizes to be won in many competitions, of various sizes, but sometimes it's enoug...

My Recipe Lensography 

All my food-related lenses

Recipe Lensography

If you're looking for tasty and easy recipes, then look no further. All my recipe and food and cookery lenses are collected here, and over time it will grow into a delicious database. The recipes are designed to be easy to prepare, are full of flavo...

My 'Balanced Living' Lenses 

Holistic Wellness 1.01 Lifestyle

The lifestyles we lead can be as important to our long-term well-being as the more well-known factors such as diet, exercise or meditation. Of course, these other factors can be considered as ingredients of our overall lifestyles. But being happy, o...

Holistic Wellness 1.01 Diet

We cannot live without food, that's for sure. Deciding what types of food we eat, and how much we should eat distinguishes a healthy and balanced diet from one leading to all sorts of health problems. Western and Oriental thinking on the issue of foo...

Holistic Wellness 1.01 Meditation

The hectic pace of life in the 21st century can easily leave us burnt out and stressed. It is vitally important that we take time out to relax and calm our minds in order to prevent ourselves from becoming overwhelmed. Meditation is a wonderful way o...

Holistic Wellness 1.01 Exercise

Regular exercise should form part of our day-to-day routine, and is possibly the single most positive step we can make to ensure good health in the years to come. Just two or three periods per week, each lasting 20 minutes can make a phenomenal diffe...

Holistic Wellness 1.01 Sleep

Over recent years, we have been bombarded with information saying how important it is to drink enough water, and to take enough exercise, and to eat the right foods. Very often overlooked is the vital role of sleep for our health and well-being. Bedt...

My Martial & Healing Arts Lenses 

The Seven Deadly Emotions

Traditional Chinese medicine has acknowledged the role of emotions in health and well-being for over 2000 years. Increasingly, scientific studies are backing up the ideas that negative emotions can cause serious health issues. Certain parallels can...

Standing meditation for health

The qigong exercise zhan zhuang is practised by people all over the world for both health and for martial arts. Translated as Standing like a tree, the exercises appear simple to the casual observer, but are challenging in a gentle way that means eve...

Soft martial arts

The three main internal kung fu (neijia) styles are taijiquan (tai chi chuan), baguazhang (pa kua chang) and xingyiquan (hsing-i chuan). Practising these arts has a profoundly beneficial effect on health, as well as building self-confidence and self-...

My Growing Things Lenses 

How To Grow Your Own Chillies

Learn all about chilies, why they can be fiendishly hot and how easy it is to grow them for yourself. I've been growing various varieties for the last three years, and it's a fun hobby - one where you get to eat the results later on! I've mainly gro...

My Laughter Lenses 

Laughter - the Best Medicine

If you must find a habit to get hooked on, make sure it's to have at least one good laugh everyday. There is a growing body of evidence that says laughing is beneficial to our health - and it's free. So go on: have a laugh! There are so many opport...

Talking Cats Video Showcase

Isn't it just the greatest when your cat says its first words? How cute! But then it launches into a whinging, whining diatribe about Long John Silver - or was it Long Johnson - and you just wonder 'Where on earth did THAT come from, Kitty?' Lens im...

Harry Hill

Harry Hill is a British comedian, who started out as a stand-up comic and comedy writer, and has become a successful British television star, with his award-winning series Harry Hill's TV Burp. He also currently does the amusing voice overs on You've...

My 'Oops! What have I started?' Lenses 

Game over, man! Life was best for our parents' generation.

Game over, man! Life was best for our parents' generation. A few years ago, a friend of mine shocked me by saying that our parents' generation had it best. He said quality of life was better, society was better. There was a sense of community where p...

When I grow up, I wannabe...

We were all young once, little caterpillars wriggling our way through early life, with vivid dreams and high hopes for our beautiful futures when we emerged from our cocoons of education. But after the passage of time, did we transform ourselves int...

If you want success, ditch education!

If you want success, ditch education! We were ALL told when we were kids that education is important. 'If you don't pass your exams, you won't amount to anything.' 'How are you going to get a job if you don't get any qualifications?' Now I agree tha...

My Charity Lenses 

Saving Wild Tigers

Despite huge efforts in recent decades, wild tigers remain critically endangered. There are more tigers privately held in zoos, and by individuals, in the USA than there are left in their natural habitats. The pressures on these majestic animals, th...

Level 42 Virtual Concert

The original Level 42 line-up consisted of Mark King (bass, drums and lead vocals), Boon Gould (guitar), Phil Gould (drums), all from the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England; and Londoner Mike Lindup (keyboards and vocals). It could be argue...