Busy, busy, busy…I’ve got lots of work to get through this week (which is a good thing).
I recently purchased a Sony MiniDisc player courtesy of Amazon for a really good price. We needed a recorder for journalistic purposes as our old MD recorder departed a long time ago and our USB MP3 Player/Recorder can be a bit temperamental when recording with an external microphone – not good for telephone interviews. So I purchased this NetMD player for £40. Now you can export MP3 files on to MiniDisc with the supplied software and I even put my own music on the player as an audio test. I was immediately struck by how superior the sound playback was. In fact, I was so enamoured by the Sony MD player, I have purchased another one. This one uses the HiMD format meaning you can store up to 1Gb of data on a disc – plus you can use it as a USB storage device. My old USB MP3 player is going up on eBay. It was fun while it lasted but my ears are telling me it has to go.
In the post: Horizons (DVD) – Steve Hackett. Managed to purchase this from eBay for £4. This a show filmed at the Birmingham Studios in 1991 (or thereabouts). I have the original TV broadcast somewhere in the Darren Lock video archive. Nice to have it on DVD, anyway.
Now a confession. I am a chronic nailbiter. There…I’ve got it out of the way. I haven’t always bitten my fingernails, but over the past couple of years this habit has got worse. I do it when I am stressed – I often do it and I am completely unaware. The habit got so bad that my fingertips were getting sore. This is no good if you use a keyboard or play the guitar. The Missus, with foresight and some great logic, bought me some nail hardener at the weekend and I have been using this to deter my nail biting. The stuff makes my nails all shiny (no sniggering at the back – I am 100% all-man…grrrrrr) but when I put my hands to my mouth, I can smell the chemical smell of the nail hardener and it gives me that psychological jolt to take my hands away from my mouth. Clever, eh? So for the first time in half a decade, I am actually growing some fingernails. Next week, I might even put on some black fingernail polish! [JOKE]
Category: Diary
I’ve seen some crap on eBay, but this has to take the prize.
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=2913&item=7150895746&rd=1
I have always been a big fan of the comedy series “The League of Gentlemen” ever since it broke through onto our screens back in the heady days of 1999. There’s a new movie coming out called “The League of Gentlemen’s Apocalypse” and it concerns the characters of Royston Vasey managing to breakthrough into the “real world”. I remain optimistic, but it is difficult for TV shows to make the big screen leap. Anyway, here’s the brand spanking new trailer:
Stupid internet. So you press all the buttons and you expect domain names to be renewed and updated, but your web provider doesn’t actually tell you that your credit card details are your OLD credit card details. They don’t warn you that your credit card has expired and so you wake up to find that your website is no longer there. Well it is, it’s just no-one can see it because the domains have not been automatically renewed. This is supposed to be an automatic service, but without a credit card warning system in place it is useless. 🙁
In the post: The Ultimate Matrix DVD box-set via Amazon at £27. Nice spangly packaging. OK – so some of the films are rubbish but there’s enough extra stuff here to keep a sci-fi fan occupied for months. I absolutely love DVD boxsets.
Courtesy of The Missus: the new ELP 2-DVD set. Should be interesting.
Talking of Tortoise, I found this rather snazzy video to one of their tunes from their website:
Well that’s my tax return filed and sent off via the good old Internet. I feel exhausted now. Time for a lie down… 🙂
In the post: tickets to the Tortoise gig at the RFH.
Today, getting in tune with my accounts. A letter from Mr Taxman reminds me that he wants to know what I am up to, so I begin the yearly slog of figuring out all the numbers. I do it all myself and use the online self-assessment doo-hickey. It’s all rather clever. My problem is that I am a number dyslexic, so I have to double, triple, quadruple, quintuple, sextuple, septuble, quadruple check… 🙂
Luckily, being a freelance writer and not having any outgoings or materials or staff means that I have a relatively easy time of submitting my tax return. I just tell them how much I’ve earnt and how much I want deducted as spendables (this doesn’t come to much: envelopes, sundries, etc)
Loaf of the Day:
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It’s a standard white loaf…slightly blurred because my hands were shaking in delight at the wonder of this vision of bread-based loveliness.
My current commission is all about Internet privacy and just how easy it is to find people on the Internet. As part of my research, I managed to find the address of my father (though he might have already moved on). So I got to thinking that if he is so easy to find, then I must be doubly, triply, quadriply easy to find. So I got to thinking that if my half-sister knows where I am, maybe she doesn’t get in touch because she doesn’t want to? Or maybe I am just thinking aloud too much, eh? Basically, in this day and age, if you have an internet connection, you are pretty easy to find…it’s just whether or not anyone wants to find you…
For example, my house looks like this from the air:
