Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Bleh! Mobile Phones.I picked up a new one today, just coz the battery life on my old one is now so low as to be next to useless.
So this new one has a battery life of around 400 hours (nice). Thing is, even though this is one of the most basic phones out there (Sendo S360), the manual reads like War And Peace... just menu after menu after menu. No doubt I won't use a fraction of these functions, but I do feel I should know how to use all the features, just so I know how to fix it if I mess it all up.
It''s still charging at the mo (12 hours for the first charge) so I haven't had the chance to tinker with it yet. Should be interesting.
Steve 5:53 PM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, November 28, 2004
It's not often friends stun me into speachlessnes, but it can be really funny when it happens. Pity I can't actually tell you about it... lol.Steve 8:51 AM [+] (0) comments
Thursday, November 25, 2004
Jesus.I just discovered an unexpected side effect to this mp3 lark.
You know how certain songs, or even whole albums can trigger old memories, transport you vack to another time and place, to people and situations... how some songs can have you in floods the moment you hear the very first bar?
Well... I thought I knew all the songs and albums that do that to me, so I'm usually prepared. I was wrong.
While going through my CDs for ripping purposes, I came across Seamonsters by The Wedding Present. I havent listened to it since 1992... not as a concious decision... it just got overlooked.
So I played it just now for the first time in 12 years and oh fuck... what a hammer blow.
Andy Cal, (more)Ron, Squidgy Paul, Trish, Whacky Jacky, and... damnit... what was her name with the boat?
These were the best friends I ever had... never been able to replace them, and never felt as at home with any group of people since. We used to go gigging, everywhere, several times a week. Didn't matter if it was some local crappy band, or the latest thing in London... we were there. And the parties... oh my.
All are lost to me now. If rumours are correct, at least 2 are dead (drugs and insanity were rather a common thing for us all back then), the rest have either gone to god knows where, or grown up, got married, had kids and settled down.
Its funny what music can do to you.
Labels: music
Steve 6:32 AM [+] (0) comments
Oh god that's better... 10 hours of really solid sleep, and boy did I need it.
I pretty much ran myself into the ground over the past couple of days, to the point where I was feeling quite ill.
My sleep pattern being what it is, I often reach the point where my body clock can't decide if I should be asleep in the daytime, or at night, so I wind up sleeping through most of both... but this time around it couldn't make up its mind again, and refused to sleep at all.
Still stuck between day and night mode... crashing out in the middle of the afternoon and waking up around 1am, but it's cool, coz I'm still awake at the times I need to be to get things done.
Oh yeah... I'm absolutely loving this MP3 player thing. It's almost like having my launchcast radio station in my pocket. All my absolute favourite tunes, non-stop... never repeating the same tune... no having to get up and change a disk or turn over a tape, and battery life so long that I just don't have to worry about it. The only time it ran low was during heavy hard drive usage while I was transferring tunes onto it, and that was easilly fixed by just plugging it into the charger while I worked.
Just another hundred or so CDs to rip and transfer now... then I'll probably pay a trip to the library and see what good music I can borrow.
The one thing having this widget has brought home to me is how much good music I used to have, but don't any more... or just can't access coz I don't have a record deck. Once upon a time I had a massive tape collection, hundreds of albums that I don't have on CD, so I know there's *lots* of songs that I love but don't have available to rip.... and I can't remember the titles to download them.
I abandoned the tape collection when I left an old gf a few years ago... it was just too much to take with me, coz I had limited transportation facilities available to me, and I figured I didn't listen to tapes any more since getting a CD player. (yeah... it was that long ago)
Yeash... am I ever rambling.
Steve 2:05 AM [+] (0) comments
Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Yesterday turned out to be quite interesting.I went into town, just to pay in a cheque and do a spot of window shopping. So I was stood in the 02 shop and after chatting with a sales assistant for a bit decided bugger it... I'd buy an XDAII. All was fine right up till the point she needed proof of signature. They don't accept the card I use, and I didn't have any of the other things they'd have accepted. Talk about stupid. For the sake of some dumb beurocratic red tape, I couldn't buy my widget, 02 lost out on a regular income from the data tarrif, and the shop lost out on the sale of a not altogether cheap piece of kit. Idiots.
In a rather poor mood, I wandered off to a games shop and picked up a copy of Half Life 2. (Bitch to install, but it looks great. Haven't spent much time on it yet.)
Anyway... that would've been it, but I figured I'd do my usual lap of the shopping centre before going home, and in doing so I walked past...er... into a gadget shop.
Oops.
For the past couple of weeks I've been looking at this Rio 5gig MP3 player... and walked away every single time. So I was stood in the gadget shop and looking over the MP3 players in there... some that I'd not seen before elsewhere... when this sales assistant who really knew his stuff approached me and proceeded to explain in great deal the finer points of various of the MP3 players. Now this was very refreshing, coz in Dixons, you're lucky if the assistants even know their own name, much less any technical details about the stuff they're trying to sell (though it actually seems they aren't trying to sell anything at all, they're that disinterested in serving the customers).
Anyway... after about 15 mins of listening to the guy, being given demos of each one, I looked at the guy, chuckled and said "Right... I need to go to the bank. I'll be back in 5 mins."
5 mins later I was £200 poorer and in possession of a very nice Creative Zen Touch 20gig MP3 player. I struggle getting my head around the fact that this tiny little thing has the same storage capacity as my laptop, but there it is.
So most of last night and this morning has been spent transferring most of my MP3 collection onto the thing, and then working my way through ripping much of my CD collection. It's heavy going and my eyes are killing me now... but boy is it worth it. Nearly 2 gigs, and 426 tunes done so far. The idea of having *all* my fave tunes to hand wherever I go is very appealing.
Labels: annoyed, gadgets, games, music, phones
Steve 11:48 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Ahh... that made me smile.I was trawling through limewire (a p2p file sharing thing, for those who don't know) and found several of my tunes being shared on there.
For a band trying to make money by selling their stuff, that'd be bad news, but as a musician who just wants to get his stuff heard by as many people as possible, I'm quite chuffed.
Steve 6:51 AM [+] (0) comments
Monday, November 22, 2004
Heavens.... a whole week without blogging.I haven't really been in the mood to be honest.
It's kinda hard to describe or explain my mood. Disillusioned, grumpy, fed up etc aren't really it, coz for the most part I've been quite happy. Just a bit... hmm... I guess "Meh!" covers it.
Yup... somewhere between wanting good company, and wishing the people around me would just sod off and leave me alone.
Talk about contrary.
I want, I want, I want, and I even know what I want, but if I had it, I wouldn't want it any more.
Meh.
Time to sit back and watch some more Invader Zim, I think.
Steve 2:08 AM [+] (0) comments
Sunday, November 14, 2004
Ignore my last post... the gallery is back.Seems it was just a coinsidence that I recieved an email stating "we are no longer offering the old service" at the same time as the gallery server had some downtime.
I only glanced at the email and just assumed it was spam... but then when the gallery went awol I put 2 and 2 together and made 5.
At this moment I'm working on building up a large compilation of 80s tunes. Tisn't the first time I've done this, but the last collection was lost when I had to format my laptop.
This collection's rather less pop and somewhat more goth though... or at least, a bit 'out there'.
Labels: music
Steve 10:45 PM [+] (0) comments
Grrr.
It's looking like the people who were hosting my photo gallery have shut down their free service. It's probably time I got a paid for service and made a new website... something to host all the stuff I've got scattered around the web.
I figure I'll use the same baisc design as this weblog, and move the blog across to the new location, (when I get it) combining it with the photo gallery, and whatever else.
We'll see.
Labels: annoyed
Steve 3:33 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, November 12, 2004
Yeah yeah yeah, I know... I need to blog.Trouble is, nothing's happening here.
Daytimes are being spent watching dvds, evenings trawling the dating site with Penny, and night times chatting on irc and watching more movies.
It's all very enjoyable from my perspective, but not worth blogging.
Tell you what.... make up something exciting and then pretend I wrote it here.
Steve 3:46 PM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
I'm having a bit of a LOTR day, or rather... couple of days.After picking up Fellowship Of The Ring last week, I got the extended version of The Two Towers (already got the standard version) and the standard version of Return Of The King (extended version not being out yet... though I'll get that too when it's out)... and watched all 3, one after the other, follwed by all the additional doccumentaries on the extra disks.
The extended Two Towers really is incredible... being 47 mins longer, but oddly, it's worth seeing the standard version first, or even buying both versions. It's hard to explain why... maybe the standard one feels just that bit purer and more focused.
Still... whichever version... Two Towers is still my fave of the three films.
Labels: movies
Steve 7:43 PM [+] (0) comments
Friday, November 05, 2004
At last.Blogger's been a bit of a pig of late and wouldnt let me get to the editing page. Probably the server's been overloaded with people registering their pleasure or displeasure at Bush being re-elected.
Personally I'm rather amazed that a civilised country would want a talking monkey (and he doesn't even do that very well) at the controls... but whatever.
So anyway... I did a spot of shopping yesterday and came away with more DVDs. They've got one of their 5 movies for £30 deals in Virgin, so I could't resist. Got Brazil, Delicatessen, Cross Of Iron, The Matrix, and LOTR Fellowship Of The Ring. And best of all... The History Of England doccumentary box set, reduced to £40 from around £80. Had my eyes glued to that all yesterday afternoon and evening, and still aren't even half way through yet.
I dunno what it is about history. There was a time when I couldn't care less about it, but these days, I just can't get enough. The world seems to make a bit more sense knowing how we actually got to where we are today.
Labels: movies
Steve 7:13 AM [+] (0) comments
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
What can I tell you?I'm feeling rather noisy at the mo. Got music blasting.
Yesterday was a movie day for me. Picked up DVDs of Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions (no need to talk about them as I did that at length when I first saw them), and the directors cut of Dawn Of The Dead (the remake, not the original).
I wasn't expecting too much of 'D of the D', remakes being what they are, and the George Romero version being a classic... but y'know... it kicks arse.
Very very impressive. If you like 28 Days Later, you'll like this.
In retro(ish) gaming mode, I picked up a copy of Daytona USA 2001 for Dreamcast. After two pretty shoddy versions on the Saturn, and reports that this was waaaaay better, I had high hopes.
Well... yup.. it's at least arcade perfect, if not better, but y'know... I still don't like it. Maybe it's just rose tinted spectacles making me remeber the game as better than it was, or the lack of three friends in the seats next to me trying to run me off the road. Whatever it is... it left me cold.
Steve 1:52 PM [+] (0) comments
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