27 Feb 2010

Excellent memories

Posted in Life, Music at 5:56 pm by alby

I’ve been cleaning my house this afternoon.  Whilst I’ve been doing that I’ve been starting to digitise my LP collection.  This is entailing listening to them whilst the computer gets busy recording.

My word there’s some excellent music locked in them grooves.

I may be an old hippy but I’m absolutely loving listening to Echoes by Pink Floyd.  Storming track.

And I’m only just scratching the surface (literally as well as metaphorically) of stuff that will delight.  I have a fun few weeks (possibly months) of rediscovery ahead.

26 Feb 2010

Digital radio blues

Posted in Life, News, Rants at 5:23 pm by alby

I’ve just sent off for my first DAB radio.

This is the one wot I ordered: here.  To replace the ancient midi system I have had in my middle room for years which only seems to work with AM radio now.

Nice features, great reviews, swanky bit of kit.  Thank you very much.

But then the problems start:

First of all I get a delivery card through my door (from “Home Delivery Network”).  Not too surprising seeing as I “work” n’all.  The delivery co say go their website and pick a different day for delivery.  OK no problem.

Oh but they only do Mon-Fri delivery.  So that’s useful then what with me, you know, “working”.

No matter I am at home for at least an afternoon a week.  Ah that’s not helpful their delivery slots are “7am -7pm”.  In other words if I want them to do their job (IE deliver me something they’ve been paid to deliver to me) I must take a day off work.

I wouldn’t trust any of the neighbours round here and there’s no “safe place” for the driver to leave it.

I have another option which is to pick it up from their depot.  In Nottingham.  Thanks very much.  I may as well have just bloody driven down to Amazon’s warehouse in Milton Keynes and not bothered with the delivery.

Doesn’t all of this screw around with the whole bloody point of mail order service?  You know, the whole “not having to go and pick it up” thing?

I wrote a very grumpy email to Amazon who, to be fair, did respond quickly but then used the line

“Currently, we do not have the ability to assign certain carriers to a specific customer or address”

What?  I find this astonishing if true.  They’re the ones who pay the carrying company.  But they can’t specify which carrier takes which order? I’m nearly speechless.

I’ve ordered plenty of things from them before and have had to pick orders up which have been unable to be delivered but these items end up in the central post office in the centre of town.  So why the hell does this one have to be a: given to a company that is unable to do the job they’ve been employed to do, b: unable to be given to a carrier that actually IS able to do the job or at least will get it to within a couple of miles of my house and c: this snazzy wotsit I’m actually really looking forward to playing with and getting use out of?

Bloody hell!

And just to cap this annoying little episode one of the main reasons I bought a DAB radio was to listen to 6music which looks like it may well be being got rid of in the next round of BBC cuts.  Yes that’s right one of few stations on the BBC that actually looks after their public service remit is being cut whilst BBC3 isn’t, BBC1 remains appalling, BBC2 is a pale shadow of what it once was and only BBC4 is showing much of what they should be producing and showing us (and isn’t safe from the chop either).

Bad mood day today.

05 Feb 2010

Life is odd

Posted in Life, Self-indulgence at 4:28 pm by alby

Two things occurred today.

Firstly I did an on-line “Are You Autistic?” quiz.  Apparently scoring 32 or higher is very common in those we see as autistic.  I scored a worryingly close 28.

And secondly, after lots of hassle with crap internet support from my ISP I changed it today.  The lady on the phone was very nice and had a lovely Welsh accent and things went smoothly and I’ve now switched providers for both phone and broadband.  Got my confirmation email and it was addressed to a “Mr Williams”.  I thought this was a little odd.  For 2 reasons – 1 I hadn’t used that name at any point in the conversation and nor had she, and 2 the dDebit details were for my account and with the correct name and my email address has my correct name before the @.

Weird.

13 Jan 2010

Donor

Posted in Life at 11:36 am by alby

I’d assume most people who read this would already know this but I thought I’d make it known again.

I’m on the NHS Organ Donor registry and should the occasion occur that my organs can be used for someone else’s benefit (AND when I can’t benefit from them) then I would be most annoyed if they were simply thrown away.  Seems such a waste.  Get ‘em used!

If you’ve always thought about joining the donor register then you can do it online here.

I recommend it to all and sundry (except those with manky organs obviously).

Have fun.

01 Jan 2010

Confusing New Year

Posted in Life at 12:40 pm by alby

How odd!

PowerDVD Ultra from the manufacturer via download = £77 with their special discount for new year.

PowerDVD Ultra from Amazon on CD ROM including postage = £48.

Thought I’d try to be green by buying it as a download but stuff that.  Amazon wins.

30 Dec 2009

Merrymas

Posted in Life, People at 4:04 pm by alby

For the first time in years Christmas was not spent at home with mates coming round in the evening.  Rather I was invited with R to her sister’s place for food and company.

A fine time was had.  Met one of the remaining 2 sisters I’d not met before who turned out to be perfectly pleasent and chatty.

Photos were taken too and can be found here.

The last few were of a walk in Belper where we found the most disturbing nativity scene I’ve ever clapped eyes on.

21 Dec 2009

Back

Posted in Life at 9:06 pm by alby

Not been away.  Just busy.  The Tas post has been mostly written for ages but I just never got time to sit and finish it.  Done now.  Slightly less descriptive than I’d have liked but it’ll do.  Normal service may well be resumed as of now.

Stuff done:

18 Oct 2009

Long time posting

Posted in Life at 8:44 pm by alby

Ooh hello there.

I’ve been away for some time hence the lack of postage on here.  I’ve been lucky enough to be travelling for the last month but I’m now back and trawling through the photos of the trip and spending time catching up with R.

A grand time was had but there’s lots of different bits including Singapore, the Melbourne Juggling convention and then travelling through southern Oz.

I’ll get through stuff soon and photos will be up shortly after each bit.

Cheers.

06 Sep 2009

Festen

Posted in Life, People, Reviews at 8:55 pm by alby

Life continues to be fun.

I’ve spent the last couple of weekends with R and her daughter (N).

Last weekend was spent visiting Lincoln with R and meeting up with my folks for a meal and a couple of drinks.  The Bank hols was spent with both of them at the Beacon Hill Wood Fair.  This was a strange event of “learning about woods”.  It should have been awful but was actually a nice way to spend a day.

N got to see a scary green wild man telling stories, me and R got to eat nice food including a self-made pizza and some proper burger.  After that N went climbing and very nearly rode in a cherry-picker.  Then we watched some countryfied version of the World’s Strongest Man with some butch lumberjacks chopping logs for our amusement.

As I said, very strange.

This weekend was spent in Derby watching some stuff at the “Derby Feste“.  We saw the opening thing which had 2 groups of kids wandering into Derby square and playing an annoyingly repetitive riff over and over and over and over…..

Each group had their own mascot.  One had a bird thing.  The other had what we assume was meant to be the Derby Ram.  In reality it was a bloke in a costume carrying a huge sheeps head thing.  It was rubbish.  Really very bad.  It looked like it was manky from years of lying in a cupboard and patched together with bandages.  It was horrible at best and scary at worst.  Just nasty.

Anyway after about 3 months of them playing this tedious riff they headed off again, still playing it.  We zoomed off to a small park where the fest had set up a stage.

Once there we found a small group of folk.  Some of them clearly just liked hanging around the square normally and seemed mildly annoyed at this intrusion into their Sunday afternoon.  The rest had, like us, a mild curiosity at just what was going on.

One small group seemed to be a juggling group.  They had one guy juggling 3 teddy bears and then a couple of them doing quite basic diabolo tricks.  After an hour or so they all stood up and then spent the rest of the afternoon playing catch with not 3 balls each, not 4 balls each, but 1 ball between them.  Very poor.  Earlier in the day I’d been thinking about going over and chatting but even my measly juggling skills would have shown this group up badly.

So the fun on stage starts.  A hip and happening guy comes out giving it all “Come on Deeeerrrrrbbyyy!!!!” to muffled “hello”s and such from the mainly apathetic crowd.  He witters on with some (I guess) street vocab for a bit until very few know what he’s on about.  At this point he decides to do the “tell the crowd what to do” schtick that I loathe.

So we have to cheer when he shouts one thing and scream “Derby Feste” when he shouts another.  N loved it, for about 3 minutes.  When you’re boring to a 4 year old then you really need to change your spiel.

Then who shows up but the parading kids and their loathsome riff.  Yes they’re still playing it, still annoying as hell.

The musicians turn out to be part of a Latin band that starts the show.  Some good music and some dodgy singing later they depart to be replaced by a duo doing ukelele covers (oh the originality!).  This would have been good if they’d bothered doing anything any good and maybe shortening some of the long songs.  EG they did Thriller in its entirety.  Come on guys give us a break and boil it down to the bits we know; that way we might not get bored off our tits with you.  And no, we won’t be buying your CD.

After this we had a tired 4 year old on our hands so we went home.  I don’t think we missed a lot.

Photos from Wood Fair here.

23 Jun 2009

Rage

Posted in Life, People at 10:11 pm by alby

I had a 28 Days Later moment this afternoon.

I was on my bike coming home from work.  I got to a crossroad (good choice of name there). And I was trying to get across the main road from a side road.  Imagine a busy main road at rush hour.  So loads of zoomy cars not letting a bike through cos bikes aren’t worth letting out (unlike cars).

I was at the junction with a car sat behind me.

I heard a BEEP! from the car.  Looked round to see a young woman driving and a HUGE scary looking man in the passenger seat.

I ignored them.  I was in the right place and just waiting for a gap.

HUGE bloke decides to yell at me as if I’m the idiot.

What does he expect to gain here?  He’ll get to the junction a tiny bit earlier but  then they’re stuck again.  I could get onto the road as soon as they could.

But apparently a bike in front of them is anathema.

I pointed at the zoomy cars as to say “What?  Where are you going to go?”

He got out the car yelling randomly (apparently) and making extremely threatening overtures at me.

I should remind you that the road was extremely busy.  Loads of people were watching this including from cars behind them and on the main road.  Did he really think he was going to randomly beat up someone who’d done nothing beyond cycle safely and correctly?

Luckily at that point someone let me out so I set off bravely managing a “wanker” hand signal at him before pulling into the local Tesco garage – IE somewhere with CCTV in case of severe beatage up and somewhere with loads of people hanging around including security guard.

I love some people.  And what was the woman thinking?  Poor thing having to live with that.

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