My Excellent Taste In Music

Just to prove that I'm not completely stuck in the 80s (or late 70s, for that matter), here's something relatively modern which is also good:

Records & Tapes

I had no idea that tidying up would end up making me feel so amazingly old. The process of sorting through long-forgotten things seems to be bringing home to me that before you know it, what was only yesterday turns out to have been half a life away.

Perhaps it's the fact that much of the stuff that fills my spaces is that which was once current, and is now forgotten. I find myself in possession of a fair number of cassette tapes. The things that we used to listen to music on - before MP3 players killed off the CDs that killed off the tapes, that is. I haven't been through them too closely yet, but I can make a fair guess that the vast majority of the cassettes I own are filled with nothing more than harsh electronic squeaking noises - no, not the Pet Shop Boys, but data cassettes for the ZX Spectrum which I once spent so much time with.

Even so, part of my grand tidying up is in making old things all modern and digital, so I've been transferring a lot of tapes to my computer. And these last few days, I've been finding more tuneful tapes of music recorded off the radio, as people used to do. Lots of good songs, in fact, including the one above, which came out in 1977, when I was about five, although I discovered it much later on. But then somehow between the music some cheesy radio jingle will break in.. "Your 1989 power station! 103.2 F-M!!"

1989? Was it really that long ago?

And that's when it hit me. I was seventeen years old. That makes these tapes eighteen years old. These tapes, so normal and useful and everyday at the time, are half a life away, and now almost obsolete.

It's not just cassettes. Maybe the most painful part of the tidying is in finally coming to terms with the fact that a whole lot of my "stuff" is also obsolete. Hundreds of VHS tapes. 45rpm singles. 33rpm LPs.. Even floppy discs, once an everyday essential, have now been taken over by time. So I'm also copying all my floppy discs onto something newer. I must have at least 400 of the things. And for those playing along at home, all the files on 400 floppy discs will fit quite comfortable on precisely ONE CD. Or a USB thumb drive that's smaller than my thumbnail.

Progress IS fantastic. CDs are better. Floppy discs take up a ton of space. It's hard to find things on tapes. But the reminder of how the passage of time can so swiftly turn the everyday into the antique, or worse still, the relic, is just scary.

There's no reason why it should be. As I've occasionally said in the past, there's every reason to believe that there is nothing to fear about getting old. Or at least, older. After all, you pick up some nice memories along the way.

Millions

After one false start, news reaches me that word of my blog has spread far and wide, and that there may now be as many as two people reading, on a good day. Needless to say, if I am to continue to build my ratings, tales of cardboard boxes may not be enough to pack in the crowds. So here's another adorable picture of a kitten:

Please Come Back

"I am hoping you get this... please come back, we miss you."

I haven't been on Second Life for a good long while. I guess I've just not had quite as much time or inclination for it recently.

There are people I know on Second Life - I'm not sure I'd really be as presumptuous to call them "friends" because that's really their decision rather than mine - but in any case I wasn't really expecting my absence to be noticed or for anyone to be particuarly bothered that I was just not around any more.

I'm not quite sure how to take it. I guess on one level it should be nice to be missed - heart-warming somehow to be liked enough that someone realises when I'm not there. Or maybe that too is being rather presumptuous and there is another less ego-flattering reason at play. But on another level.. slightly worrying. Suddenly, more of an obligation, a responsibility.. and even without being there, I might already be making people feel bad.

I do worry about stuff like that. One of those things at the back of my mind which worries me so, the idea that I leave people worse off than I found them.. that somehow as much as I might enjoy people's company, as much as I'd hope to be a fun and decent and useful person to have around... what if I was actually bad for people? What if, overall, without even knowing, I was somehow saying or doing things that actually just upset people? Without even knowing. I'm not sure I could stand that.

It seems I can do it without even being around, and on the occasions when that particular thought has currency, it gives me this terrible urge to run away. Just to disappear, to crawl back into my shell and keep myself to myself and not bother other people any more. Because as much as I do like other people's company, I'm fairly sure that I'd miss them a hundred times more than they'd miss me - if they even noticed at all. As much as it would hurt, sometimes it just seems like the right thing to do, because the idea of upsetting people with something that I did or didn't say, without even realising, is just too painful to bear.

The usual problem is that "friendship", at the risk of being presumptuous again, is that it's just too hard to escape. Inevitably I'll end up saying or doing something which gives people other ways to find me or get in touch, which makes it hard to ever truly disappear, no matter how strong the urge sometimes is. There is no escape, short of moving house - but I guess, no-one's really going to come knocking on my door just because I haven't been on Second Life for a few months. Or at least, I certainly hope not. That would just be too embarrassing.

So as far as Second Life goes, I need to decide - return... or run? Oh, how stupid is this? I wish I was better at this kind of thing. Just not being a complete basket-case would certainly be a good place to start, but I doubt if that's going to happen any time soon.

Another Nice Day

I have a feeling at the moment that things are starting to come together. My tidiness problem now seems less daunting than before. There's still plenty to do, but the stuff I have is at least better organised, in neat boxes (see above), and a first wave of chucking-out or selling-on-ebay means there's less of it than there was before.

So life is good. Yesterday I resolved to take a second trip through my cupboards and see if more space could be freed up, and today I felt quite pleased with myself at clearing almost a whole shelf's full of space. (That's about two-and-a-half standard storage boxes worth of space, for those following along at home.) It was almost a shame to fill that space, but that in turn freed up some more space in other places, so it all comes good in the end. And I'm looking forward to doing more tidying tomorrow. It's quite addictive once you get into it. I wonder what on earth I'm going to do with myself once the grand tidying-up is all done...

I'm also turning my attention to healthy eating. I had a very nice salad for lunch, with vegetables and chicken and rice and everything. It was good. In fact I might have it every day. I also had extra vegetables with my tea, which was also good. I might even have reached the Government-mandated 5 portions a day. Perhaps I should have some fruit to make sure. I'll do that in a minute.

I feel remarkably content right now. I think it must be the time of year. The weather is cold outside - so cold, in fact, that for the last two mornings my heating has come on, despite the thermostat being cranked down super-low due to the summer. But it seems that summer is over. So while it's cold outside, it's now nice and warm inside, which I find very very pleasing indeed.

Life is, as they say, good. And who wouldn't be delighted by that?

Payday

Today is the glorious 27th. Glorious because it is payday. Every month, the 27th is the day when I get paid. Unless the 27th is a Saturday, Sunday, or Bank Holiday, when I get paid on the last Thursday. Or something like that. There's some method to it but I try not to pay too much attention to it.

And it seems that it has been a productive day. When a young boy's thoughts turn to money matters, the frugal impulse kicks in, and I find new ways to ensure that my pennies are properly conserved and stored for the future. So this evening I have been making phone calls a-plenty.

First off, a call to the nice people at the cable company. Long-term readers will know that for some baffling reason I continue to pay them for their lousy service. I made a phone call today to bring that amount down to something slightly less. Not much, it only saves £4.50 a month, but for something I never EVER use, and only seem to hang on to for no good reason at all, it seems like a reasonable saving to be made. And it takes me one step closer to cancelling for good, one day.

Secondly, a phone call to the nice people at Sky. People say bad things about Sky but I got through to them quickly, got straight through to the right department, and told them where they could shove their movie channels. (Which, rather ungraciously, I had been getting cheap for the last three months, although that offer has now expired.) And while disposing of the movie channels, I also got rid of the "News & Events Mix", because there's nothing in it I need, and the only two news channels which matter (Sky News and the other one) are free anyway. No point in paying £21 a month when you can just as easily pay £20 a month. (That's "5 mix" for those playing along at home.)

Earlier in the day, a phone call to BT, from whom I had ordered their whizz-bang "BT Vision" television broadband thingummy. Boxes and stuff were supposed to arrive yesterday, but they did not. A call to BT today reveals that there is "some kind of problem" with my order, which they cannot track down or fix, leaving them with no option but to cancel my order completely. And cancelling this order will take 48 hours. So could I please call back and order again next week?

Sure. Or I could just not bother. Another £14.99 a month saved! Perhaps I'd rather have the money.

Had a quick look around my various online banking accounts and was delighted to discover that the missing £3 (which had gone missing in a previous "lost cheque" shenanigan) was now once again found. Which was nice. This may be the electronic equivalent of finding coins down the back of the sofa.

Registered an internet domain name (a www.something) for possible use in future artistic endeavours.

Bought £100 of premium bonds, in the hope that my number might come up and the resulting millions will pay for those future artistic endeavours.

Looking over my other monthly outgoings, I can't see anything too obvious to get rid of. So that'll do for now. And so it is that, as with every payday, I am briefly a man of means. Hooray! Of course there's a whole month's worth of bills to come yet. :-)

King of iTunes

I love iTunes very much. I admit that I didn't really see the point until someone bought me a Shuffle, which necessitated my downloading of the hitherto unexplored beastie, but I soon fell in love with it.

The recent announcements of the new iPods brought about the urge to secure a 'classic' (well, v2) Nano before it was too late. Having got a nice deal on a black 8gb from Amazon, I picked up a red 8gb on eBay at a similarly irresistible price. (Yes I wuv you, Mr Red Nano, yes I do, yes I do..)

But anyway.. Much as I love iTunes, sometimes there are things you can't do with it. It's not easy to move your MP3s from one disc to another, for example. Not without losing the play counts and ratings. Which you get used to after a while, and it would be a shame to lose...

The nice thing is, I found a devilishly excellent (and considerably nerdy) trick which gives me full mastery over my iTunes. No laborious moving files around for me. Rename tracks individually? Ha ha ha. I pity the fool. 

Tonight I was getting tired of the tracks in my library from many bad compilation albums. The information usually had the artist titles in the track name - meaning I had thousands of tracks called "Peter Andre / Flava" by the popular artist 'Various'. As opposed to the less popular artist, Peter Andre. But I digress... the upshot of it all is that using my considerable excellence and skillo skill, I managed to rename something like 3,000 tracks in the blink of an eye. Which certainly beats typing out all the track names again. 

And therefore, in short, I must admit to feeling rather pleased with myself. Can I be King of iTunes now? Just for a few minutes? :-)

Fine Dining With Antnoise

Be sure to notice the 20% discount I received in recognition of being the world-famous Ant. :)

Motor Control

So here's how I spent my Sunday evening. Eating crackers and cheese, as one does, while catching up on some Calvin and Hobbes comics on the computer.

It all went very well. First I dropped the knife - and after a few minutes peering around on the floor, even after turning on the light and looking around with a torch and everything, I was forced to conclude that it had disappeared.

I went downstairs to fetch another knife, and returned to resume my eating. This continued for several more minutes until I then dropped the box of crackers, resulting in crackers flying all over the floor, accompanied by the crumbs that are inevitably created by the act of carelessly smashing a box of fragile crackers against an unyielding hard surface like the floor.

So I picked up the crackers, swept up the crumbs... and made a mental decision never to attempt any tasks requiring such complex hand-eye co-ordination ever again. I think I'll go to bed - let's hope I can at least manage that.

The People's Choice

I discovered last night that someone else actually reads this blog. This came as something of a surprise, given that I had previously assumed it had a maximum readership of 1, on a good day. But no! Someone else is reading, watching, analysing my every word and phrase. I am being examined, studied, as scientists may study creatures which swarm and multiply in a drop of water.

I don't know if I'm flattered or horrified! How am I to give pleasure to an audience of many people? Wibbling about cardboard boxes is one thing, but an actual proper audience is harder to please. I may have to buff up my act, bring out the 'A' material, guaranteed to be a crowd-pleaser at all times. If not, booing and rotten tomatoes are bound to issue forth from an unsatisfied audience.

It can only lead to a massive decline in quality as we race headlong towards the lowest common denominator. And who wouldn't be delighted by that? So, for all the good readers everywhere, here's a cute picture of a sleeping cat: