Archive for March, 2009

Digitising 10cc

March 22nd, 2009

I remember buying my first LP.

I haven’t a clue what possessed me, but it was The Best of The Beach Boys.  I bought it in a record shop in Johnston’s Lane off Grafton Street.

On thing I remember well was the girl at the counter asking me if I wanted mono or stereo.  I asked for the mono version as we didn’t have stereo at home.  To this day, it remains the only mono record that I have.

Sometime in the early 70s, I bought my first real stereo outfit.  It was at the time when 3 in 1s were coming out, but I went for separates.  I got myself a complete Sansui outfit of a record deck, cassette deck, amplifier and speakers.  Years later, I got a Sony tuner to go with it.

I still have the full outfit.  Like myself, it is a little tired.  The amplifier volume control has some dirt in it and crackles badly, and the bearings are gone in the cassette deck motor, but the speakers, tuner and record deck are fine.  I haven’t used it in a couple of decades, and only sentimentality stopped me from leaving it in a ditch somewhere.

Lately, I have been wondering about digitising my record collection [leaving out The Beach Boys, of course]. 

There are various turntables on the market that would do the job for me, but they come at a price, and I would end up with another turntable that presumably would be redundant.

Yesterday, I bought myself a lead that connects phono to jack.  That should work nicely, if I connect my old Sansui turntable output into a computer sound card.  It only cost a couple of Euro.

I’m a little nervous about connecting up though, as I don’t want to blow the fuck out of my brand new laptop.  I thought of using Herself’s machine for testing, but she urgently needs it for researching useless tat on eBay.

I think I’ll borrow a laptop off my neighbour.

Equinox

March 21st, 2009

So this is the time of year when the day is as long as the night.

Or is it that the night is as long as the day?

I can never remember.

They call it the Vernal Equinox.

I wonder who Vernon was?

Ever decreasing circles

March 20th, 2009

Writer’s block is like driving a Porche flat out down a motorway, when suddenly the engine seizes, and you are left there wondering if your precious car is ever going to shift again.

I have been there, but I’m not there now.

I’m still driving flat out down that motorway.

My problem is that I am driving a clapped out old banger, and I ain’t going very fast.

car

What is worse, I seem to be on a ring road, and am just going around in circles.

This site has been going for nearly two and a half years now.  If it were a child, it would be learning to talk on its own.

I don’t know about you, but I think I need a new car and a new road to drive on.  The scenery at the moment is a bit dull and uninspiring, and I would like to see some fresh horizons.

What this site needs is a proper destination, but then they do say that it is better to travel than to arrive?  I just don’t know.  I sometimes think it’s boring.  You sometimes think it’s boring.  Don’t deny it because I know you are leaving in your thousands.  Sometimes, my journey comes across something exciting and we all have a laugh for a day or two, but I think it is in danger of becoming repetitive?

I know this site will never become the Huffington Post, because life is quiet here in the mountains.  Washington, it isn’t.  I could write about the first sighting of a bumble bee in Summer, or how Pullit is recycling his slops again for the tourists down in the pub, but you’d soon get bored with that.

Maybe I need to start a regular column?

Someone in the mists of time suggested and Agony Aunt type thing?  An Agony Grandad?  It doesn’t have a very good ring to it?

Personally, I’m quite happy pouring out the same old shite, day after day.  It keeps me out of mischief [for ten minutes, anyway] but I need a little spark from time to time. 

Over to you.

Any ideas for a little regular spot?

Get out of my air

March 19th, 2009

I had to go up to the city yesterday.

I hate and despise the city for its noise and its dirt and its mayhem.  I don’t know how the hell I survived working there for all those years.

What was worse, I got stuck in the Rush Hour for the first time in about eight years.

Some things have changed over time.

The number of traffic lights seems to have increased exponentially.  Roads that used to be relatively traffic free are now bottlenecks because they have been narrowed to allow for empty bus lanes and empty cycle lanes.  The amount of paintwork on the road surfaces defies description.  There is also a scary proliferation of roundabouts.  I think they are overused at the behest of AA Roadwatch who love talking about “rindabytes” on the radio.  They drove Roger mad though.

Other things haven’t changed.

The mad fuckers in the Beamers and Volvos still fight with the Old Dears for mastery of the outside lane.  The first lot want to treat the city roads like Brands Hatch, and the Old Dears want to drive at twenty miles an hour, and have to be in the outside lane because they are turning off five miles up the road.  Cyclists still cycle as if they have the entire road to themselves, and weave about all over the place.  Cars still won’t switch on any lights until it’s so dark they can’t see the bonnet of their car.

It was a ten minute meeting, but I was gone from home for three hours.  I still haven’t recovered.

The place I was going to had a car park out front.  It consisted of a loop of road, and in the middle of the loop, there was grass and trees.  It would have been nice if it weren’t for the noise and the massive cranes looming ominously overhead.  In the middle of this little oasis, there was a patio area, with seats, tables, a shelter and ashtrays.  As smoking areas go, it wasn’t bad.

Some distance away, there was another patio area, with tables and chairs.  It was about half the size of a tennis court, and strategically placed all around its perimeter were very large signs – “THIS IS A NO SMOKING AREA”.  What the fuck?

So here we have two areas, both outside in the open air.  One is smoking, and the other non-smoking.  Why?

Will some one please tell me what the objection is to smoking in the open air?

Is tobacco smoke so lethal that the merest contact will cause an instantaneous and horrible death?

Are they afraid that smoking is contagious?

Is the world going totally insane?

Bovine choices

March 18th, 2009

I took a peek at the RTE website today.

It was just a casual look, more to see if there was any interesting news than anything else.

rte

The first thing that caught my eye was my old friend Lucy Kennedy.  You couldn’t very well miss her as the ad took up about five acres of the screen.  So I clicked on her to see what would happen.

The screen I was presented with asked me to vote for the hottest Irish male.

I am no homophobe, but I feel uneasy about describing any male as ‘hot’.  I had a look at the meat that was on offer.

Oh, for fuck’s sake!  Plank is in there.  Here is the one bloke who is guaranteed to make any real woman top herself from sheer boredom and he is supposed to be ‘hot’?  And Martin King?  That idiot that can’t stand still for one second and who looks like he has a cattle prod up his arse?

I wanted to skip that section but I couldn’t.  I had to vote to go any further, so I picked one at random, but being very damned careful to avoid Plank and King.

At last I was into the decent stuff – Irelands hottest females.

There were a few tasty bits on offer, and I’m very glad to see my Sharon in there, so I gave her one before going any further.

I have never heard of quite a few of them.  God preserve us, but I see the Seoige sisters in there.  I can’t understand what other men see in those two bimbos.   Glenda is there, but she is an ex, so I couldn’t vote for her anyway.  And Miriam has too many kids.  I left my mark on Sharon and moved on.

Bloody hell! I have to choose the hottest international male?

I looked through the list and there were about three names that I recognised.  They are the greatest shower of wankers I have ever seen.  They even have that lunatic Brand in there?  As for Gary Lineker – I throw up every time he comes on with that fucking crisps ad on the telly.  Another random click, and on I go.

Now you would think that the line-up for the hottest international female would be the stuff of wet dreams, but just look at them!  There are one or two that have a fairly high shagability factor but the majority look like they have a combined IQ equal to the value of a share in Anglo Irish Bank.  What is worse, I haven’t heard of most of the programmes they are on; or if I have heard of the programme, I wouldn’t stoop to watch it.

I gave up at that stage as I don’t want to run the risk of another dose of the clap.

I have one question though.

Why the fuck am I not in there?

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