The First Of Autumn
I've been neglecting my blogging quite shamefully this year, so I've set myself the goal of writing here at least once a week, in order to try and get back on the blogging horse. Seems reasonable to me: it always seems like there's plenty going on, or plenty I want to talk about, but given how much time I sit in front of a keyboard (at home as well as at work), lately I just don't seem to have the motivation to tap something out - and typically, the less I write, the less I am inclined to write, and so on. Talk about a vicious circle - this one's positively murderous.
Autumn's here - well, near enough. I wandered off to Tesco's to pick up some last-minute Bank Holiday shopping yesterday morning, and that first all-important bite in the air was present, a sure sign that my favourite season is on the way. The sky was a glowing blue, not a cloud to be seen, and it jollied me up considerably - and frankly, I needed it, as today sees the start of the autumn term at the College, Steen's first day back at work after the summer, and a mountain of paperwork to tackle both at work and at home. Summer's nice (when it's not raining, this being England 'n' all), but a bit too hot and sticky for me generally, whereas autumn just seems to get reasonably nice weather, albeit with that little bite in the air that means temperature-challenged Celtic-skinned types like me can go out more regularly without getting burnt or sticking to our clothes. I love it. The leaves changing colours and falling from the trees, conkers (which I never grew out of), bonfire night... Ah, it gives me a nice warm glow.
It's a been an odd summer, really. For one thing, it's seen me change computers again - the old Dell I was using became extremely unreliable, turning itself off at random and running the fan so hard that it sounded like a jet engine. Ultimately, Steen got so fed up with the racket (and me swearing colourfully and at length at the recalcitrant machine) that she green-lighted the cost of a ground-up new build, which for the first time I took on myself. Having obtained second opinions about various components, I settled on a list of fairly arse-kicking components which arrived quickly (praise be to Overclockers, who have been bloody marvellous, if not to Scan, who have been somewhat less so) and attempted my build. Frustratingly, all seemed to go fairly well (despite a few early nerves as I came to grips with installing a CPU cooling tower for the first time) until it was turned on, when nothing happened. Curses, thought I. Happily, a brief consultation with my mate Alan resulted in a fully-functioning machine. The problem? Due to some rather ropey instructions provided with the case, I had neglected to properly attach one of the motherboard's power cables. D'oh! Oh well, a lesson learned there...
So now I have a fab'n'groovy new machine. A pretty handy quad-core beastie, it is also running Windows 7 64K edition from an unfeasibly large hard drive, so I feel a bit like someone from the 1890s who has suddenly arrived in 2010. I have to give props to Windows 7, actually: a completely hassle-free install, and thanks to the compatability mode I've had no problems installing even the oldest, crustiest hardware/programs/drivers. A complete joy - and I've yet to see any malfunctions, blue screens of death or any of that sort of garbage. I've ceased to sweat and swear when I turn my PC on, and that is a gift, let me tell you.
One of the many side-effects of having a handy new computer at home with mega mondo amounts of storage has been a new-found willingness to re-rip a whole bunch of music at a much higher bitrate to said hard drive, in preparation for ultimately one day preparing a wireless audio server for Hippy Towers (at its current address or elsewhere). Don't get me wrong, I'll always have my CDs for those times when I can slump in front of the stereo and really wallow in some high quality audio, but you just can't beat the convenience of being able to stream audio to the device of your choice. Listening to whatever you fancy as you sit in the garden/in the bath/etc, without getting up and swapping around a bunch of discs every hour or so, really appeals.
The upshot of this is that I've had the time to get reacquainted with a whole lot of music that I either haven't heard enough, or haven't heard for an age. I dug out Sheryl Crow's self-titled sophomore album at the weekend, which I haven't heard in years, and it sounded as fresh as a daisy. Likewise Dream Theater's Images And Words, which I hadn't heard in aeons, All About Eve's gorgeous Touched By Jesus, Metallica's eponymous 1991 offering, and both volumes of Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion. It's been a very long time since I heard a lot of this stuff, and I've been sitting around mesmerised by it all for a couple of weeks now. And of course, even the stuff that I had been listening to regularly and had ripped for storage on the old machine sounds a lot better now, now it's been ripped again at substantially higher quality.
But all this is probably a blog in itself. And, having now broken my blogging duck, I'll leave it there. More soon - really!
Autumn's here - well, near enough. I wandered off to Tesco's to pick up some last-minute Bank Holiday shopping yesterday morning, and that first all-important bite in the air was present, a sure sign that my favourite season is on the way. The sky was a glowing blue, not a cloud to be seen, and it jollied me up considerably - and frankly, I needed it, as today sees the start of the autumn term at the College, Steen's first day back at work after the summer, and a mountain of paperwork to tackle both at work and at home. Summer's nice (when it's not raining, this being England 'n' all), but a bit too hot and sticky for me generally, whereas autumn just seems to get reasonably nice weather, albeit with that little bite in the air that means temperature-challenged Celtic-skinned types like me can go out more regularly without getting burnt or sticking to our clothes. I love it. The leaves changing colours and falling from the trees, conkers (which I never grew out of), bonfire night... Ah, it gives me a nice warm glow.
It's a been an odd summer, really. For one thing, it's seen me change computers again - the old Dell I was using became extremely unreliable, turning itself off at random and running the fan so hard that it sounded like a jet engine. Ultimately, Steen got so fed up with the racket (and me swearing colourfully and at length at the recalcitrant machine) that she green-lighted the cost of a ground-up new build, which for the first time I took on myself. Having obtained second opinions about various components, I settled on a list of fairly arse-kicking components which arrived quickly (praise be to Overclockers, who have been bloody marvellous, if not to Scan, who have been somewhat less so) and attempted my build. Frustratingly, all seemed to go fairly well (despite a few early nerves as I came to grips with installing a CPU cooling tower for the first time) until it was turned on, when nothing happened. Curses, thought I. Happily, a brief consultation with my mate Alan resulted in a fully-functioning machine. The problem? Due to some rather ropey instructions provided with the case, I had neglected to properly attach one of the motherboard's power cables. D'oh! Oh well, a lesson learned there...
So now I have a fab'n'groovy new machine. A pretty handy quad-core beastie, it is also running Windows 7 64K edition from an unfeasibly large hard drive, so I feel a bit like someone from the 1890s who has suddenly arrived in 2010. I have to give props to Windows 7, actually: a completely hassle-free install, and thanks to the compatability mode I've had no problems installing even the oldest, crustiest hardware/programs/drivers. A complete joy - and I've yet to see any malfunctions, blue screens of death or any of that sort of garbage. I've ceased to sweat and swear when I turn my PC on, and that is a gift, let me tell you.
One of the many side-effects of having a handy new computer at home with mega mondo amounts of storage has been a new-found willingness to re-rip a whole bunch of music at a much higher bitrate to said hard drive, in preparation for ultimately one day preparing a wireless audio server for Hippy Towers (at its current address or elsewhere). Don't get me wrong, I'll always have my CDs for those times when I can slump in front of the stereo and really wallow in some high quality audio, but you just can't beat the convenience of being able to stream audio to the device of your choice. Listening to whatever you fancy as you sit in the garden/in the bath/etc, without getting up and swapping around a bunch of discs every hour or so, really appeals.
The upshot of this is that I've had the time to get reacquainted with a whole lot of music that I either haven't heard enough, or haven't heard for an age. I dug out Sheryl Crow's self-titled sophomore album at the weekend, which I haven't heard in years, and it sounded as fresh as a daisy. Likewise Dream Theater's Images And Words, which I hadn't heard in aeons, All About Eve's gorgeous Touched By Jesus, Metallica's eponymous 1991 offering, and both volumes of Guns N' Roses' Use Your Illusion. It's been a very long time since I heard a lot of this stuff, and I've been sitting around mesmerised by it all for a couple of weeks now. And of course, even the stuff that I had been listening to regularly and had ripped for storage on the old machine sounds a lot better now, now it's been ripped again at substantially higher quality.
But all this is probably a blog in itself. And, having now broken my blogging duck, I'll leave it there. More soon - really!