Year: 2009

I have a separates system with Wharfdale speakers and it really does make a difference. However, you have not heard anything unless you’ve played music through a decent professional system. We used to do this all the time in the theatre while we were setting up shows 🙂

You are cordially invited to
A ‘Hearts and Flowers’ Party
from 8pm UK time
Friday 13 February 2009
until 12 midnight UK time
Sunday 15 February 2009
at the Palace of the Crazie One

http://craziequeen.blogspot.com/2009/01/hearts-and-flowers-party.html

cq

You obviously like music a lot. 🙂

It has been a while since I started up this blog 🙂 Although I did have that big long break in the middle.

So what have I been up to over the past couple of days ? One of my targets of things to buy has been a bag for the laptop – which has led to me joking about handbag shopping 🙂 Still getting a bit of mileage out of that one but I’m having to start watching out there cos the joke’s getting stale and expected. So I need to find me a new joke.

I’ve been enjoying the iTunes -> Airport to decent speakers quite a bit over the last week or so and I’ve finally got the setup tweaked to absolute satisfaction. When I first hooked it up, I’d not long since watched Iron Man, so my speakers had crept into being a little bass heavy. Not me – the subwoofer dial crept up on its own … honest 🙂 The problem was there just a little too much bass for music. You need some bass in there to make the punchy bits punchy but too much tends to drown out the subtle parts of the music.

It’s just about right now and is showing off one of the new albums I got yesterday extremely well. That’s Rockferry by Duffy, I grabbed the deluxe edition with an extra 25 minutes of Duffy. I’m not so impressed with the other one, which was Snow Patrol’s Songs for Polar Bears. I think my Snow Patrol expectations must have been raised quite a bit by Final Straw and Eyes Open, which are both outstanding albums.

What’s the big deal about having the music on the decent speakers ? If you haven’t heard decent, well set up hifi sound, then you really don’t know what you’re missing. Honest 🙂 A good setup brings out all the subtlety that the artists put into their music plus you’re able to pick out the individual parts a lot better. Things like the trumpet solos, the drums and strings on Gloria Estefan’s Oye Mi Canto (current iTunes track). And Mark Knopfler going “1,2,3” when kicking off guitar on Making Movies. Tori Amos and the pedals of the piano.

All good stuff, which people tend to miss out on either because their speakers aren’t up to it or aren’t set up properly. My speakers aren’t great (I’ll be looking to replace them with the HD upgrade I’ll do) but they mostly do a good job. They’re a set of surround speakers made by Creative Labs about 10 years ago, which aren’t available now but cost me about £200 when I got them. They’re designed for being hooked up to PCs, with 5 small speakers to surround you and 1 subwoofer to deliver the bass. I haven’t actually had mine connected to a PC for 7 years now. Since I moved into this house, they’ve been permanently hooked up to my dvd player, with the Airport Express now letting me get iTunes music across to them.

What’s on the playlist at the moment ?

I’ve picked up albums by Paramore, Hoosiers and Goldfrapp as well as the Snow Patrol and Duffy ones, so I’ll be listening to those soon as albums instead of as the individual tracks. Duffy’s is the best of that collection. Arctic Monkeys has been a very pleasant surprise, their cheeky sound will be gracing my Party Shuffle and iPod for quite a while. Lene Marlin has another album out as well as the two I have, that’ll be coming from Amazon some time 🙂 Evanescence is another where I’ll be hunting more albums.

There’s also the old favourites like Mark Knopfler’s Dire Straits, Kate Bush, Gloria Estefan, Alisha’s Attic, Pink Floyd, Tori Amos and Edie Brickell. The iTunes library is currently sitting at 2287 songs for 6.5 days of music and I’ve actually listened to 1112 of those over the past fortnight.

PS No handbag yet. Friday’s centre of Bristol session got pushed into being a Saturday session because I was getting pain from my right hip. No handbags on show in the centre, which was kinda expected. I aborted the trip up the hill to Borders though cos of traffic and didn’t peek in the Staples. Kinda unsure about how to get into the Staples near Cabot Circus, there doesn’t seem an obvious way in from the main roads. Not too bothered there cos I’ll be very close to a different Staples at the end of the month when I go to wish my dad a happy birthday 🙂

PS2 No dropouts whatsoever on the Airport audio link … the only issue has been that this laptop can be a little slow to find the router again after I need to reset it. (Router issue) Will be checking out a utility called Airfoil sometime, which will let me throw any audio to the Airport, not just iTunes. Could be handy when I get a decent telly to let me take advantage of the HDMI output 🙂

I’ve finally added something new to the stories blog !

It’s not fiction though I’m afraid … I’m turning it into a Geek Zone. One thing I used to do a lot at work was contribute to a Help Needed folder covering computers. I kinda miss that and the Geek Zone will be one way of indulging that side of me without confusing too many people here 🙂

The link is on the right under “Sleepypete Stories” still – until I upgrade my template here I can’t change that blogroll. Something to do later that is.

Anyway – first couple of new posts are on there, have a peek if you want to know what I really think of my new laptop 🙂 It’s a fairly lengthy review so the one line summary is :

Nice – does the job so I’m keeping it 🙂 It’s a very competent piece of hardware.

If there’s any techie questions people want an answer to, please do drop me a line. I’ll post it up on the other blog and hopefully add an answer if I know anything useful 🙂

Curious 🙂

www.laptopstuff.co.uk could be a good one too. Think in the not too distant future (i.e. when I go hunting for birthday presents for my dad!) I’ll be laptop handbag shopping in the centre of Bristol to see what I can find.

Wonder if Janinekingdesigns has an equivalent in the UK …

janinekingdesigns on etsy

I got my bag from her and then another for my niece

they are padded, waterproof
outside zipper pocket
2 deep pockets on the inside lining

under $100

the only thing I’m not sure of is the array of patterns – for me I bought a black and white chinese design and for my niece a mad mod polka dot thingie

I don’t know if she has designs to compliment you incredible manliness!!

if not her – do check out others on etsy, I love it there

I’m going to be joking with people that I’m shopping for handbags with that laptop bag 🙂

I’m reasonably impressed with Vista so far – it insulates you from all the techie behind the scenes stuff. That’s ok for now but I get the feeling that when a software problem comes along, it’ll lead to much worse headaches than XP and before. We’ll see how resilient it is 🙂

The smoothness could be to do with this probably having the beefiest cpu that I’ve had so far … Hard to believe that it’s probably got more grunt than the desktop machine I use for gaming 🙂

I’m getting more impressed with the Airport Express widget – I’m hearing more detail in the iTunes music than I used to, cos it’s able to send that detail to the decent speakers. Trouble is, looks like iTunes 8 is broken for the Airport Express and I gather iTunes 8 is needed for the iPhone …

Ah, the joys of the Mall at sale time – NOT! I wnet there too and thought it was not worth bothering with on the whole. You might wnat to try John Lewis for laptop bags, though I got a decent one for my wide screen lappy on Ebay 🙂

I notice also that you’ve gone to Vista, take it from someone who has barttled with it for the last 18 months or so. Go back to XP! It’s slow, pondorous and full of bugs and it drives me nuts. So much so that I am considering getting a Mac (also for iPhoto and smoother interface with my iTouch).

BTW – thanks for the offer of tunes for my sojourn in hospital but I have downloaded plenty from my extensive library. I appreciate the offer though 🙂

This time of year, I’m usually doing at least one Mall run to pick up more stuff in the sales. I had another objective tonight, my new laptop is a bit wider than the last one, so I need to get a new bag to put it in.

This is where the ickle flaw becomes apparent …

The cunning plan has worked beautifully, the new lappy is letting me stream music in pretty high quality to my decent speakers. All without yet another wire stretched across the room that I will trip up on. The ickle flaw is finding a decent bag, large enough to put it in. Eva Green’s character in Casino Royale says “There are dinner jackets and there are dinner jackets.” Well – there’s laptop bags and then there’s laptop bags.

My requirement in a laptop bag isn’t too onerous … I just want one that has decent strengthening in the sides to protect the laptop from crushing, plus a place to put the power supply that won’t cause the plug to create scoring on the laptop lid. Having trouble finding one at the moment but I’m sure I’ll figure something out 🙂

Oh – I have more cds to feed the iTunes monster 🙂 I’ll be listening later to :

Goldfraap – Seventh Dream
The Hoosiers & The Trick To Life
Paramore – Riot!

I like sales 🙂

PS I may be doing something constructive with the Stories blog. When I first started working in Bristol, I made a bit of a name for myself as a PC hardware/software guru … by carefully picking the questions on the forums to give an answer to. In other words, keeping quiet when I didn’t have a clue but otherwise helping out where I could. I miss that now, the forums got killed a couple of years ago due to the forum supervisor wanting to have less work to do. So an extremely useful resource got lost to the site. But I may well be doing something with the Stories blog which resurrects that … By putting the odd techie post on there 🙂

PPS It’s darn cold here ! The weather widget I picked up from the UK Metoffice (linked) is saying it’s -5.7 degrees C. Think I may be playing pooter games later, not as something to do but so I can put my tootsies near where the hot air comes out 🙂