Sleepypete's Pillow

I may have to do this list again a few times myself, with over 4000 tracks in the library, there's lots for the shuffle to choose from 🙂

I'm thinking of doing a 'What I listen to this weekend' thing from time to time to show the variety of music I listen to…..

Just spotted this one come round again on Facebook …

(1) Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer.
(2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.
(3) Write down the first 25 songs that come up–artist and song title–NO editing/cheating, please.

There’s more – but it’s Facebook tagging type stuff that’s not really appropriate for here. I usually tweak my iTunes DJ upcoming songs quite considerably but here’s the ones that iTunes picked out for me :

1 – Franz Ferdinand – Michael
2 – Ennio Morricone – Il Tramonto
3 – The XX – Basic Space
4 – a-Ha – Manhattan Skyline
5 – Madonna – Shanti/Ashtangi
6 – Alanis Morissette – Mary Jane
7 – All About Eve – Hide Child
8 – Star Wars (ROTJ soundtrack) – Alliance Assembly
9 – The XX – Night Time
10 – Babylon Zoo – Spaceman
11 – The Cardigans – Little Black Cloud
12 – Evanescence – Cloud Nine
13 – All About Eve – Wild Flowers
14 – Pink Floyd – Comfortably Numb
15 – Abba – Andante, Andante
16 – River City People – California Dreamin’
17 – Pink Floyd – Speak To Me/Breathe
18 – Sam Brown – Your Love Is All
19 – Goldfrapp – Dreaming
20 – Blondie – Hanging On The Telephone
21 – Paramore – Playing God
22 – Norah Jones – Thinking About You
23 – Murray Gold – I Remember You
24 – Hard-fi – Stars of CCTV
25 – Mansun – Fragile

Coming to the end of a very easy weekend at the moment. (Just tapping this out before slipping into the shower before a pre-bedtime gaming session)

Last weekend was pretty hectic. Being a bit busy meant the birthday weekend for me and the Big Sis got delayed until last weekend. First time I’d travelled a significant distance for a good long while (I’m not getting out enough at work) and apart from a very nervous trip past Leicester, the trip went fine. Nervousness was induced by me being the lead car taking impatient people up the A46 in medium fog in a 40mph roadworks limit where the temporary road markings weren’t up to the job of giving a worthwhile idea of where the road was.

Yep – nervous.

The trip back was much better. I travel in evenings, when the roads are theoretically quieter.

Hectic started when I got ready to start off. Start the iPod for iPodFM, put the radio to the transmitter channel. What’s this ? No sound. Take a peek, examine stuff. Think – there should be a metal bit on the end of my power adaptors (the plug part of the multiplug had fallen apart). No big deal, I’ll just slum it with cd’s with the power feed going to the satnav and then we’re going out tomorrow anyway, I’ll buy another multiplug for the car.

Arrive and it’s a check of my dad’s old laptop to see if its problem was actually terminal. Yep – a Blue Screen Of Death while trying to boot up and none of the Usual Suspects (safe mode) worked to make it better. That confirmed what we’d be doing the next day – heading into Lincoln to get him a new one. Oh – to buy a few more bits too … I also changed/updated the wi-fi password up there so it would be easier to get my mum’s new netbook connected.

We’re a techie family. Everyone with an active laptop now, me and me dad with a desktop and a few spare laptops lying around too. I’ve adopted the sysadmin job as well as on-call tech support. It teaches you a bit, mostly to remember your tracks so you can follow them with your eyes closed. Cos that’s effectively what they are if the kit is a few hundred miles away using different software. We manage 🙂

Where was I ? Old laptop has its hard disc removed (oops – skipped a bit), ready to be put in a Widget for taking its data. We could have run what’s called a “Factory Restore” but that has the side effect of wiping the laptop clean. Not desirable. And I’ve just remembered something else I need to do …

Saturday and we raid the Pub, check out the goods, get disappointed by Halfords (no car power socket multiplugs – disappointing as usual for there) and then Buy Stuff. We’re now 3:1 Acer, with my sister being the rebel with a Toshiba. My dad’s old Acer did pretty well, only the catastrophic software failure in at least 3 years. Mine is “as new”, the only problems are M$ software.

Saturday night, we’re watching Strictly while munching dinner. What’s turning out into a tradition is that we listen to the iTunes stuff after. Not a bad tradition 🙂 I ended up doing some early config on my dad’s laptop too.

Skipped another bit. Threadlock is bad. You know those screws that just won’t budge ? Well, after you’ve hit them with a hammer enough to make them move, there’s usually a splodge of blue stuff in there. That’s Threadlock and it’s effectively glue to keep screws in the socket. It’s also very good at making people swear when putting hard discs into Widgets that let you pull the data off.

Meh – after “persuasion”, I get the data from my dad’s old laptop into his new one. Except one bit (old emails) which I’ll fix next time I’m up there because it’s Geek Level expertise needed.

That’s not it for the techie stuff – we also set up their Kodak printer. It’s a wifi printer, so no cables to hook up to make it play nice. It actually worked far better than I thought. It connected to the network first time (Linksys router – doesn’t need prodding, it just Works) and after a hefty download, ready for use. Can’t ask for much better than that. Thumbs up for Kodak.

Off to the pub again for a birthday nosh on the Sunday before heading off back home. Faith in tech not playing restored itself due to a (Probably Kaspersky) bit of “I’m not talking any more” from my sister’s laptop. Oh well. If it went 100%  right, I’d be suspicious that I’d forgotten something.

Hectic – but worthwhile. It’s great to see the family up norf every once in a while, plus I get a good slurping from Muttley (aka Ben the Staffy). And sorting out all that IT goes some way to countering any feelings of not achieving much that I was expressing a few posts down.

PS I think I have a new fixation – she’s called Tessa and has that intrepid attitude that probably has her bosses going “Cold, wet, snowing, freezing, chance of getting stranded there – We’ll send Tessa, she’ll love it”. And it shows in the very high quality of her reporting.

Yep – waiting for Avatar to go down to a reasonable price before buying it. I picked up Alice in Wonderland in the 2 for £25.

Hmm – not watched the new Star Trek on the new kit yet. Maybe that's next after I have the recorded stuff backlog out the way 🙂

I haven't seen this one yet but it's on my list. I can't remember if it was this year or the end of last but my favourite movie of the last 12 months (ish) is Avatar and I don't give a damn that it's Pochahontas being retold. All the best stories are! 🙂 I also love the new Star Trek film which I have watched so mnay times now that I have lost count!

It had its moments……

One of my favourite films of 2010 was Alice in Wonderland :

We kinda knew what to expect with this one when the Crazie Mob went to see it in the movies at the start of the year. Curiouser and Curiouser went the Crazies as this rather delightful movie unfolded before us.

Most movie adaptations follow the books they came from, some more loosely than others. It takes a brave crew to totally redo the tale. What we have here is an utterly charming tale of rabbits, March hares, mad hatters, Evil and Good Queens, knavely knaves, strange creatures and the wonderful Alice at the centre of it all.

It caught the 3d fashion but I have to admit, I never saw it in 3d. Before watching it again tonight, I watched a couple of the extras which gave me pointers on things to look for (the colour of the Mad Hatter’s outfits …). And then I started watching and forgot all that. A movie/book shouldn’t be about the tricks in play, it should be about the story. And they’ve done very well here.

I don’t want to say much more, as a movie as good as this needs to be watched to allow its tale to bring the viewer with it. Let’s just say, watch this movie and you will finish with a :

Guaranteed. It’s my Movie of the year.

Ninja-edit – oops. I’d forgotten how brilliant Inception was. Alice = 2nd best movie of the year.

Doing better now 🙂 This post had the usual (and desired) effect … By scribbling down the frustrations I can sort them out in my head, which is a good first step to dealing with them.

I think the second step is the refusal to end on a low note, which gets me thinking on the positives 🙂 Like the Currys girl in the shop earlier catching the Grin(tm) 🙂

I'm sorry you feel this low. The shorter days and the darkness can't help either. I am glad that work is somewhere you enjoy going though. I used to but I absolutely dread going in these days. I think I have one of the worse bosses around. Hence why I am in similar poor shape and also looking forward to Xmas. It can't come soon enough 🙂