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Expenditure
Mar. 6th, 2006 04:05 pmBefore the main thrust of this post, a couple of diversions.
Winamp has gone the way of ICQ, and deteriorated horribly since being bought by AOL. At the moment it's failing to notice that I have a CD in the drive which it was happily playing 20 seconds ago. It also tends to be much less reliable with CDs now that it attempts to digitally extract the audio, and when you try and tell it to use the traditional method you get silence instead. Winamp 3 never had any problems. Nice one, Nullsoft. Oh, and it crashes every time I close it, but I think that might well be the Last.fm plugin (which is in fact the only reason why I use Winamp 5).
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blackwidowphoto may be impressed to hear that I picked up the latest issue of Zero Tolerance magazine from the little corner shop on the main road into town. I remember when you couldn't even get Terroriser in WHSmiths so things have come a long way. Anyway, I mainly bought the magazine for the Daylight Dies track on the cover, which did not disappoint - not that an album described as having a "similar style to Opeth, Paradise Lost, Dark Tranquillity, and Katatonia" would. Where do I sign?? Oh, wait - I already pre-ordered my copy. Anyway, one less positive thing about Zero Tolerance is that some of the writing and editing is a bit poor. I spotted several errors on the Daylight Dies article page alone, not to mention a hideous monstrosity that was a 2.5" x 6" paragraph of small text. Shockin'. Are they looking for more editors, Sarah? They should be. ;)
Anyway, I had a 'quiet night in' on Friday and Saturday, followed by a mad post-pay-day retail mission on Sunday. The fruits of this latter endeavour include:
On a more negative note, I saw more Guantanamo Bay news today - c'mon Americans, sort it out. Unless you want more terrorism, which arresting an assortment of foreign nationals, and lying and calling them "people picked up off the battlefield" - when in fact a large number of them were arrested in Pakistan - is likely to cause. Indefinite detentions without charge for 'national security' is what you'd expect in North Korea, or 70s Cambodia, or some war-torn central African 'democratic republic', not in a country that professes to spread liberty and human rights.
Winamp has gone the way of ICQ, and deteriorated horribly since being bought by AOL. At the moment it's failing to notice that I have a CD in the drive which it was happily playing 20 seconds ago. It also tends to be much less reliable with CDs now that it attempts to digitally extract the audio, and when you try and tell it to use the traditional method you get silence instead. Winamp 3 never had any problems. Nice one, Nullsoft. Oh, and it crashes every time I close it, but I think that might well be the Last.fm plugin (which is in fact the only reason why I use Winamp 5).
blackwidowphoto may be impressed to hear that I picked up the latest issue of Zero Tolerance magazine from the little corner shop on the main road into town. I remember when you couldn't even get Terroriser in WHSmiths so things have come a long way. Anyway, I mainly bought the magazine for the Daylight Dies track on the cover, which did not disappoint - not that an album described as having a "similar style to Opeth, Paradise Lost, Dark Tranquillity, and Katatonia" would. Where do I sign?? Oh, wait - I already pre-ordered my copy. Anyway, one less positive thing about Zero Tolerance is that some of the writing and editing is a bit poor. I spotted several errors on the Daylight Dies article page alone, not to mention a hideous monstrosity that was a 2.5" x 6" paragraph of small text. Shockin'. Are they looking for more editors, Sarah? They should be. ;)Anyway, I had a 'quiet night in' on Friday and Saturday, followed by a mad post-pay-day retail mission on Sunday. The fruits of this latter endeavour include:
- a digital camera, after years of not owning any camera whatsoever. This has allowed me to create at least one cringeworthy MySpace Picture™ and capture the squirrels outside in action. I will also take it out and about, if only to hopefully pay fiendil back for his heinous camera crimes committed against me over the last 3 years.
- 3 books, called "Basic Vocal Workout", "Basic Keyboard Workout", and "Basic Rhythm Programming", all useful stuff for what I need to be doing. I was particularly impressed with the vocal one as the guy, a 50 year old music teacher, is very adamant that heavy metal has redefined the world of singing by comprehensively disproving the old limits assigned to the bass/tenor/soprano/etc divisions.
- A glowing mouse pad with built-in 4 port USB hub - handy for connecting the camera/MP3 player/flash drive to, and, well, it glows blue round the edges. Bonus.
- A copy of Physics Demystified because I think I should know more about physics. And maybe when I get around to reading this, I will.
- 2 CDs - 'Iron' by Ensiferum and 'Sleep of Reason' by The Eternal. The Eternal have almost ripped off Paradise Lost's celtic crown of thorns logo on the cd inlay. It's quite amusing.
On a more negative note, I saw more Guantanamo Bay news today - c'mon Americans, sort it out. Unless you want more terrorism, which arresting an assortment of foreign nationals, and lying and calling them "people picked up off the battlefield" - when in fact a large number of them were arrested in Pakistan - is likely to cause. Indefinite detentions without charge for 'national security' is what you'd expect in North Korea, or 70s Cambodia, or some war-torn central African 'democratic republic', not in a country that professes to spread liberty and human rights.
