Positively Now Street

Not sure what to say this post is about. There's a lot of bad things happening , mostly to people fairly far removed from me. It's therefore easy to write about stuff complaining about the bad , and lets face it it's always easy to find something wrong or to complain about stuff , without having an idea how to fix it. Anyway I always lokk for good stuff , positives , things to make me smile. I love seeing pics of my daughter Juliet and her fiance Paul's cat and the fantastic meals they make  and my daughter Kirsty's music and gaming posts  and her and Mark's dogs' Moll's pictures and videos. There is a lot in life to enjoy.

My Music Boxes - Abba , Roxy , Little Feat etc

Anyway a couple of things I was looking at a small part of my record collection , particularly the Original Album series and other boxes and  realised than the starting with Madness - The Lot and finishing with Little Feat's Original Album series contains around 100 CDs which is approximately 100 hours or four continuous days of (though I say it myself) excellent music. And that's just a single row on a rack. I'm still ripping this lot to hard disc so I can listen through my home network.

This week I was introduced to the attrociously named Deezer , which has an equally attrocious sign up process expecting a Facebook account these days , but once you're on it is effectively a music library service. You never own the music but for a fiver a month you can listen to anything they have , although the excellent Tempest by Bob Dylan is missing from their base , but I have been listening to the new British Sea Power album courtesy of Deezer.

My home studio - now operational

The other thing is that I finally have my home studio working consisting of an iPad with Garageband and a couple of other music software things, plus an Alesis I/O Dock and Q49 Keyboard , all now working after months of trauma getting things to talk to each other.

The I/O Dock lets you plug things into it like guitars and microphones so expect to have something online this week , just a bit of ambient improvisation , but that has made me really happy as well. Just hope the noise that comes out thats good.

I finished EH Gombrich's A Little History Of The World , the book I'll be distributiong for World Book Night 2013 and think I write a piece and put together a video montage of this years books. But we shall see. Any the book is excellent and fantastic for any parents with children under twelve who are open to learning about history. Well written and jargon free. Recommended for anyone.

Finally next week have tickets to see Omid Djalili at The Stand in Newcastle so things are generally good.

Transistor Transformation

In the early sixties youth carried music around in the palm of it's hand in the form of transistor radio, stations playing the latest rock and roll hits to satisfy the "kids" . Phil Spector listenned to each song he produced with his tradmark wall of sound to ensure it sounded good on a transistor radio, because that was his sales window. If it sounded good on radio then the market would buy it.

Radio has progressed through MW to FM to DAB and portables are part of your average phone either i the form on an inbuilt tuner using the headphone wires as an aerial or streaming media , which is effectively data that your supplier will charge you for. So the kids are still listening to music on portable devices that can be held, it's just now they have a little more choice and control and they are paying for it.

Ironic ,fifty years on,that  a phone costing maybe seven or eight hundred pounds is being used for the same purpose as a cheap transistor radio. Though I am well aware that todays phones are actually very powerful computers but it's still quite amusing.

Not Maintaining Standards

Despite the fact I'm impressed with my iPad, Apple continue to flabbergast me with their continual ignorance of standards . Was recently at my mate Mark Tovey's had he showed an excellent Android Media player that I could install on my Samsung Note called BS Player. This works like a dream allowing you to play media from you network drives after connecting to wifi. Would love if it would connect over 4G , but lets not complain. It allows to set a home directory and then has fast negotiation of you network drive to play whatever media you want , video or music.

I thought the iPad is wifi based , but I can only do the sameby installing an Air Play server on my PC and have another Apply lump of bloatware slowing my system down. My big gripe with Apple is that device are not self contained. You need iTunes on your PC that you have to sync with your iPhone or iPad or both often ending up in horrendous autorisation knots. The softare on the device should do the job independently . Yes you can sync between machines but that should not be mandatory.

Oh yes and the iPhone 5 has a different connector to prior iPhones , when other manufacturers are moving towards a standard USB connector. So god forbid that you leave your charger at hone.

So I wont be using my iPad as a streaming player anytime soon , like I can do with my phone.

April Fools

Well it's a new month and new financial year and the school bullies (Cameron , Clegg , Osborne , Ducncan- Schmidt) have chosen the easy targets again (anyone on benefits). You can imagine them at school each September picking out the apparently weakest new pupils , then running home to mummy if they ended up with a bloody nose.

I'm lucky that I have a job and a house so am personally not affected , but was severely attacked under Thatcher , recieved no support when I had a hundred mile return commute when my daughter was severely ill in the Royal Manchester Childrens Hospital. I was helped through that by my bank manager at the Midland Bang in Tarleton who gave me the extra money I needed for petrol and said we'd sort when my daughter was better , which we did . The government gave no help at all bar still allowing the NHS to exist.

The current re organisation was tried fifteen years ago under the tories and failed then. It is designed for "private enterprise" to cherry pick profitable bits (often made profitable by tying the NHS intp extortionate contracts) . The last three governments don't seem to understand the concept of services and utilities.

The mass privatisations have just resulted in spiralling costs paid for by the electorate.

The government continually attack the low paid, the disabled and people on benefits while actively encouraging large corporations such as Starbucks, Amazon , Google  NOT to pay tax on monies earned in this country.

Benefit Fruad in this country is estimated ate 1.1 Billion though this site reckons it is more like 5.5 Billion. Corporation Tax avoidance (that we know about) is between 8 and 14 billion (see here) , yest this is not being addressed at all by this government . It's the school bully mentality , go for the easy target who cant fight back , and probably you will find that those companies are contributing to the government coffers. So even in the worst case scenarion Corporation Tax avoidance is 60% than benefits fraud.

I am not condoning either , but cutting benefits is the bullies answer. Providing living wage jobs and actually targetting fraud would mean that cuts would be minimal.

It's Still Easter

and I haven't had an Easter Egg. I'm sure that lots of people will make up for me though

Clocks Go Forward

and today for the first time in over ten years I ordered a new alarm clock. I suppose Easter weekend is an ideal time to put the clocks forward as it allows those of us who don't work in retail to easily absorb the lost hour of sleep.

One good thing about being in this digital and electronic age is you only have to adjust mechanical items such as clocks and non networked items. Phones and computers now do themselves spo to speak.

So tomorrow is time for Easter Eggs , Church Celebrations if you are so inclined . I shall just be mostly resting.

I was originally going to use Coldplay and The Buenavista Social Club's Clocks , but then remembered Marillion's Easter and thought that would be more appropriate.

A Little History Of The World

Every Home Should Have One

I've started reading this book by Ernst Gombrich and four chapters in I've convinced that any family that has children under ten should have a copy of this. It's written in a simple, generally jargon free manner and is likely to spark interest and questins from inquisitive minds.



It's nice to come across something positive for young children and also to able to promote it as I shall be doing on April 28th.




Books stimulate the mind whether on paper or in ebook format and all children should be encouraged to read from as early an age as possible even if teachers don't like it .



Both my daughters knew their alphabet and the use of upper and lower case by the time they started school and amazingly some teachers said this was wrong. Luckily their primary school in Sunderland encouraged their reading and both had finished the Lord of The Rings by the age onf 10. I only started on the Hobbit at that age!