Steam Powered

I must say I am very impressed with the Steam Gaming Platform. I know there are so many games that run on this but it's great to be able to play the ones that are my level obviously very retro and they cost next to nothing and actually work as they did when first released.

So far I have bought the Quake and Hexen packs which were lest than a tenner for both of them and am considering Doom which again is  a pittance, but all these are veritable timesinks or time vampires. I also got Civilization III for a massive 74p.

I would not regard myself as a Computer Gamer, I have a Nintendo Wii which I use about every six months, and when I see the latest XBox and Playstation Games I know that there is no way I could even start any of those games. These games now have budgets normaly associated with films, with scored soundtracks by major composers. I cannot see where I could put aside the time to actually take part in these games.

I remember buying a Steam Package which contained some amaging graphical games but just couldn't handle all the controls an dthen decided to uninstall it and forgot what my original account was.

Anyway I am really happy with this installation and it should keep me occupied for the odd half hour  when I need a bit of mental relaxation. So the natural music to accompany this (for me) is "It's A Game" by String Driven Thing which was also covererd by The Bay City Rollers.

Hope your Friday is going well.

New Year, New Book

I've finished "swords of Corum" by Michael Moorcock and now taking a break from Science Fantasy (though there is little Science and a lot of Fantasy and it suffers like "Elementary" of finishing off incidents too quickly ("I Killed All The Gods")) , and now I am starting "There Are No Maps In Hell" by  Steve Birkinshaw about his record breaking run of the 214 Wainwright Fells.

This is a book I bought just because of the title when I saw it in the 3 Peaks Cycle Shop in Settle (which also sells book and breakfasts and the people are really helpful. I'm hoping to get back there soon and try their breakfasts. They say never judge a book by the cover, so should you jusdge one by it's title? Well the title sold it to me and the cover is fairly good although completely different to my recent reading.

After this I will be back on Moorcock's Corum books in the "The Prince With The Silver Hand" which is heavily based on Irish Mythology, so looking forward to that as well.

This morning 6Music (John Hillcock) played "Bang The Drum All Day" and it sort of sums the feeling of coming back to work after the New Year for me. It is Friday though, so have a great day.

Bonjour 2019

For some reason I thought it was 2020, probably working in a Finance Department in the Financial Year 2019 for the last eight months. I do believe that tax and accountancy is just an annoying situation where a bunch of ex council pedants make up rules to make life difficult for everyone else.

Anyway less work talk and here we are on the first day of 2019 with my first post before my first sleep of the New Year. I' will go for (like I probably did last year) "New Year's Day" by U2 from the "Under A Blood Red Sky" album that I bought from Woolworth's in Goole when I was on my first contract at Hygena coding COBOL on a DEC/VAX . I was quite amazed when there was all the palaver about the Millenium Bug because I'd been programming since 1980 catering for the millenium, so how come programming in the late nineties didn't see the Millenium coming. Still "Under A Blood Red Sky" is one of my favourite U2 albums which I still play today

Not to worry, we are still here despite the morons in the USA and UK Governments at the moment and sure that we will deal with these like our bodies deal with infections, we will purge them.

Welcome to 2019 everybody.

Goodbye 2018 Hello 2019

Yes it's still New Year's Eve and I have been pondering the decline in visits since the end of October. Up to then I would get 30-50 hits for each post now it's 14-20 for each post with no apparent reason for the decline. However the real oddity is that the overall number of visits is staying at around 2m200 a month , that's roughly 520 a week or 70 a day, and given that I post maybe five times a week that implies more hits than I am getting.

The conclusion that I'm drawing is that Google visit logging is slightly disfunctional. The overal stats show that my most visited page is here with 879 visits (this figure keeps declining) however when I check the individual page it's had 1,899 visits when this one here shows as my second most visited with 679 visits but checking the page it's actually hit 2,114 visits. So really I need to take this fall with a rather big pinch of salt.

So although this is just about blog statistics, it is another excuse to share some rather excellent music with you though I'm not sure what that should be.

One thing with technology is that you don't had the problem of dating your cheques any more, I don't know why that flashed into my mind.

Everyone is posting various New Year Greetings on Social Media and out enjoying parties, and I binge watched Killing Eve, which was a very good way to spend New Year's Eve.

The weather has still been grey and uninspiring so we won't go into 2019 with a flurry of snow, but no doubt there will be noise and fireworks, so maybe I will choose "Fireworks"  by Siouxsie & the Banshees as my 2018 play out song, Happy New Year All.

Possibly Last Post Quiet

Walking to work this morning was very quiet, almost deathly silent. I wasn't sure whether there were any buses running until I hit the third bus stop and there were people waiting and then a bus went in the other direction.

It is New Year's Eve so most people will be getting ready for parties and socia;lising and joining together, but through laziness and apathy I wont be. I find a lot of gathering become very cliquey and if you are not in with a group of people then you get the worst kind of loneliness , the one of being the outsider in a crowd of revellers.

There are times where you just want to be alone and I wouldn't expect anyone to be bothered on my behalf because it's my choice to stay away.

This also gives me a chance to catch up on films and TV and to read and to record things on this here blog although I think there are maybe half a dozen people who read it now, but even when the vistor numbers flatline I will keep on writing because essentially this is for me and it is under my control.

There is also a chance I will do a last last post before midnight hits and then we start of 2019, which is another year of opportunity for some, and hopefully we can become a more caring society.

We have seen HMV going under again and find it ironic that people bemoan that kids will never know the joy of browsing for records. The fact is HMV is a chain and when it held power it looked to to take out the competition, especially small local independents. I find it ironic that lots of people who are involved in local and independent business (especially arts and music) who are bemoaning this but suddenly become blind to local music shops and venues, preferring chains, Spotify and big venues.

It's like saying I'll never be able to watch comedy again because Michael McIntyre is no longer touring. When your choice of product is narrowed to the ones all over the media it destroys the grassroots.

I'm sorry if this seems a bit ranty but a perferct piece of music for this is The Mekons "Where Were You?" which probably applies to most of us in most situations.

So if this is my last post for 2018 Happy New Year.

Aitchemvee

It looks like HMV are heading for administraion again. Last time their stores were selling anything, but music is still not their core sale product, although it is the core product you associate with HMV. One of the problems is that a great deal of people think that this is the only offline place you can get music. I Newcastle there are half a dozen record shops (listed and linked here)which a lot of people just ignore. Probably the same people who insist on going to Tesco rather than the Grainger Market for food.

They just sent me an email advertising their sale but the site doesn't work. Yesterday I bought two lots of vinyl from Discogs, which is a goldmine for both buying and selling music.

So I thought I would just mention this, it's not particularly important but they are blaming the high street malaise where everyone is shopping online. The thing is online is cheaper and often more convenient but it doesn't provide the interaction you get from a shop, that's for records or anything else. With that interaction you often get extra information and almost get a relationship with the person in the shop.

I don't know their names but I am friends with all the people in the shops I visit., and that takes me back to the shops. While I drop into HMV every now and then they are seldom my first port of call to buy a record, although I have bought from them. The problem is HMV is just another chainstore, it has no customer loyalty,  like any chainstore, and as such people will not be too botherd if it sinks or swims (apart from the employees), so I will share The Buzzcocks' "Why She's A Girl From The Chainstore" which seems sort of appropriate.

Quiet

It is that time between Christmas and New Year where you almost feel you are trapped in Limbo. Prior to Christmas I saw someone chatting about the 12 Days of Christmas with celebrations every day but it is basically Christams and New Year and then the outlet seems to be shop sales.

I would love 365 days of celebrations where everyone had a good time, looked out for their fellow man and no ne wanted for anything but unfortunately it's not like that. Commercialisation drives us to spend more money while ensuring we are paid less, and then complains that people are not spending money. People spend what they think they can afford.

This morning on my walk in I saw some amazing skies as the sun rose, examples on my Instagram feed are here. I have completed my steps for December 2018 although at the beginning I was thinking I might not make it, but the weather has become much milder and listening to music on the way in is excellent. Today I listened to Jordan Reyne's new album "Bardo" which is hypnotically dark and beautiful, much as I expected.

There are no video's for the new album yet so I have chosen "Bite" from "The Annihilation Sequence", all her albums are worth experiencing and available as a digital pack from Bandcamp.