To Buy or Not To Buy

... that is the question, I was thinking about getting a Google Pixel 3A and then I thought "What will it give me that I don't already have?". The onboard memory is double that of my Pixel , but that is really a minor thing. It may have better battery life, a faster processor and better cameras, but the reality is that it will not tangibly improve my life. I still miss the Samsung Note Stylus, but I am not paying a grand to be able to use a dedicated stylus every now and then.

Whether it's age or just being sensible I think for the foreseeable future I will just keep my current phone on my SIM Only plan.

It's like the roll out of 5G, seriously what do I need that for. I can see it's uses in a large scale or industrial environment, but for personal users the benefits, again, don't really affect you or me.

I've just finished Stephen Fry's "Mythos" and absolutely loved it and am following that up with Neil Gaiman's "Norse Mythology" which I am sure I will enjoy , being a fan of almost all mythologies, and I got into them at School not through Stan Lee's comics (that is not a dig at Stan Lee, just me showing my age).

The blog is set to hit 200K page views tonight, which is an unexpected surprise due to Feedburner helping me to hit 20K views this month. I really didn't see that one coming. Also I was only intending to do about 15 posts this month to hit 2K posts since the blog started, but I have manged to post 32 times this month.

A Sudden Surge on Seven Days In

Given that the post numbers are now corresponding with the years of our current timestream, I thought for the next ninety posts I could use a piece of music from the corresponding year. This is post 1932 so we'll go with the Cole Porter song "Night and Day" from "The Gay Divorcee" performed by Fred Astaire. I bet you weren't expection that. Although the first time I heard this song it was John Peel playing Tuxedomoon's take on it.

Focus On The Good

Working from home yesterday which meant I could listen to whatever music I wanted , although I did end up listening to 6Music for much of the afternoon. The issue with the Garden Waste payment was dealt with when I phoned Newcastle Council to tell them their site was down. They came back with the evergreen excuse "Oh You Know, Computers". I didn't bother pointing out that that you shouldn't make something public when it doesn't actually work, I then paid over the phone and that did work (hopefully).

Focus On The Good

Anyway I saw a post from my Facebook friend Raul Kohli (The Newcastle Brown Male, brilliant comedian) which was a short piece by Scroobius Pip eulogising appreciating the good  rather than going on about the bad. Too many times people just whine and moan about things, but while you have to deal with the bad, it should not become the main point of your life, although I see lots of people who are not happy unless they are miserable ad have something to complain about. I suppose the phrase "A Pessimist is Never Disappointed" does hold true.

This means I finally worked out a title for this post, and it's really to give priority to the good things in like like friends and family, socialising , music, theatre, film and good tv, and good food.




If you do focus on the good things in life it makes it easier to deal with the less savoury aspects of it. I've said it before that I always look for positives in disappointing situations. You miss your bus, it means you can walk to the next stop and get a little fitter. Though I know people who then say "What if it's raining?" or "What if it means you'll miss your train?" , to the first I would say stay under the bus shelter or run to a bus shelter, to the second I would say you should have caught an earlier bus.

You can always find fault with any situation, look to find the positives of you situation and build on them. I've included  "A Letter From God To Man" by Scroobius Pip which gives a little food for thought.

Stay Happy.

Thwarted

I'm giving the Laptop update attempt a rest, the guy is comping to fix the roof link later and the weather is good. I also decided to pay for the Garden Waste Collection for this year found the site and it told me to follow a new link if I was renewing. The new site is a beta site that doesn't work, so I thought I'd try the normal way. It told be I can't because I have paid before (last year).

It does amaze me the sheer volume of online idiocy who's normal excuse is YOU (the customer) must be doing something wrong. I don't know if  I've just become immune to it or what , but I just feel it's another example of the idiocy and buffoonery profligate in our world today. This is the page and the new link is at the bottom, but it resides here. It may work when you try this or they may change it on the live page to a live address.

I also woke up very early and couldn't get back to sleep and now feel tired, but I am showered and dressed and ready to get off to work, so no real option to go back to sleep, also I have a piece of work to do using my three screens at work before I work from home this afternoon.

So really what better song to share than "Gardening At Night" by REM, which I first heard when I bought the album "Epobymous",  who I've never featured in a post before which surprises me, Enjoy your day.

A Laptop Stole My Week

I am still trying to update the laptop to Windows 10. This is basically because the software I want to run on it won't run on Windows 8. It seems that every time I get past one brick wall there is another one waiting.

Added to that the leak in the roof is still there, I tried getting into the rook but my biggest ladder is not long enough so, I've ordered a longer ladder although hopefully the roofer will turn up and sort it out this afternoon.

The skies are very grey and it is frustrating not being able to get into the roofspace , but the new ladder should help with that. Water is very insidious, yes we need it to drink and clean but it can find it's way through the most unexpected paths.

The laptop had some software updates which I applied and apparently there are 619 issues for it to fix, if I pay £27 for software to do him. I feel this is, to say the least, underhand Toshiba.

So I am still in this limbo , though I am sure I will I will eventually get my way with it. As I say if Cars and Washing Machines were like computers no one would drive or wash anything. I don't know where the "Limbo" thought came from but it gives me a chance to share "Sitting In Limbo" by Jimmy Cliff.

A Laptop Stole My Day

I bought my dad a laptop for his 80th birthday. He virtually never used it, so I bought him a tablet and he gave me the laptop back. He likes the tablet, it's easy to use though he's still getting to grips with the concept of wifi, but he likes using ing to watch youtube videos and research things via Google. So far so good.

I was going to sell the laptop but the battery was dead, which means I can't really sell it. A new battery will cost £20 - £40 and I could maybe get £50-£60 for the laptop. Then I thought I only use laptops plugged in , so I could make use of it, then I thought get my guitar interface and keyboard and this could be the studio. It's a 64 bit operating system, and was thinking it looked slightly strange. Ut was because it's Windows 8.1 . So I thought simple, just upgrade the Windows 10 then it's the same as my desktop and other laptop. No problem.

That was about twelve hours ago and I am still trying to upgrade to Windows 10 and it keeps getting into a loop searching for updates. There is nothing worse than something looping when you cannot break the loop. This is similar to the incident in March with an unexpectedly lengthy update that I documented here.

I am still attempting to do this upgrade, and each try takes a long time. I have nearly written a few songs while this has been going on, but as the laptop is going to be my recorder they have flown off into the ether. I was playing along with songs on the radio including "Isis" by Bob Dylan, then sat and played the guitar solo from Thin Lizzy's "Emerald" and still I came nowhere near having a recorder.

So we have just passed midnight and slipped into the Bank Holiday Monday and the upgrade is going along with no sense of urgency whatsoever and I am hoping for success but feel that I will hit another brick wall. It is now of the "Checking For Updates" sequence and this is where it keeps failing although I have taken precautions to try and circumvent this situation. Things should just work. I always say that if Washing Machines and Cookers were like computers we would never cook or wash anything.

And it looks like it has stuck once more.

So what do I leave you with, well Thin Lizzy's "Emerald", the penultimate song from the album "Jailbreak", is one of their finest moments so we will go with that.

Still The Same and Ghostbusters is Great

I wasn't going to write a post today, intended to give it a rest as I am absolutely shattered, and want to go to bed, but also want to be sure that I will go to sleep. This afternoon I finished watching series two of "Black Books" which is consistently anarchically funny and tonight watched the reboot of "Ghostbusters". I was surprised and the remarkably low score it gets on IMDB but that is the power of white men scared of women with the ability to cast a digital vote. I mean women can't do what men can do can they? The answer is a resounding YES THEY CAN. There is no place for misogyny full stop.

I suppose the complaints about the final series of Game of Thrones is similar but is probably more triggered by the fact that Game of Thrones has now ended, so pedants can pick over plot holes rather than enjoying the amount of brilliant moments throughout the final series. You had two amazing battles , with buildups and then the fallout from those battle, and an anything but expected ending. At least it didn't go on for an hour like "The Return of the King".

The original "Ghostbusters"  is great , the reboot is brilliant and funny and I love it. The complainants are the same numpties , gammons and male "supremacists" who went mad over Jodie Whittaker becoming Doctor Who. We would probably get a similar reaction for a non white Doctor Who , but let's face it, Whoopi Goldberg and Samuel L. Jackson would be fine to fill those boots. Anyway, I'll say it again, "Ghostbusters" is great.

This post was just to note that I am still getting  over 1.2K hits per day, and there are still five recent posts in my top ten all time posts. The only problem sort of being is that posts over the last month are still getting hits, the last one that is not get hits is the one about the Facebook Ban here.

So because I have always loved the theme to the original "Ghostbusters" I will go with that, because the Ray Parker Jnr song is still cool and fun.

I Played A DVD

I am definitely becoming lazier and lazier. Also while I have a large CD and digital music collection, there are big chunks of it I have never heard and probably never will. It's similar with DVD. This week I have actually taken the DVD from it's place on the shelf, switched on the DVD player and switched the channel on the TV and actually watched  the films. The two I watched were "The Golden Compass" which was excellent but has been on the shelf unplayed for ten years, and "Fight Club" (adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's novel) which has been there for even longer. Both these films are excellent, and I should have watched them years ago, but apathy and laziness has meant that despite knowing how good these are ("The Golden Compass" was the film of the first book in Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" series which is coming on TV from HBO and BBC).

I don't know if this is just a digital malaise, because my vinyl collection is always played when I purchase anything and I often share things on my Instagram Channel , but when you buy digitally it is so easy to put it on one side for later, and after a week or so it's forgotten about. If anthing gets put in a box or a drawer then thats usually it. I still listen to music digitally from my network and on my phone, but still eschew streaming services such as Spotify or Amazon as to use them without wifi means that your data gets consumed fairly quickly, so I load albums from my network to my Google Pixel which I may upgrade to a Pixel 3A in the future.

So one of the good things of being in the digital world is that I can share suitable music with you as I post entries on this blog, but I do think digital storage has turned us into magpies , buying things that we don't actually use or properlay appreciate. With that I will share "Digital" buy Joy Division with you with an excellent video taken from the equally excellent film "Control".