Vinyl Ripping

Finally set up my new toy the mp3 turntable.
Connected it up and loaded the program (Audacity) and was ready to go.
Had a look around and found some old vinyl 7'' singles which were in a box ready to go to a boot sale one day to test it out.
First problem was despite following all the instructions I can't get any sound through my PC :(
But the waveform appears on screen so I knew it was working and would be able to play it back once it was ripped and saved/converted.
The first single I tried seemed to be taking forever to play, turned out it had got stuck halfway through and I had about 10 minutes of the same groove :(
Tried a different single which recorded perfectly but when I played it back it was hard to concentrate as it seemed to amplify every single scratch and dust particle.
Will have to put some practice into this (and buy a new cleaning cloth).

Jokes

Favourite jokes at the moment (oldies but goodies).
.
Q - Why don't cannibals eat clowns?
A - They taste funny
.
Did you hear about the dyslexic devil worshipper who sold his soul to Santa?
.
Boy with no fingers goes to buy an ice cream from an ice cream van,
Ice cream man says "what flavour do you want sonny"?,
Boy says "don't matter I'm gonna drop it anyway".
.
I went to buy some camouflage trousers the other day but I couldn't find any.

Thoughts For The Day

Found these on the net a while back, and thought I'd share them.

I want to die while asleep like my Dad, not screaming in terror like the passengers in his bus.
It's hard to make a comeback when you haven't been anywhere.
If ignorance is bliss, why aren't more people happy?
I didn't fight my way to the top of the food chain to be a vegetarian.
The trouble with life is there's no background music.
I just want revenge. Is that so bad?
I may be fat, but you are ugly and I can lose weight.
Practicing Safe Sex? Give yourself a hand!
If we weren't supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat
Out of my mind. Back in five minutes.
Sometimes I wake up grumpy; other times I let her sleep.
Some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them.
Practice safe sex, go fuck yourself.
If you don't believe in oral sex, keep your mouth shut.
One good thing about Alzheimer's is you get to meet new people every day.
Why don't you ever see the headline "Psychic Wins Lottery"?
Why is it that doctors call what they do "practice"?
Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?
Why isn't there mouse flavoured cat food?
Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?
Driver Carries No Cash, He's Married
If you can't feed 'em, Don't Breed 'Em
Your village called, Their idiot is missing
I am Not an Alcoholic.....I'm a Drunk. Alcoholics go to meetings.
Politicians and nappies both need to be changed often, and for the same reason"
If I throw a stick, will you leave?
Don't hate yourself in the morning, sleep till noon.
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
If you think there is good in everyone, you haven't met everyone.

Rip Off Britain (Part 2)

Bloody cheating newsagents.

Getting sick of all the newsagents round here who try to rip you off everytime you buy something.
1) The nearest one is a family business and the father has always seemed pretty honest and is a nice guy, but his missus is a nightmare every single time I've bought something which needs change I'm handed the change a pound short, and she seems really put out when you point out her mistake.
I learnt very quickly to keep my hand on the counter and count out the change after the first few times where she basically accused me of fiddling her!! "I definitely gave you the right change" she said in a loud voice as I walked off before checking, it would probably seem to the other customers she was playing to that I was trying to scam her.
She obviously makes a habit of it as despite my many complaints over the years it happens everytime I go in there, and if I was the only one surely she would remember me.
A nice little earner.

2) Another newsagent I use sometimes has an old guy who's scam involves holding back any notes in the change, for example if you buy something for a couple of quid and give him a tenner he will hand over the coins then wait to see if you walk out.
If you stand there for a minute waiting he will go back to the till and get the fiver.
Never get an apology, another nice little earner.

3) Last week I had to use the newsagent in the hospital and sure enough my change came up a pound short.
I mentioned it to my missus who used to work there and described the woman, and she says "yeah she's always doing that", so I said to her how come you didn't do it as you were always broke when you worked there and you could have earnt a fortune, but she's too honest.

Rip Off Britain (Part 1 of Many)

Why is everyone scamming so much these days, whatever happened to honesty?
Listening to the latest revelations about the television phone votes scam, with Michael Grade making up lame excuses that ITV hadn't come to terms with the public interaction on TV shows and that no one was to blame and saying "I wish it hadn't happened", while really meaning "damn they've rumbled us" and "I wish we hadn't got caught".
Surely everyone can see that these "celebrity" shows are just a money making exercise, the old style Saturday night game show is long gone where a member of the public could win 3 grand if they were lucky and you just sat back and enjoyed it, now it's all Celeb come dancing, celeb ice skating, celeb cooking etc where the winner doesn't get any prize money but you have to ring in and vote at anything up to £1.50 a go.
Simple maths - old show could cost the tv company 3 grand, new show makes them millions with no outlay, even if they did it legally.Those after midnight quiz shows on a lot of stations are a total rip off, you have to ring up at 75p a go even if you don't get through, I guess they have tens of thousands of calls every hour and every five minutes or so they actually take a call, and even if you get through the chances of winning a prize are minimal as the quiz answers are really obscure, funny if you haven't wasted your money though :)
Question = White things
Top 3 Answers = Honduran white bat, Winter white Russian dwarf hamster, Coconut milk powder.
Wonder why no one got them :)

Rumbled

The music blog had a pretty poor start with most of the files deleted within 10 days of uploading :(

As some of those deleted are long out of print items I'm guessing it was the serial deleter, who seems to have hit a lot of my favourite bloggers recently.

Although my twisted mind thinks maybe anyone selling the second hand versions (on e-bay for example) might have cause to complain?

Not unduly worried as I get most pleasure from just re-finding old stuff I haven't listened to for ages, and the search for info about the bands usually turns up more stuff I'd forgotten about :)

Big Gob = Small Brain

Just an opinion, based on experience.

Can't Find It

Often made the statement "you can find anything on the internet".
Met my match tonight as I've spent hours looking for a discography with track listings of the band "Alberto Y Lost Trios Paranoias" and I can't find one.
Have a collection of their stuff on mp3 which was given to me by a mate several years ago who was/is a big fan, but he's moved and we've sort of lost touch.
Was thinking of putting these tracks into album order for posting on the other blog, as I was always being asked to repost them on the old "punk torrents" site many years ago.
Also was hoping to settle my mind what tracks were on the "heads down, no nonesense" single I bought back when it was new? it was a double single which I'm sure had 6 tracks on it, but the only info I can find says it only had 4 tracks?
Another "I wish I hadn't sold it" story as it seems to have been a rarity and the basic 1 disc copy is going for silly money :(

Confusing

So I try to log in here and I get the message "You cannot login because cookies are disabled"?
I've not changed anything as far as I know.
But I hit the back button and I'm logged in, confusing!!

Coffee

I think I drink a lot more coffee than the average person, usually 10-20 cups a day!! My excuse being a medical condition, as I tend to fall asleep all the time if I don't have my Caffeine fix, and I don't like Red Bull or taking Pro-Plus tablets.
But mainly because I really like Coffee.
But despite a coffee addict I have a huge gap in my knowledge, as I don't have a clue what goes into those poncey coffee's they sell in most high streets, I haven't a clue what a Skinny Latte or a Mocha Capucino is? the thought of spending 4 quid on a cuppa seems alien to me, when a whole jar of Nescafe costs less.
I suppose it goes back to ordering a coffee after a meal in a semi-posh restaraunt once, I can't remember exactly what type it was, but I was expecting a big mug of strong coffee with a flavour to die for. Instead I was presented with a cup from a kids tea set with less than a mouthfull of what tasted like Happy shopper instant.
Decided to read up on what makes these strangely named cuppas and came across this explanation "Espresso, while apparently a simple drink, is in reality a complex product. It is derived from 1500 chemical substances (800 volatile and 700 soluble), and when prepared correctly involves 13 independent chemical and physical variables", Sounds more like a recipe for a bomb than a drink?
So basically there's coffee and milk coffee just made hotter than you would at home.
Remember reading years ago that if you put boiling water on coffee it released Carcinogens which cause Cancer, whereas it was safe if the water was "off the boil" about 80°C, so surely these steam heated coffee's aren't safe?
Another interesting side issue found "there are 10 milligrams (mg) of known carcinogens in a single cup of coffee. To put that into perspective, 10 mg is probably more than all the synthetic pesticide residues you could get from eating non-organic food for an entire year. In one cup".
Another reason not to pay a fortune for Organic food, personally the thought that it's grown in various animals poo and sometimes comes complete with bugs is enough to put me off it.

Treating Myself

Rare that I treat myself to anything other than the odd pack of wine gums and feeding my nicotine habit, but I blew £89 on myself yesterday and bought a USB turntable (see pic above).
I haven't actually set it up yet but I'm hoping I'll finally be able to play some of my vinyls for the first time in about 10 years, once I dig them out of the loft.

My last record player was thrown out a couple of years after I had broken a brand new expensive stylus on a scratched record from a boot sale, I nearly cried as the £12 spent was half a weeks shopping money at the time, and I'd had a big bust up with the missus about spending that much on a luxury item (although to me it was an essential), justified by pointing out that I wasn't going to carry on selling all my records unless I could tape before losing them for ever.

I remember the exact record that did it "Nine to Five" by the Man Eaters (Toyah and Adam Ant), I had been selling at a local boot sale when the guy next to me asked if I was interested in buying a large cardboard box full of 7" singles as most of my stall was boxloads of records, I had a quick browse and in amongst the usual piles of New Kids on the Block, Jason Donovan and Five Star singles I found a couple of Prodigy singles and a couple of others I liked, but as he was asking 25p each I said there was a few I'd like but wasn't interested in the lot (expecting him to want at least £15-20 for all of them).
So after a while he comes back and offers me the lot for a fiver, but as I'd only seen a few I expected to sell on I declined the offer.
As I was packing up at the end, he came back and said I could have the lot for a pound!!, this time I agreed.
When I got home I went through them and there were over 500 singles, including about 50-60 that I later sold for a lot more than a £1 each :)
The Man Eaters one stood out as I believe it's a bit of a rarity, so that went straight on the turntable without checking, seconds later the arm of my record player is skipping across the disc after an un-noticed deep scratch has taken the tip off my stylus (... cry).
At least the sale of the other records more than made up for it, but I never bothered replacing it again.
http://rapidshare.com/files/59737554/Maneaters_-_Nine_To_Five.rar