Adventure Rocket Ship

Sometimes when the people on the television want to you pay special attention to words because they think they are scientific or futuristic, they will make them appear slowly from left to right accompanied by a squelchy chattering noise like someone scraping TO220-packaged transistors down a sheet of galvanised steel.

Transistors? They were the things that made HH 100W combos sound post-punk and collectivist.

Post-punk? That was the soundtrack the day industry decided to stop.

A couple of years ago, some splendid type was good enough to pick 'The nine symphonies' (Yer Beethoven, innit. von Karajan, Berlin Philharmonic, Deutsche Gramaphon - top quality gear. None of yer motorway services spinny rack two disc set of popular classics mauled by a squad of bored sessioneers) off my Amazon list.

As is traditional, I had put it there as a note to self for when I was flush, rather than expecting anyone else to fall for it.

Anyway. I hauled the wrapping off the thing and stuffed the first CD into the computer that is connected to the good quality amplifier and good quality speakers in the room where I spend most of my listening-to-things time.

God what a disappointment.

'Rock' music can cope with fighting for audio spectrum with a set of PCs generating a deal of white noise. Beethoven? Not happening. If it's all up loud enough to be able to appreciate the quiet bits, then the movements where it all kicks off properly are comfortably loud enough to be heard at the end of the road.

I could probably get away with that in NW3, although some clever bugger would come round to shove a note under the door about being in thrall to the traditionalists and would I care to play some Webern? (Ans: No. Sorry. Stockhausen, on the other hand... Which itself is a weird backreference for having listened to lots of Neubauten, Kraftwerk and dreadful electronic skronk from the Bleep Shop.) However, the residents of BS16 would rise up and call me a Cotswold ponce.

Anyway. Since it is quiet due to being cold outside I tried that first CD in the downstairs rig that has never been turned up over 30%. Oh good heavens yes. I think I might have been reading a book, but buggered if I remember a sentence.

The demo code does talk to a PC. A small hurrah for not chucking out the homebrew gender-changer (RS232 only, sadly) and a length of serial cable liberated from HPL.

Does anyone else do the pliers-and-elastic-band trick as a seriously portable alternative to a bench vice?

There now follows a brief slideshow.

You remember the music from (Top gear) Rally Report? Slow motion footage of mad people hoofing Audi Quattros and Lancia Deltas into the scenery to the tune of 'Duel/Jewel' by Propaganda.

The version they used didn't seem to be the 12", sublime racket though it was. (Although slightly tainted by essence of Small Boy)

I always suspected that since ZTT were ZTT, the mix was out there somewhere, but I was unlikely to find it since it would be a cassette-only version that was a Mongolian import deleted on the day of release.

Although perhaps not. Maybe it's the version on Wishful Thinking.

The thing is that I can no longer remember what the Rally Report version sounded like, but it doesn't really matter since I've had to listen to several different mixes and they're all differently bloody marvellous.

In an attack of carelessness on Friday even, I tried to hold open a loaded door with my right little finger. Or perhaps the wrong one. Anyway, the result was the nail being half ripped off an uncomfortable way down into the nailbed and presumably a deal of blood on the inside of the relevant glove. Even cut down as far as I dare, there's still a good section that's going to catch on anything within a 500 metre radius and cause more blood and swearing.

So I thought I'd try to glue it all together with some reasonably gloopy nailie. And paint the matching nail on the other side for reasons of symmetry.

Result: it looks like I'm dripping the final gothness from my life out of the ends of two fingers. Although I'm starting to wonder if I may as well do the rest, I rather like MAC 'Black and blue'...



Today I was seduced by the wonder that is the local pound shop again. A handful of maybe-useful clampy things for £1.98. Not much use for holding fingernails on, but significantly less useless than talking South Park car air fresheners. I'm sure there's a large factory in China that plans production runs using the same perl script that generates spam message titles.

And and and... Was that Howard Goodall programme (How music works) on Ch-4 a corker or what? It's self-evident that people who know their stuff (and can convey same) are going to be a lot more use that random simpering teevee presenter. Like Radio Humppa from WhatTheHack last year.