Oh, the pain

There are two things I want from nanotechnology. Neither of them difficult, and both of them contributing significantly to the quality of life in this country.

One. I want a nanotech bug that eats nothing but Japanese Knotweed. I guess it would have to be activated by something local to here - maybe a signal broadcast from the mobile phone networks - so that if it got accidentally shipped off to Japan, it won't destroy the entire eco-system, but that can't be hard. And the only thing it's built to do is eat Japanese Sodding Knotweed. At our last home in Chiswick, never mind infesting our garden, it was in all the gardens in the street and the three parallel, all over the railway embankment and threatening the little wildlife enclosure. We moved out nine years ago - I haven't had the nerve to go back.

Two. I want a nanotech bug that eats nothing but PLAQUE. Isn't dentistry about due for some sort of revolution? I had a DEEPLY uncomfortable hour in the chair yesterday, and am due two more sessions over the next month. (Oh frabjous day, let joy be unconfined etc etc.) The activity seems pre-historic in it's sophistication - I doubt it has changed significantly in - well, ever, would be my guess. (And let's not forget the cost. Holy shoot.) Why on earth can't THEY design a bug that stays dormant in toothpaste, is activated by saliva and chews its way through the unwanted contents of your mouth. It would be desirable if it didn't crap there, so maybe once it was full, it would just stop. You would just swallow it and thereafter dispose of it in the normal manner.

Please? Someone? Anyone?

I'm back

The cycling was lovely, the open fire cosy and the Scrabble set untouched. Caught up with Tempe Brennan and Robert Langdon (I was on holiday. Gimme a break) and ate tapas (in Wiltshire. I know) and swam. Well, messed about in deepish water. SO likes the pounding up and down of the lengths-swimming, me, I like a decent flume and a good Rapids. I was happy, he, not so much.

. . . and I am delighted and relieved to find that I missed a proper shower more than I missed broadband and a mobile signal.

Enough already

I have come to the reluctant conclusion that, unless one has a spare room awash with sacks of fivers, a USB turntable is (currently) *sigh* the way to go. Yes,

• it takes ages,
• it's a pain, and
• the quality of the resulting digital tracks is not all one could wish,

but on the other hand,

• you do get to listen to all that lovely music,
• you do focus on what LPs you do want to spend the effort on,
• if one had ears good enough to be bothered by the slight drop in quality one be would be earning a damn sight more as some sort of fancy consultant for Deutsche Grammophon. That or the blind bloke on a boat in Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow.

There are, of course, people who will do it all for you, For A Price. The cheapest I could find was £10 an album, at which point unless one's collection was really obscure (Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, anyone?) one really may as well just buy the CDs.

But, dammit darn it, now I'm all excited about exploring areas of technology hitherto distant dreams. Next Post - My New Electric Toothbrush. Don't hold your breath though, as SO and I are off to the wilds of Wiltshire for a few days. I expect my toothbrush to come in quite handy.

And the series of crushing defeats rolls on . . .

I spent THREE HOURS a coupla days ago getting The Tango Project from vinyl to digital. I couldn't adjust the sound levels, I'd forgotten how short some of the tracks are, indeed how abruptly some of them end, leaving me nano-seconds to stop what I was doing to press the 'Next Track' button, missing it and having to start the session over again, SEVERAL TIMES



Sorry. More shouting. No swearing, though.

Just imagine my delight when I found an ad for a Teac GF-350. Insert a CD, set the record to playing up top, and voila! A CD with your record on it, all nicely broken up into tracks because the software recognizes track breaks. And only twice the price of the USB turntable we bought two weeks ago.

I was kinda relieved to find a lovely man in some US of A publication, who tells me it ain't necessarily so.

*sigh* this is turning into a techblog, and I don't appear to be able to do a thing about it. A techblog with the added additional extra of me not knowing what the hell I am talking about.

And The Tango Project? Having spent years deliberately not buying CD duplicates of my vinyl, because we were going to get a turntable ANY DAY NOW, I remembered earlier tonight that that was one of the EXTREMELY FEW I'd cracked and bought because I couldn't bear to be without that music one more minute.

I've given up swearing for Lent

. . . and its bloody hard work I can tell you.

Dubbin

Not the stuff you put on yer boots, alas. The thing you do, left, right ands centre, FOR THE WHOLE WEEK. And you can't do ANYTHING ELSE at the same time.

Phew. This is turning into a bit of a shouty post, and I haven't even started yet.

First off, that blimmin' turntable. Oh where do I start? With the nasty software that won't figure out from three seconds (that's a distinctly long time in record-speak) of scratchy hiss that IT'S A NEW TRACK. Nu-hoh, you have to tell it. It's kind of OK if you are transferring something symphonic on acccount of the tracks are about 15 minutes long, so I can set the timer and pay some serious attention to my book. But if it's (shudder) pop, you have to sit there, listening to Fleetwood Mac (good grief I'm old) with an attention that I never managed when I was young, in order to press the damn button in between each and every track. Then you get to label the track, and start on the next one.

And after a LONG TIME of doing this, you discover another button which lets you just mark a new track, and then you do the labelling in bulk at the end of the side. (And the cool thing is, occasionally it recognises what you just recorded, and fills in all the track details for you!)

Oh yes - and for some reason the software overrides the volume controls on the laptop, so you can't turn it down. And thats my concentration shot - never bin very good with background music unless I'm doing manual labour. If there's music on I'm hopelessly distracted from

Reading
Preparing Sunday School stuff (have you seen the time!)
Writing (well-overdue) thank-you notes
and BLOGGING

The whole business is a right pain. Turns out that my lovely record collection is lovelier in retrospect than prospect - faced with choosing to go through the grinding boredom of dubbing the stuff onto a hard drive, and NEVER LISTENING TO IT AGAIN . . .

And in between times, because it needed re-formatting, I was having to download stuff from the DVD hard drive, programme by programme. Again, not discovering the Bulk Dub function for an unnecessarily long time.

*sigh* - at least I can stop with the song lyrics, because I,LTV's back, hooray.