CatsEye

101. XP SP3

I've been noticing the laptop getting slow the last few days, and have now just twigged that it keeps downloading this massive Windows Update.  Which I keep ignoring because there's always more interesting things to do than upgrade Windows (shudder).

But Service Pack 3 has been out a while, so I'm going to take the plunge.  How bad can it be?  (Don't answer that).

See you on the other side ...

49. iPhone blogging

ETA: the post number and a bit of text, because it really wasn't as impressive as I'd hoped.  A photo would definitely help!

19. This post

intentionally left blank.

Can you hear me?

Back in the day, before I was sucked into the iWorld, I read blogs.  A lot.  Occasionally, someone would mention an audio book.   I have a couple of Terry Pratchett's Discworld books on cassette tape, but they were never bought with the intention of portable listening.

And then, seduced by the flashy dancing adverts, I bought an iPod shuffle.  And then I installed iTunes and found music and podcasts and finally audiobooks. 

I like to knit on the train but knitting to music is tricky.  I hear the tempo and I want to make my hands move in rhythm.  This often leads to errors.  Podcasts were great, but I would run out of them pretty quick (we're talking two years ago here, and knitting podcasts were kind of scarce).

So I started to buy the Discworld books via iTunes.   Ouch.   The unabridged versions of the early ones are £20.  And can someone tell me why you'd buy an abridged version of a book?  The author wrote every word for a reason (hopefully not just to fill a requisite number of pages), so why would you not want to hear every word they chose?

Anyway, books via iTunes was getting kind of pricey.  Somewhere I heard about Audible.  I joined up for the Premium plan, which gets me two books a month for £14.99.  And those two books are always cost more than that, so I save money with the plan, and I save money shopping at Audible.  Especially as I have pretty much bought all the Pratchett on offer, and thanks to David, I have now moved on to Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series (at least £24 each and rising).  Okay there's no Harry Potter but you can't have everything!

I decided to write about this today, because during my break I really need to do a lot of tidying up.  The house is one thing.  But I have two computers with different iTunes libraries.  Different podcasts, different bought music, different iPods.  It's just not practical any more.  And although I'm not definite about this, what happens if I need to stop "wasting" £15 a month on books?  Do they close my account and I can no longer get to the 40 or so books I've bought?

Better to take the time now, while I have it and re-download everything to one place and back it up on CD.  Problem solved.  Books for ever.  Although it's taking a little while ...

An eerie silence

Quiet in here, isn't it?

Yep, it was inevitable, I suppose.  I have been assimilated into the Ravelry collective.

I'm still knitting and taking photos.  I went to the Lingfield Bead Fair today and spent far too much money.  And I'm always haunting the Sunday sale at Posh Yarn (again with the money).

It's just that all my computer time is spent at Ravelry these days.  Well, the last week or so.  Since they let me in.   And the Flickr account is getting  a good workout too.

Poor old blog - I can't even dredge up a photo for this post.  The memory card converter is all the way over there somewhere, and I still have loads of projects to catalogue in the R-place.  Oh and books.  And my stash.  And my needles.  And ... gotta get back - I might have a message or a comment.  And there's loads of forum posts still to read.

(And I'm really sorry for those of you still on the waiting list, the way I keep going on and on about it - I was most impatient myself.  Don't worry, your time will come and it will be worth the wait.)

Resistance is futile.

Oops

It appears that ever since I blogged about LibraryThing ... it's been down.  (Was it something I wrote?)   I love this bit on their temporary front page:

"We're confident it was a bad hard drive, and that we're on the right path to fixing this. Fortunately, that system has six hard drives. Unfortunately, they were not configured redundantly (RAID 0 not RAID 5). "

The IT geek in me so wants to wave my finger at them and "tsk tsk" in their direction.  (But then I don't like RAID 5 for databases anyway ... RAID 0+1, that's the way to go, stripe and mirror - best of both worlds.)

I've been listening to Eddie this week on the train, having finally run out of knitting podcasts.  A bizarre side effect seems to be that I hear him in my head all the time now.  "Well being a transvestite, I'm aiming for 80.  Wear all the clothes, shag all the women.  Best of both worlds."

And perfectly suited to the LT situation - "What do you mean I've wiped the file?  I've wiped all the files??  I've wiped the Internet???  But I don't even have a modem!" 

Sorry.  I could go on.  For days actually.  But I won't.  Well, maybe just "in my mind." 

Oh, by the way, did you notice the facelift?  I'm not overly sure I like the new layout.  But that's change for you.  And it killed about 2 hours when I could have/should have been knitting.  I don't know what's up with me this week - it's like I have a malaise.  Even LaStrada is just sitting there, glaring at me from its bag, daring me to make it a UFO, along with all the others (15+ and still counting).

Maybe I'll go bead something, or just go to bed.  Oh, there's some chocolate in the fridge, that might do the trick...

It's just like buses

You wait for ages for a blog post, and then three come along at once ...!

It's a special occasion that I'm celebrating.  I finally (after two ... three years?) got the wireless networking thing to work.  Here I am, blogging on the sofa. 

The next day I'm home, and it's not peeing down with rain, I'm blogging in the garden.  How's that!  Of course, given the weather forecast, that may be several months away ...