What's Doing

I’ve just uploaded more photos than you can shake a stick at to flickr. For themed views try;

• Christmas and Boxing Day.
• New Year.

… we did it again. I’m pleased to announce that another member will be added to team Todd this year. We’ve just been for our twelve week check up and mother and baby are doing fine.

Todd Too is due towards the end of July. Unlike last time you can expect plenty of slightly irrelevant updates in these parts as the chances of SWMBO updating her blog are less than zero.

On a side note, that will teach her to buy me some presents for my birthday in future.

Dante, in his Inferno mentioned that hell had nine levels. I think I’ve found the tenth though.

It’s the car park at Waringah Mall between Christmas and New Year. I’ve had the misfortune to go there twice this week in peak shopping hours and each time there hasn’t been a parking space to be had.

It’s not a great experience for driver or passengers, let me tell you. I worry for JFGP’s vocabulary.

Today I have mostly been doing chores whilst SWMBO catches up on her sleep.

Why is it that every lawn cutting tool I kind find (both mowers and strimmers) in this country is petrol powered? All I need is a cheap electric flymo and my one and a half square metres of lawn could be cut in a jiffy. As it is I had to borrow Captain Schmooze’s strimmer and muck about with two stroke – well alright, he fuelled it but you know what I mean.

It’s almost as puzzling as why you can’t get any more than four flavours of crisps here. I must have just missed the memo they sent round explaining it.

This one is strictly for the audiophiles out there. A bunch of crazy Russian geezers have been scanning and photographing cassette tapes and their cases.

Possibly for posterity’s sake, I wouldn’t know though as my understanding of the cyrillic alphabet leaves a lot to be desired. This, folks, is what we call a labour of love.

It certainly takes me back a couple of years or so. When I was but a callow youth and didn’t even possess a means of transcribing vinyl records onto cassette I had to resort to flattery to get portable versions of my long players.

I would procure new records (usually from WH Smiths) and TDK tapes (usually from Woolworths or a certain entrepeneur in my tutor group) and give them to my good friend Russell. He would then sit on them for several months and eventually the items back to me for my audio pleasure. Occasionally (for instance when tape copying was involved) I used to go straight to the school audiophile. Who is usually referred to around these parts as the 70s Throwback.

There was one time when I borrowed a cassette from the library, and liked it so much that I wanted my own copy. I gave the borrowed pre-recorded tape and a shiny new AD90 to the Throwback who promised to faithfully "back it up" for me. Which he did, about five months later. The late fees on the tape where more than it would have cost to buy an original one myself.

This was, of course, the period when home taping was killing music. Sadly we didn’t do a good enough job and the industry is thriving to this day. Although now they inform us that MP3s will finish the job we started. I can’t say I believe the latest argument any more than the old one though.

So here you go Molly, the page of TDK Tapes including our all time favourite of all time the AD90.

[Courtesy of Stavros the Wonder Chicken]

Oh, and the tape I borrowed from the library? Dare by the Human League. I’ve got an MP3 copy on my iPod if you’ve got a spare tape.

Nothing to see here, move right along please.

Told you it wasn’t very interesting.

Even scarier than a slideshow of JFGP photos, how about one of SWMBO?

Or, you can simply subscribe to an Atom feed of my photos, and see them as they are added here. You’ve got to love technology, it’s smashing.