Okay, so yesterday I actually managed to speak to a “genius” at the Apple Store and he restored the iPod software on my Nano. And that’s all okay, except… quite often whilst the iPod is connected to the computer it will suddenly wipe all the data. All songs, gone. I can make it happen predictably by trying to copy album artwork over with the songs, so that’s disabled now, but it’s still happening unpredictably for some other reason. Grrrr.

My computer also had trouble with the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs CD. It decided that the first track was 49 minutes long (i.e. it contained the whole album) and that the second track was 15 hours long (maybe it contained a secret message from an alien intelligence?). Track three onwards are fine. I must check it an a regular CD player to see if it’s the CD and not the computer.

Doctor Who starts two weeks yesterday, and the BBC promotions machine is in full swing. Tennant and Piper are in all the weekend newspapers (oh dear, the David Tennant fashion article in the Guardian…). But much more excitingly on the web site there are trailers and “Tardisodes” (BTW, who would pay through the nose to download these to a mobile rather than watch them online?). And Mickey’s updated his web site as well (be sure to follow all the links.).

I’m trying to catch up with the 8th Doctor novels. I’ve reached The Last Resort and now have a dilemma. I have six of the remaining nine books but not Timeless or Sometime Never. The latter is definitely crucial to the ongoing arc and I think the former is quite important as well. Yesterday I looked in three Waterstones, two Borders, two Books Etc., Forbidden Planet, Blackwells, Foyles^[1], WHSmiths and the BBC Shop. No luck. Amazon are saying that they dispatch in 4 to 6 weeks, which if past performance is anything to go by means that there’s only a 50-50 chance at best of Amazon being able to dispatch them at all.

At least Oxford have run the boat race.

Oh, and the flat is currently full of knitters. But they brought cake so that’s okay.

[Update] - I just remembered that whilst I was in Foyles I noticed a stocky, balding chap staring at me as he walked past. Just after he left the store I realised that this was almost certainly Dom Sandbrook, whom I have mentioned before on this blog. Gosh, he has a Wikipedia entry, and I wonder whether if anyone I know was responsible for the ‘vandalism’ shown in the revision history. No, scrap that, I don’t wonder “whether”, I wonder “which”.

Very True Mood:  cranky

I think that was one of the best episodes of Never Mind the Buzzcocks for ages. And pink_weasel will be bouncing off the walls when she plays it back. But I’ll let her tell you why later…

Very True Mood:  mischievous

I was starting the process of updating my long neglected Tanita Tikaram web site, and was checking out other sites. From her official web site (and repeated on a number of others):

‘Sentimental’ is Tanita’s sixth studio album

1. Ancient Heart - 1988
2. The Sweet Keeper - 1990
3. Everybody’s Angel - 1991
4. Eleven Kinds Of Loneliness - 1992
5. Lovers In The City - 1995
6. The Cappuccino Songs - 1998
7. Sentimental - 2005

I make that seven, not six, I don’t see why any of them wouldn’t be counted. Odd

Very True Mood:  curious

via lonemagpie

These are the instructions:

• Put your iTunes/Winamp/WMP on shuffle.
• Say the following questions aloud, and press play.
• Use the song title as the answer to the question.
• NO CHEATING unless the songs you get don’t make any damned sense.

1. How does the world see me? Crime and Punishment - Fun Loving Criminals
2. Will I have a happy life? A Stroke of Luck - Garbage
3. What do my friends really think of me? Friend or Foe - Adam Ant
4. Do people secretly lust after me? In Liverpool - Suzanne Vega
5. How can I make myself happy? Found That Soul - Manic Street Preachers
6. What should I do with my life? I’m finding it harder to be a gentleman - White Stripes
7. Will I ever have children? Little Willie Leaps - Charlie Parker
8. What is some good advice for me? Armistice Day - Midnight Oil
9. How will I be remembered? Model Worker - Magazine
10. What is my signature dancing song? It’s Bad You Know - RL Burnside
11. What do I think my current theme song is? Under the Weather - KT Tunstall
12. What does everyone else think my current theme song is? I Will Hold On - Moxy Früvous
13. What song will play at my funeral? Keep Myself Awake - Black Lab
14. What type of women do I like? Pain (Slayer Mix) - Four Star Mary
15. What is my day going to be like? Frank Spencer Blues Explosion - Shirehorses
16. Will I ever have love again? Good Date Band? - Moxy Früvous
17. What type of sex life do I have? Written in the Heart - Midnight Oil
18. What song would be the title of my own porno movie? It’s Coming Down - Cake But see 7 above, which sounds much more like a porn movie title

Very True Mood:  bored

Maybe my head is still fuzzy from plague and lack of sleep but I just did something rather unusual for me. I went out and bought a CD in a shop (not online, a real shop with idiot staff and all) without dithering about it for ages. Must be entering my second (third? fourth?) childhood.

So currently I’m listening to We Are Scientists - With Love and Squalor and loveing it.

And no, I didn’t buy it just because it has kittens on the cover. Well, not only.

Very True Mood:  drained

I’ve added a couple of plugins to the blog to display music and books that I’m enjoying at the moment. Over there, on the sidebar, down a bit, below the categories and links. (Scrobbles and Now Reading plugins created by Rob Miller.)

Depending on which browser you use you may notice one of two things - FireFox users will notice that both of the new sections suffer from the random single-pixel transparent lines that crop up here and there on the sidebar. Still no clue what causes this. [Update] - FireFox 1.5 fixes this problem, I must update my home version.

And IE users won’t see any cover pics for the books. That’s ‘cos, even in IE7b2, the display was totally screwed up. Too late on a Sunday to dissect the CSS (and let’s face it with IE there’s not much chance of a happy ending anyway), so I gave up and applied an IE only stylesheet to hide the images. Blah. [Update] - Mac IE doesn’t use conditional comments and hence shows the images, incorrectly, but really, Mac IE?

[Update] - As Paul points out in the comments Safari is inserting a large chunk of empty space under each book. According to browser cam this happens in Safari 1.2, 1.3 and 2.0 but not in Konqueror 4.3.

Via lonemagpie

You belong in Moxy Früvous!
People would travel to the vast reaches of space just to hang with you. You have an absurd sense of humour and no sense of fashion whatsoever.

Which Canadian band do you belong in? brought to you by Quizilla

A Canadian band that (a) I’ve heard of and (b) I actually like. Those weren’t easy criteria to meet.

The file or directory \iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB is corrupt and unreadable.

Oh F***.

Open iTunes/iPod or Windows Media Player to answer the following. Go to your library. Answer, no matter how embarrassing it is.

How many songs? 476 (I have an iPod Nano and a laptop computer so space is limited)

Sort by artist
First artist: 4 Hero
Last artist: The Zutons (apart from two with no artist listed)

Sort by song title
First Song: “A” Bomb In Wardour Street - The Jam
Last Song: Zuton Fever - The Zutons

Sort by time
Shortest Song: 0:27, Interlude II - Aziza Mustafa Zadeh
Longest Song: 13:32, Try - The Magic Numbers

Sort by album
First Album: A night like this - Rebecka Törnqvist
Last Album: Wonderful - Adam Ant

First song that comes up on shuffle
Cold Light - Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs

How many songs come up when you search for “sex”? 6
How many songs come up when you search for “death”? 0
How many songs come up when you search for “love”? 29

Via unknownlegend.

Joe Strummer… you’ve been through the cleansing fire of punk, only to pick up a few venerial venereal diseases along the way. You’re more of an optimist when it comes to fucked-up genius. But you can write wicked-deadly riffs and lycs lyrics.

Which fucked-up genius composer are you? brought to you by Quizilla

I wish the people who write these things would learn to spell - venerial is clearly a mistake, though lycs is ambiguous and just about could be licks rather than lyrics.