"Nothing but the rain"
Where vague stuff is placed for filing
I find the water ice crystals on the roof of my car yesterday morning rather attractive.
This photograph isn’t a brilliant representation of what I saw, so, I shall try again to take a picture next time the car is covered in a beautiful blanket.
#nerd
For quite a while I have found iTunes to be thoroughly frustrating. It has issues with my music collection, randomly adds songs I’ve deleted and doesn’t like updating the artwork on my albums. iTunes also takes an age to synchronise my phone and when it does it fails to update artwork, copy playlists or new songs across to my phone. It seems to be a pretty bad and bloated piece of software. I don’t use iTunes to back up my phone and rely on the cloud for that, which I am thankful for as iTunes probably wouldn’t cope very well with it.
I searched the internet thingy and found a free piece of software called CopyTrans which has a suite of iPhone utilities. I was rather hesitant about using it as it could really mess things up. Would it work with iTunes and my phone and help me do the following:
I do still need iTunes but only to manage my playlists on the NAS drive as that is where my Sonos system reads the files. I guess I could use a completely different music manager but iTunes works well as long as I don’t connect my phone to the PC (which is kinda the point of the software).
I downloaded CopyTrans and started it up. The Manager part of the suite is free to use. I was quite wary of doing this. I love my music and have spent ages making sure I have the songs I want and the correct artwork. It’s quite a time investment.
“Connect Your Phone”
CopyTrans wanted my phone. I connected it and waited. CopyTrans read my database and a song list appeared on my computer. I tried to copy some new songs across to my phone.
IT WORKED
AND QUICKLY
I tried editing a playlist – easy. I even tried making sure my artwork was up-to-date (I had noticed two albums only had artwork on the first song), this was really easy and IT WORKED.
The online help files are really good. It all seems so easy.
CopyTrans you have made my life a lot easier and I am thankful. I hope millions read this and use your software, but unfortunately this website only gets ~270 hits a month. More people should use CopyTrans.
Confession – I have absolutely nothing to do with CopyTrans. I just think their software it worth a mention here.
Every now and then you will see something on the internet which makes the rounds every year or so. This is just one example. Marty McFly is meant to visit us in the current (future) on a particular date. So far every one of these predictions has been wrong. The actual date is given below:
Let’s save the date and make it more special than all those dates where people Photoshop the movie clip to make it now (or then).
If you ever suspect anything on the internet of not being what it says it is (and that’s pretty much everything) then you should look at Snopes. It’s a brilliant website that looks at the evidence for particular news/popular internet claims.
A few years ago I bought a plastic reusable Christmas tree from Homebase. It came in a box. It was nicely packaged in the box.
This late December I found myself spending more time fixing the box than I did actually taking down the decorations and tree. By mass, my box is nearly more duct-tape than cardboard. It turns out that the boxes in which Christmas trees are sold aren’t very good for the storage of Christmas trees.
I paid money for the tree and also, I assume, for the box in which it came. I would have happily spent a little more if the box was advertised as being stronger than the others and lasting more than two years in the loft.
I understand that the box is the cheap part. I also understand that my loft is at times very cold, very hot and occasionally just a little bit damp. However, should there be a manufacturer who takes notice of this communication then I will happily buy their product.
Perhaps I should start a twitter campaign for decent accommodation for reusable Christmas trees. Look out for the hash-tag: #decentboxesforxmastrees
About five years ago there used to be three or four burnt out cars by the footpaths surrounding my village. The were rusty and were old, plants had grown in them and I couldn’t see a track or pathway to get them there. At some point there was a clean up and the footpaths and surrounds were back to a more natural look.
This morning on my run up the Downs and down them again I found a freshly burnt out car. It was still smoking. I don’t understand why someone would do this. I really don’t. It’s not that I care for cars, I just don’t get why you drive a car to a relatively quiet spot and set light to it. Seems pretty shit to me.
Here’s the route I ran:
Here’s the car I found along Common Road at the top of the Downs.
Possibly a Vauxhall Corsa. I don’t really care.
Thanks to the 309 Twitter feed this is a picture of me from quite a while ago. I’m the twat in the hat.
A nice lunch on the cantilever many years ago! #30yearsof309pic.twitter.com/R157u01GxW
— 309 Air Cadets (@309atc) January 17, 2014
There are three bridges here over the river Medway. See if you can spot them.
They are:
In 2001 I first got internet access and a home PC. I think it was 2001, it was either then or 2002! It was dial-up access with a bandwidth of around 56Kb/s I first got broadband and wireless in about 2004 or so. Since then I would agree with the “new” hierarchy of needs with Wi-Fi at the base. I feel definitely lost when I don’t have internet access, especially when my phone has no data signal too.
This is a diagram of my home network. Just because I wanted to, you know? This is an hour of my life I won’t get back, but was worth it. Click for a PDF.
I was having a text conversation with my sister about my lack of mixer drinks for use with Jack Daniels. I tried to say that I’d go and buy some coke but I have fingers that are a bit bigger than my keyboard on the phone. Whoops!
I seriously laughed out loud in my house while alone for a good five minutes. It’s still a giggle when I think about it.
Here’s the thing. Where I work has some rooms with lovely views. Here’s the view from my normal classroom:
As you can see, the view from my classroom is dominated by mud. Mud and the sports hall. In terms of view, this room rather sucks. However, the selling points of the room are plentiful.
This room is in the same building and actually has a positive altitude in opposition to my room. The view over Maidstone is lovely and should be worth the effort of changing rooms. However, there are downsides to this room:
The compromise is that although I would love a good view from my work room I value the other good things about my room more.