Further ramblings of a self-made pauper

Of course in an ideal world, having been in rehab for the requisite length of time, sober and permitted only enough cigarettes to keep her voice at the level of dissolute huskiness that makes it interesting, Amy Winehouse would be dragged into the recording studio and made to rerecord Valerie using The Zutons' original arrangement and backing track.

That would be the ideal.


At the moment the two versions of the song I know are superlative in one part and poor in the other. That is why this spliced version of the song needs to exist.

(Edited to add: The Mark Ronson version featuring Amy Winehouse comes close to being what I had in mind, so perhaps there's no need for a further version - endure the first 45 or so seconds before the song starts:).



I have just spent an hour or so plundering Furtle's CD collection and adding bits and pieces to my Walkman. I still have over 5gB of space on it and pretty much the entirety of my CD collection, less the classical, is already on it. That must be of the order of 700 CDs since the clear out of the extraneous stuff of little consequence. There is still a fair selection of albums that I need to listen to before I decide whether or not to copy them; I'm not sure when I'll ever find the time.

In taking my mind off other matters, I am torturing my grey cells with other, less important items.

I continue to be plagued by indecision, which I flatter myself is an uncharacteristic trait. I've mentioned before that my hi-fi system is acting up and my DVD player is becoming more erratic. At the same time, the TV is showing signs of age, though I have decided that it will last me until I am sure that I can get a decent digital signal wherever I live and that's certainly not true where I am at the moment. The digital signal is, to put it kindly, variable, so I refuse to dispense shekels on an all-singing, all-dancing TV until I am sure that I shall get my money's worth from it. Plus the longer I leave it, the cheaper they become.

That leaves me with the hi-fi – in particular the CD player – and the DVD player. I can solve the former by taking advantage of a kind offer from rumfuddle, though that will be a midi system rather than a mini. This leaves me with the DVD conundrum. I don’t think that at this stage I want a DVD/HDD machine for the same reason that I am prepared to wait before buying a new telly; I want my money’s worth from the machine via digital broadcasts. What I do want is something region-free (not difficult to get these days as bibliogirl pointed out), but I have decided that it must also have DivX playback capability and that complicates the issue. I have seen a nice one on Play.com that may well fit the bill. The problem is, I should rather like one of these:

Freecom Network Mediaplayer
Freecom Network Mediaplayer 3.5" 320Gb

This little beast would allow me to stream downloaded movies and music direct to my (or anyone else's TV or hi-fi. It's an awful lot more expensive than a new DVD player, mind and doesn't really get rid of the need for a new one at some point.

Oh, decisions, decisions.

I am now all digitaled up, having acquired, after mulling for a couple of years, a digital camera.

No doubt there will be inventive cursing tonight (or more likely tomorrow night, as I'm out at t'pub tonight) while I fathom out how the bugger works. The battery is currently charging, so I may play with it a little later during a ciggie break.

End of line Sony DCS-T5, 5.1 Mega Pixels, 3x optical zoom, 2.5" monitor, 512mb 40x speed memory. That'll do me. Once I've worked out how to use it - and it doesn't look too complex - I'll be able to post up all manner of drivel.

And of course, I shall have it fully mastered by the time we run NWO.

Which means I'll leave it on the kitchen table before I leave...