My Songwriter colleague, Phil Simon, from London, told me today that my song 'Christmas just gets earlier' is now being played on the DAB radio station Amazing Radio, I obviously can't hear it here in China, but then again how many of you actually have a DAB radio? But I have to start somewhere. After having passed my 1,000 listeners mark I am now quite pleased to have made a radio station, the last time I was on a radio was with my group 'The Shameless Five' and we played on a magazine programme when we were in sunny Aden in 1965. Just a little gap between performances, but that one was at least live and the only time I have ever been inside a real studio. I will probably eventually have for for another band in order to play anywhere live, but that's not going to be easy here....
We had a short trip to Hong Kong the day before yesterday and at the end of it I ended up with a case of upset stomach and shouting down the big white telephone. Seems to be cleared up a bit now though. I also managed to get a genuine copy of the Windows 7 Home Premium software to replace the fake copy of Windows 7 Enterprise that came when I bought the bits for the new machine. I am just waiting for my USB soundcard to be returned all checked out and I can get on with the music again. I now have a 6core Amd, 8 gb memory, 1.5tb of disk space and 1gb graphic card, so that should make the work a bit easier, previously on the XP machine I was unable to do any of the effects live, so it was hard to judge what sound I was eventually getting when I was recording.. It seems on the music site that my most popular song so far has been my "Christmas just gets earlier" song. I've got a few lined up waiting to be recorded so will be busy once the soundcard returns. Iv'e kinda been off the air for about a week while I've been doing the changeover of machines and it all seems to be working ok again now.
Well, I have just upgraded my computer to a new windows 7 machine, 6 core processor 8gb memory, 1.5tb of disk space and a 1gb video card, and the windows 7 is behaving ok so far now that I removed an old webcam driver that kept crashing it. anyway, my rant, Why oh Why did Microsoft change "upgrade" the windows live stuff, its really crap and not that easy to use and its full of stuff I don't want at all, they seem to want to integrate everything these days, which I find a little bit more than annoying, I don't want everyone in the world or even myself to know what I or my 'friends' are doing all the time and I have now uninstalled it and returned to a previous saner version, this all started when the "upgraded" windows live spaces which I used to use for my blogs, and a system that I really liked. the closed it down and sent everyone over to Wordpress, which I didn't like at all, and had none of the features that I wanted, I have as you know now moved over to this site by Weebly, its ok, but still not as good as the old windows live spaces site. Every upgrade lately seems to make life harder..... aarrrgghhh.... except for windows 7 (so far), It has a couple of niggles for me, like it refuses to let me put the correct driver in for my webcam and keeps telling me its something else when it isn't!!!! There feel better now....
Well, not in life anyway, but just spent the last couple of days changing over my old XP computer to a new Windows 7 Machine, Rose is having the old XP system and the laptop she was using, which is starting to fall to bits, is going over to her classroom. Don't let anyone tell you you don't get blue screens with Win7 , you do, I've had 2 today while installing new stuff. Everything seems to be back in order now and, so far, working OK.
2010 as a celebration went very quietly in this household, although they do celebrate it here its much more of a thing on Chinese New Year. The year started with water leaks all around the kitchen and me having to replace the taps and the damn drainage system, most of the drains had to have 2 seals but on them to stop the leaks, very frustrating. It seems that seals here don't last very long, must be the atmosphere, rubber bands suffer the same fate, they deteriorate quite quickly. So it looks like I will be on an every restoring cycle for any watertight seals we have from now on.
Rose had the brilliant idea of having the bedroom wallpapered which they are just completing as I write this, a little man and h is son did it this time, and it seems to be fine. We helped with a lot of the prep work of removing the old paper, and at least choosing the paper was quite painless as we used the same company that did the living room a couple of years ago. The house is quite cold at the moment with all the doors open, so Happy and me are now ensconced in the computer room with the heater on!! I've been trying out a wireless keyboard and mouse set which we got for about a tenner from the place where I am getting my new PC from in a week or so, I have to say the wireless stuff they sold is is utter crap. I already had a wireless mouse which works fine, but the new combo was just a total pain to use. it kept sticking and refusing to work, took about 10 taps to get a letter out, drove me mad, so back to a wired keyboard and the original wireless mouse and no pain. Unless I can find a better combo of them, I'll stick with this for now. |
AuthorThe blog of a retired old git Archives
January 2018
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