Old Stuff and Cold Stuff

Am I getting old? I've just bought six CD albums for 50 pence each.

One is 'Announcing' by P2 (or Point Two) - a local twopiece who've heard far too much Peter Andre. The cover shows two tall chiseled shirtless young men standing almost as close as Bros used to. Oh, and I think they're brothers too.

That's not why I paid 50 pence for it - I thought it might be the P2 who covered Fade to Grey a few years ago. Unfortunately it's an EP of limp ballads. And the sleevenotes have a credit for 'Hair and makeup'.

The rest are 90s dance-pop compilations. One third nostaligia, one third filler dreck, and one third that I'd have heard when they were new if I'd been paying attention.
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The new DivX player works fine, and about half the cable channels are back. There'll be another NTL man around on Saturday to see about the other half.

At the time, I will probably be with Simon M. Moving his computer around, checking for viruses, fixing spyware uploaded by fraudulent websites, maybe having a go on his super-duper multiple workout machine, and borrowing another DVD from his 'special' collection.
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I've looked at USB and FireWire soundcards for laptops. Latency is usably low (10-15ms) but bandwidth is a big problem for multitrack recording. In that there isn't enough of it - Dropouts and 'lagging' much to common. Noise floors are low (around -100dB) but jitter in USB is high.

It looks like I'll be able to use this 3GB laptop reliably as a producer of songs. But only rough demos, and provided the effects processing is all offline.
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The whole sky is moving. Enormous grey and black clouds fill all space between opposite horizons, and some unheard massive wind is pushing them rapidly westward.

Down here, it's warm and the air barely moves. Three miles up, it must be freezing with an unstoppable wind.