Near a tree, by a river, there's a hole in the ground...

Right, time to respond to Andy and his comment about people feeling it necessary to advertise what they have been listening to on their blogs.

I have a last●fm profile which gives you personalised charts showing what you have just listened to. It works by installing a plugin (Audioscrobbler) to Windows Media Player (or whatever other player you are using) which watches your playlist and uploads it to a server somewhere. It's all "opt-in" so it bypasses the hassle which Apple has just had spying on i-tunes users' listening habits.

You can then use an RSS feed to add this information to a website, and that's how it appears on this blog. I've chosen to show you only the most recent three tracks I've listened to:

a) because you then can't see the full horror of my listening habits, and...
b) last●fm classes "recent" as about 24 hours, so even that disappears soon.

But... it only tracks what you have listened to on your computer... and so provides a completely false record of what you are actually listening to. I listen to most of my music in the car or on my i-river (like an i-pod, but better...) or around the house.

The music I listen to on my computer tends to be very random and it's often stuff that I have downloaded (legally!) or tried to find online for a specific reason. I listen to so little on the computer, despite having nearly all my CD collection on there, that if I listen to an artist twice, they appear at the top of my weekly charts. The other week it was Tears for Fears, because I had been talking about Donnie Darko. You make the connection.

Anyway, Andy got me thinking about my vinyl collection. My singles are all in the loft, about 500 of them (some of them picture discs and flexi-discs and 33rpm EPs) but my LPs are still on shelves in a spare room, even though I no longer possess anything to play them on. Most of what I still want to listen to, I now have digitally in one form or another, but I had a fun half hour looking through the gatefold sleeves and feeling the static as I took the albums out of their inner sleeves for the first time in about 16 years.

Not being in the least bit ashamed of my wide (and sometimes crap) taste in music, I am quite happy to share that the last piece of vinyl I ever bought was The Riddle by Nik Kershaw...



...which is in here with the rest of the stuff - a real slice of naff 80s!

Postscript...

In replying to Andy's comment, I asked What's wrong with Shalamar?

I believe I now know...

Hole in the wall...

Have discovered a new (and not particularly convenient) feature on my Chip and PIN card which has not been very well publicised by my bank...



HSBC Call-centre wage-slave: "Don't worry, they will just swipe it and you can sign..."

The Anti-Bunnies gather....

I breathed a sigh of relief this morning, and put an end to a slight element of internal confusion, when I discovered that there are other people, people I respect and trust, who don't get Donnie Darko...



I fell asleep several times during the film and had to rewind lots, but had previously kept very quiet about this, for fear of being pronounced thick or lacking in culture, but now it can be said...

Donnie Darko is rubbish.

And I refuse to be persuaded differently... "When people run in circles, it's a very, very mad world..."

Now all I need is to find someone else who agrees with me about...