All posts by Armand

Music, Technology

Multi-room audio

So, my brother wanted us to sort out multi-room audio for him for his birthday. Easier said than done; all my research turned up expensive, bespoke systems with remote controls the size of toasters and slightly annoying file library systems (all non-networked). Thanks to a little hype and a lot of research, we decided to go for Slim Device’s WiFi Squeezebox, with an accompanying Qnap NAS drive. Whilst expensive, we managed to get it all set up and working, and were quite impressed.

Setting up the Squeezebox’s and NAS drive (we got 2 boxes and one NAS drive) took about 10 minutes – sorting out the music collection – thanks to the mess that is iTunes – took several hours. Squeezebox, frustratingly, can’t play M4A or M4P files (both DRMed and non-DRMed AAC files) – so had to convert them all, which required finding (and paying for) a batch conversion program. On the plus side, that worked and was good (from imtoo.com I think).

So: Squeezebox rocks but would be better if it could cope with iTunes files, iTunes sucks and it would better if it used MP3s. And my music collection has been 100% converted now :)

Writing

Commence writing…

Well, I’ve almost started. There’s been more life-admin than I’ve been able to easily handle, but I’ve written a few things down on my first A3 sheet.

    Magic
    Characters
    Science
    Technology
    World

The idea is to begin to piece together the characteristics that define my world – yes, its going to be a fantastical novel. Not really sure whether its going to be more like Gaiman or Pratchett or Eddings, but we’ll see. Probably some bizarre hybrid.

Still quite exciting though!

Television

Withdrawal

Finished watching season 2 of BatGal and am now anxiously awaiting the next one… It is really, really well done. Par for the course with its end season cliff-hanger, but what a cliff-hanger!! Bring on July…

Miscellany, Technology

Logitech Premium USB Headset 350

Ok, so I’ve got hold of a new USB headset for Skype purposes after accidentally eating my old one*.

I’ve never before understood why there’s such disparity in price for USB headsets, which I always thought should be commoditised. But my new shiny Logitech headset is a thing of awesome power and functionality. No outside noise, no fuzz, noise cancelling and crystal clear sound quality. Well worth the £40 or so pricetag.

Now if I can just stop accidentally hitting the mute button mid conversation…

* strictly speaking, it just broke… but where’s the fun in that?

Personal, Writing

On loving characters

One of the things on my to-do list is to write up a bunch of blog posts on specific topics is to write a few posts that have been brewing in my head. Before I forget why ‘Batgal/Buffy/Serenity-loving characters’ is scrawled on my to do list, I thought I’d fire off a couple of posts.

Arvind’s written about the hero mythos before (as have others…), but I’ve noticed of late that all my favourite television is massively character driven. Buffy and then Firefly/Serenity, Stargate SG-1, LoTR, the Bartimaeus trilogy, the Peter Hamilton novels (ok, all my recent sci/fi & fantasy) – but also books like Catch 22 (still on there as one of my favoure books ever), and Chabon’s brilliant Adventures of Kavalier and Clay — all really focussed on character development, and making people come to life that you really care about. The Sci/Fi / fantasy element is only necessary for the additional enjoyable escapism, I think – its the character led fiction that I love.

Thinking about my own writing, I want to try to go down this route. Every time I’ve set pen to paper in the past I’ve always led with something pathetically post-modern or puerilely philosophical. The next challenge has got to be working the philosophy and plot around characters my readers will like. Which is why I plan to make use of the A3 pad my sister bought me yesterday to sketch out some ideas and characteristics I’d like to see…

It’s so exciting! Feels like I’m actually getting somewhere. At least I now have a new list of thank yous to write in the acknowledgements of the book – when its eventually written – “Buffy Summers, Earl Hickey, Bill Adama, DEATH, Arthur Dent, &c’ – characters and heroes, one and all.”

Personal, Television

Procastination and inspiration from Earl

Have found that I’m putting off the most trivial things lately – replacing the blade on my razor, doing the laundry, erm, blogging, and more. The attitude of ‘I’ll get to it eventually’ has me standing knee deep in a pile of slowly mildewing laundry and dust an inch thick around the base of my monitor.

I’ve bought a dustbuster, and made a list, inspired by Early Hickey. I’m going to cross off everything on my list if it’s the last thing I do (I haven’t yet written down ‘lose two stone’ but that may find its way onto the list…)

Comics, Film

V is for Vonderful

2 Comments

Massively enjoyed ‘V for Vendetta’ last night – whilst there were some issues with the fact that the main character wears a mask and you can’t see his facial expressions, on the whole the alternate history they told was gripping, the visual effects and the alternate London were stunning, the love story was plausible and the dialogue entertaining. Liked the ideology too – although the parallels to other forms of extremism made me very unconfortable with the justification of violence to achieve any ends.

Favourite line (and still loving my recent discovery of the block-quote tag):

“Ideas are bulletproof.”

Oddly, Alan Moore wasn’t credited. Wonder why?

Television

BatGal

Watched some Battlestar Galactica after a friend at work described it to me as:

“…some of the best story telling on television at the moment.”

And

“…the best thing to come out of America for ages.”

And actually pleasantly surprised. Whilst not remotely feeling the superlative enjoyment that Jon did, it has all the good charateristics of a solid drama series – characterisation, suspense, back-story, heroes, villains, and explosive action. Surprised at how different it is from a lot of other ‘sci-fi’ – no interest in featuring a technology, nothing made of the science that makes everything possible, and a slight disconnect from reality. Really more fantasy than sci-fi, but without enough CGI spaceships to satisfy the most 3d rendered fanboy.

So; interesting – will see how it develops. Although I am disappointed that there are no networks on the Galactica – they need a self-defending one ;).