Triumph Hooning
This week has been a pretty good week all in all. On Wednesday Matt, Mike, Kath and myself went to the pub, which was particularly enjoyable, the Guinness hit the spot perfectly! I needed a night out, and that was a good one 
Also this week: work has gotten a bit more ambitious and organised, which is a reason for much cheeriness. I tend to get a little stressed out when things aren’t organised, and I’m particularly bad at organising things. One of the more important projects I’m doing for work is a Job Management System, which is pretty complex but also therefore something good to get stuck into. I’m much happier now I know exactly what it’s supposed to do: it means I can see how I’m going to build it - always useful 
Moving swiftly away from work I can tell you the thrilling news that I’ve finally completed the monumental task of getting my whole CD collection (minus CD singles) onto the computer. I knew you’d be impressed! That’s 280hrs of music, weighing in at 22.7Gb and 3,743 tracks. Only one track out of my entire collection failed to rip to WMA. I’m thinking about getting a Creative Zen Touch to play it all with, but I’m waiting for a 40Gb/60Gb version. The 20Gb is too small, and Creative’s claim of getting 10,000 WMA tracks on there is pretty poor when the 4000(ish) of mine take up 23Gb(ish). Of course mine are ripped at pretty high quality. Before anyone pipes up, no I’m not after an iPod. They’re just too limited and too expensive for what they offer. I’d be happier if the Zen could play OGG files, but it can’t (neither can the iPod).
While i’m talking about music and music players allow me to have a brief rant at Sony/Modern Technology.
Back in the day when personal CD players were new shiny things of wonder I had a Sony Discman. It was great, a little square looking thing with a 1bit DAC, a two step bass boost and no anti-shock system. It was a player from before Anti-Shock had been invented. That Discman was great. It did what it was supposed to do, and did it with class. As the years passed it got subjected to wear and tear and eventually the laser started to fall out of alignment, it couldn’t read CDs anymore, and when it did manage to recognise a CD it skipped and lost tracks at even the most meager of knocks, taps or disturbances.
A year ago I bought one of those fancy new Sony Discmans. It’s tiny and round, barely bigger than a CD, it has a 36hr battery life as opposed to my old Discmans 8hrs, my new Discman has a huge Anti-Shock buffer and a remote control built into the earphone lead. My problem with it is the sound quality is absolutely dire. This new technology, all singing all dancing player can’t play CDs with anything like the quality of a six or seven year old player. It produces a horrible whistling whinny electronic noise whether the anti-shock is on or off, whether the bass-boost is on or off. On my old Discman I could play it at it’s lowest volume and hear nothing but the song. On this new one I hear as much electronic noise as I do music.
That’s the only problem, not all CDs fit in the player. One or two CDs I own physically don’t turn in the Discman, because Sony have made it so close to the spec tollerances that some CDs are physically too large for it. Also, the player has been made/designed so badly that every CD catches the internals of the player. When a CD plays you can hear the CD itself hit the inside edges of the Discman on every rotation. I hate this new Discman.
I miss my old Discman.
This weekend I’ve taken a break from coding this website. I’m aware there’s a few glitches left (green highlights on the menu’s, etc) but frankly I’ve had enough looking at code this week.
Chris and JC (someone I’ve not met) are this weekend driving around Britain in a Triumph Spitfire, for charity. Sadly this weekend has been cold, cloudy and wet (at least in Stoke), and Chris ended up with a stomach bug mid way around the coast. He’s better now and they are hooning around making up for lost time.
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- Sun, 3rd Oct 2004 at 15:10 UTC
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Comments
skip to comment formWhat is Hooning?
You hoon in some type of automotive vehicle, and ‘to hoon’ can either mean driving very fast, or simply driving around. i.e. “He was hooning it down the straight” or “The lads and I are going for a hoon, care to join us sir?”
Yes was a good venture to the pub the other night, some good conversations were engaged in. I would like to archive my CD collection to but i dont think half my CD’s are even readable after the way i treat em
some of my old stuff im gonna miss. Maybe the old donkey will help me out there! Anyways!! Sony do seem to have a very 1 step forward 3 steps back approach when it comes to technical equipment. Always they try to get things smaller and more appealing to the eye, but fail to remember what the items purpose really is!!!!
Dude, I have the Tiesto CDs in WMA if you find yours won’t read anymore. That’s Magik #1 to #7, Just Be and In My Memory.
Just got my hands on Sasha’s ‘Global Underground: Ibiza’ too, which is niiiice!
I’m on something of a Music Revival at the moment, so much funky stuff!
JC and Chris made it back in (more or less) first place.
Check out their write-up.
Hi Jimi
Everytime I check out your website I always learn something new. Not only is your site pleasing to the eye and easy to use, it is also educational. Keep up the good work.
- Pip