Carl discovers the world

I've been thinking of getting an iPod to store my music collection, and now I don't need to think about it anymore, Santa got me one for Christmas.

Funny how these things work, most electronic devices come with a detailed manual that I never read, but the iPod doesn't come with one at all, so what happened, I stuffed up copying my music onto it!

It was only after a 7 hour long sync with my music folder that I realised iTunes had scanned the entire drive and loaded every sound file it could find, yikes, I had no idea I had half that stuff on my pc.

I also expected it to come with an install disc, but no luck there, 37mb later on a dialup connection, followed by that 7hr sync, I was nearly in tears, all I wanted to do was play with my new toy.

After that frustration though I must confess I love my new iPod. Music sounds nice and crisp, my Trance and House music collections pound away nicely, and amazingly Andrea Bocelli, Acker Bilk, Garth brooks, Enya all sound really good.

I even tried connecting the iPod to the Hi-Fi through a spare set of input channels but the output seems quite limited in range, the Bass tones sound reasonable but mid tones seem to lack clarity. I probably did something wrong. Maybe the EQ settings on the iPod weren't configured correctly.

It will be interesting to see how the FM transmitters work, but unfortunately Santa wasn't able to get one of those, apparently the elves were struggling to keep up with demand. Them's the hazards of small town living.

Now I just need to tidy up my tags and resync, I just hope it doesn't take another 7hrs.

Finally, proof I'm not imagining everyone is out to get me, they even spammed the search engines to destroy my reputation check out these search results. Read More

Last night we decided to treat ourselves to an evening of Pizza and Italian music, and to make it molto authentico we set a small table with a red and white check tablecloth, a small vase with a single red rose, a bottle of chianti and a couple of candles.

I remember the last time I was in Rome eating Pizza outside a small cafe down a small side street not too far from the Piazza Navona and I wanted to try and recreate that moment.

We put on our favorite Andrea Bocelli album, Romanza, and settled down to a home-made pizza with loads of salami and mozzarella, and on her half, loads of vegetables - yuck!

Afterwards came the surprise, she didn't know I'd managed to buy the collectors edition of Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn, her second favorite film of all time. Luckier still the soundtrack could be played in English or Italian, needless to say we chose Italian to complete the evening. I wonder if any of my basic Italian phrases will be in the movie. Buonanenotte.

Boungiorno, my partner and I have decided to start seriously learning Italian, and after months of watching any Italian tv programs we could find, we now feel ready to embrace language study.

We bought a language pack, the Hugo Italian in 3 months course, a couple of dictionaries and a software program for Windows that teaches Italian using short sound bytes.

So now that we've started, we plan to spend about half an hour a day going through new exercises, and as often as possible we're going to speak Italian to each other. Read More