Playing with the Sensa Clip Zip

Well it may seem an odd combination reading a book and  note she's reading the right way - from right to left - and listening to some music but there are times you want to listen to something without being wired up to a home stereo as a former head of Sony realized when he came up with the concept of a portable tape player known in the West as the Walkman.
Following on from last weeks post having got these digital audio recordings wouldn't it be nice not to have take your computer with you to listen to them?
Well I had a player for 2 years and nine months that just clipped into my blouse pocket or skirt band but with discovering the iTunes store, I found because it wouldn't play them without me remaking them in a format it would which is time consuming as well as potentially harming the sound quality.
I needed to get a player that could so I bought this:

It's small with a 1.1 inch colour screen, allows you to just drag and drop your albums straight on to it and critically plays iTunes audio straight off the bat. It also had a big advantage over the Apple ipod Shuffle, it not only is geared around playing albums from start to finish, it has a sdhc memory card port so I was able add a 16GB card to the players own 8GB of memory which if my math is okay means I have a 24GB player for just under GBP£54.Bit of a bargain, what? It is very simple to use.
It also sounds very smooth on Apple's M4a and Window's .wma files too when played though a purchase I made at the same time a pair of Sennhesier HD202's which have deep bass and a high sensitivity to make the most of the output from portable devices.

 Because I have a small head being a small built person, I find most headphones are way too big sliding off of my head, not keeping background noises out and leaving me not hearing all those low bass notes. I also find small ear bud types don't feel comfortable either.

Artwork for the Clip Zip
This can be a bit confusing and the manual doesn't really cover how you get artwork onto your files.
Your art work needs to have a combination of  being under 100kb in size as well as Under 500 x500 pixels. The easiest way to get some is type the name of the title of the album and select images to find a Jpeg file of the right number of pixels and files size. You can resize using a utility such as MS Paint if it's too big and save it.
You then need to drag and drop that image  into the folder that album belongs to in the player and rename it "album art" (no inverted commas and a space between album and art) and save.
It should now show up on your players display.

Downloads? Good enough?

Today, it was announced on radio and television that the amount of media, that's to say music, video and games people bought directly by downloading on to their many digital devices such as music and video players,games machines, music and computers now accounts for approximately 22% of all sales of these products.
You don't have to be an avid collector of movies or music to have noticed the demise of traditional record stores in many neighbourhoods and the increasingly limited stock carried by those still around including in the case of those resident in the UK, the HMV flagship store on Oxford Street, London.
It is true that niche markets such as specialty cds sought out for exceptional  sound quality still have a following as well as vinyl lps that are finding favour with youngsters as well as those of us who grew up with them who like the whole feel of owning something that can fully display the album art apart from those who feel cd just isn't as satisfying as sound.
One reason for this certainly all those gadgets we have, taking them with us which have freed us from the dependency of having to make copies in real time of our favourite music to listen out of our homes. Indeed quite a number of devices such as tablet computers allow you to buy music or films outdoors and listen to them  on the spot! Electronic book readers are very popular for this reason.
But there is something controversial in audio circles that has aided it.
When Apple launched it's first music player in 2003 - the iPod - a few years after the very first Mp3 portable players came out, the quality of the connection you had to the internet was often poor and really slow as most people didn't have broadband.
This meant when Apple started the iTunes Music Store as it was first called, they had to make the files this music was stored in quite small as otherwise it would of taken ages to get your music.
Apple also used a different way of altering the digital sound in the form a cd would normally use to a smaller file called Aac otherwise known as M4A, that stood for Advanced Audio Codec that sounded better than the older Mp3 early downloaders especially those who downloaded stuff for free used.
It helped make the ipod in many ways the replacement for portable cassette tape players as you could carry a lot of music about with you without lugged pockets full of tapes but while it was convenient and wasn't bad as sound goes it didn't really equal the best cassette players or the so 90's MiniDisc player for sound.
In time Apple have improved the sound quality by allowing more detail to be captured by decreasing the amount of sounds the device that converts a regular cd to a Aac file to be removed (all so-called lossy digital formats like Mp3 and Aac work by removing sounds tests showed we didn't really hear).
All of this is helped by people having more reliable and faster broadband internet connects that make downloading bigger higher quality files quicker
In addition, recently some albums are being polished (aka Mastered) by Apple themselves from sources they specify to a set standard one of which is tracks cannot be so loud they may cause poor sound on the loudest moments on the device that encodes the file you, as an iTunes store customer buy.
These albums have the phrase "Mastered for ITunes" by them and some audio fans have found their can be more of a difference between the quietest and loudest moments of a song in these versions than the high street cd!
At one site I visited, many people remarked on how well some of these tracks sounded compared to the many cd versions they own and so I did the unthinkable and got an iTunes store account.
I was really quite taken back by just how good some of the albums you can buy on Itunes really are when played on expensive home stereo system being gobsmacked to hear two out of print Temptations albums sounding at least as good as cds and I'm a fussy so and so as far as sound quality goes.
I got many of the new Led Zeppelin releases that have been "Mastered for iTunes" only to amazed with how good they were.
Some people from day one liked services like the iTunes store for the ability to buy odd tracks they liked but when as a jaded by bad sounding cds person like me can be amazed by this, isn't the case that perhaps for anyone other than a total perfectionist  downloads aren't not only convenient but actually so good that for everyday purposes they need not concern themselves with cds and their storage?
Plus a good number of titles can't be found on in print cds but are  available as downloads at the iTunes stores as well as Amazon's and 7Digital's Mp3 stores.
I'll tell this much folks, my aversion to downloads anything other than stuff not being on cd just died last week.

For those who aren't using an iPod or the iTunes player.
Sometimes  you'll find in the iTunes store a track is marked as album only meaning to get the song, you have to buy an entire album. This works by marking the track with a slightly different file extension which is accepted on an iPod or the iTunes player.
I did find some other players like WinAmp couldn't see them meaning they wouldn't play  but this can be fixed.
If you open up the iTunes folder on a PC and navigate the individual album in  a folder marked iTunes media you'll see each song has a file name like this:
all you need is love.m4a
above the artist info.
The tracks that are specially marked to prevent non album play read like this:
rockandroll.m4p
The p  stands for protected which in the early days of iTunes all the tracks were.
To fix it right click rename  and just change the p on the file extension .m4p to read .m4a and save.

365 days in the life of "The world of Joanne-chan"

As we're approaching the end of the old year and the beginning of the new people often think about what happened to them and how that compared to their expectations as well as their dreams for the future.
One thing I hadn't expected this year was to be at a point in my life when I could be open with a goodly number of people about being an adult little girl, sharing with them all that this means to me and what as a community we are all about while at the same time dispelling some of the misinformation shows like the Jeremy Kyle show put out.
Equally I had not expected to have influenced some to have seen that within themselves which isn't to say they're clones of me bit by bit - identical - but they have been able to embrace it, finding a sense of inner peace.
If dear readers you fall in one or both of those categories then  I'd like to thank you all for reading this blog and being understanding on certain forums and social networks for that has help shape this years blog entries.
I've enjoyed being with those of you who are furries, leaning more about your fursonas, mets, amazing digital art skills, learning to share space with you on your sites as well as in chat.
Things around health have been at the core of my offline life from the severe reaction I had to a gnat bite that was super scary to being found so unable to work I was able to leave employment that had the effect of enabling me to spend more time as me although I do work when I'm not pawley voluntarily for a few hours helping out. I so hope not to have such a bite this coming year.
I've been enjoying reading a lot this year having found books I can read without major difficulties, chatting to people about them and even taking part in a bookathon where you read and discuss over a short period a book as a group which was rather fun.
I've talked about on forums and in chat with you about music in ways that just wouldn't of been as fun had they'd of happened in the sorts of places where groan up obsessives tend hang out.
What of this upcoming year? Well I do wanna get out more - out of the front door- visiting places, having fun times in my own little way.
Regarding this blog, I've already a few ideas for the next blog entries which will be that bit different than previous ones, raising the bar of this blog, widening the appeal.
I'll end by thanking everyone for reading this blog, the conversations we've had on various sites and wish you all a very happy New Year.

Christmas 2012

If you have just come to this site you probably did not expect me to publish a Christmas edition as I had said elsewhere I wasn't doing one before Christmas as I was going to be very busy organizing stuff for other peoples Christmas's, visiting and the like.

You might be thinking what is a Joanne Christmas like?

A Joanne Christmas is unapologetically a little affair, simple, very childlike wrapped around some groan up parts such as being with relatives so while they may do sophisticated things and talk about groan up stuff, I don't cos I'm the child.

I woke up, got dressed and spend most of the morning  in full uniform and I see I wasn't the only one in our community that spent at least some of our time like that today.

We went out for Christmas lunch where apart from having some lovely well cooked food, I played a small springy man with a sucker that holds it down for a minute before it goes pop and jumps up in the air landing all over the place. I had loads of fun doing that and Mommy was okay with it too. Having a Mommy that'll let you do this in public is so awesome.

Below is my present pile with an unexpected present on the top.

Hmm I wonder what it might be cos it came from a borderline lg colleague of mine who really knows what makes me happy.

Oh look, she bought me a Hello Kitty selection box with chocolate and other candy in it because when she saw it, it reminded her of me. It was so sweet of her as knows all about my little side.

I had some money cos really most groan stuff doesn't really do anything for me at all so I bought this years super annuals by Jacqueline Wilson who writes lovely children's books and yes a Hello Kitty annual with games,activities and other really fun things to do in them like colouring.

 As well I had this the 75th Anniversary annual of the British Comic the Beano with special stories, jokes and other things in them that make me happy.

In a Joanne Christmas, new childrens books feature as I love reading about people and their adventures so there's Emerald Star, a follow up to Hetty Feather and Four Children and It by Jacqueline Wilson in their hardback editions.
Mommy bought me some pastel pink super soft slippers that's she's happy for me to wear around her, a pair of soft snuggle socks and Scottish shortbread. I had a tin of chocolates to share cos well sharing is a 'very good thing tm' although Ill have to change some gloves as my hands are small, the fingers are smaller than Mommy's even and these are way too big.
I have record coming just after Christmas too as it was in the Christmas Eve sale too.
Now the funny thing is people this is so similar to the Christmas's of of the past and you know what? It just feels so right.

Ho ho ho!

This time of year brings back memories for me, some painful bordering on the harrowing (I have been know to go AWL from sites around this time of year) and others a lot more enjoyable. I suspect for a number of you it may be similar in which instance you have my understanding.
But as ever I'd not of posted an image here without their being some deep meaning to it and it's that one of the loveliest warm fuzzy feelings I remember is being sat on Santa's knee talking to him about how the year had been and what I'd really love for Christmas.
That's a very special feeling every child should experience as part of the magic of childhood and as we have increasing less days toward that Big Day we shouldn't lose sight of and why we 'do' the social Christmas with our families.
It's not about the money we spend, it's about sharing our love with one another, making each other feel special, loved and above all wanted.

Find-outers

Hallo there.
I've a bit of blocked up nose today so I'm doing some schoolwork complete in my full uniform today apart from some reading too.
That takes me to today's subject.
There are many types of stories written such as those centred on fantasy, romances, animals, adventures and so on but one genre I struggle with is the Detective Story usually because it requires  you use more short term memory while reading to piece together from the clues you're told, who really did it.
Unfortunately for someone like me reading something like that is like trying to run complex games on old computer with a slow processor and very little RAM (it might load up but attempting play is sluggish and may even stall!).
Fortunately I found a detective  mystery  series by Enid Blyton that were written for children from around nine years upward that I can follow reasonably well.

This series goes under the name the 'Find-outers' after the title the children who form a detective club called themselves dedicating themselves to solving mysteries and outwitting the local Police Constable, Mr. Goon who they christen 'Clear-orf' after what he shouts at them accusing them of meddling and otherwise interfering in the LAW.
The leader of the club is Frederick Algernon Trotteville  who is a boastful as well as cheeky outsider to the others in the village of Peterswood but is actually quite bright being good at languages and art at his boarding school. Because of his build he's called Fatty although he is quite physically fit playing school sports.
His deputy is Larry who is really called Laurence and they are joined by Daisy (his sister), Pip alias Peter, and Bets (Elizabeth) who is just 9 and the youngest of the group.
Fatty has a dog called Buster who obeys Fatty's commands well.
Upon being formed they call themselves "Five find-outers and Dog".
Mr Goon is probably the most incompetent policeman ever to taken on investigating mysteries in their area and the children in the first story, "the Mystery of the Burnt Cottage", strike up a very good relationship with the Inspector of Goon's force much to the displeasure of Pc Goon, especially when the inspector realizes just how good the Find-outers really are solving the mystery Goon failed to do!
There are in total 15 stories in the series which were all  issued by Dean's in the Rewards series in 1990 with reprints from that edition keeping the typeset narrative intact through most of the 90's whereas current editions like most of Enid's output have been revised and rendered 'politically correct'.
Thankfully it's easy to find these editions but Deans also did something else, as with the Schools series Enid wrote, they did two omibus editions each having three stories from the first six published and the top one issued in 1992  is mine (it's a 1994 reprint).

This one (the second in the set) has 'Spiteful letters', 'Missing Necklace' and 'Hidden House' in it and was published in 1994 although my copy is the 1998 reprint and both keep original illustrations and text in them, making a great starter set you can get cheaply used.
I'm really enjoying reading this series, more than I thought I'd of been able to howling at how Fatty and the gang put Clear-orf off the scent as Fatty's boisterous wit as well as his genius with disguises.
They also are a period reminder of how life was in sleepy English villages back then before policing moved mainly to the town and your only contact with the police was in their distinctive 'Panda car' they came out to visit your patch in where at the time this was written your Policeman lived in a Policehouse in your village and he patrolled it.
So far I've picked Mystery of the Pantomime Cat, Mystery of the Invisible Thief and Mystery of the Banshee Towers to go with the omnibus editions.

It's a wrap!

Well, the first week of new improved life went pretty well from the ability just to do a bit a work and keep up with the lives of my work colleagues now the crazy world of paid work is over. I had a blast talking with and helping our clients out as I've so much more control over how much I take on.
I was able to spend some more time dealing with sorting out presents for people although as some of you will recall from last year with the current financial situation effecting us all, I have again parred down how much I'm spending as have those who'd usually treat me. I do sometimes wonder if we'd be better of giving more of ourselves all year round instead.
Arrangements have been made to get me to and help me throughout this years works Christmas lunch which usually involve a quiz and various presentations outside of the formal meal.
I also did some more reading last week and will be taking part in this years Winter readathon where we read a set book and discuss together which should be fun as we're tackling the first Secret Seven novel!
I've wrapped up all ready my stuff cos as I think we all know sometimes it can be hard to get folk to get you what it is you really would like for Christmas with people feeling a bit awkward and that, so to avoid that foot stamping angry protest from the Little Girl within, she's been the money to get what she would prefer with the help of her bigger side.
That makes a lot of sense really as Christmas is really important for children.