Something's afoot!

He he, that got y'all excited didn't it?
Mommy excelled herself this week with a couple of unexpected gifts for me

Cute bunny furry slippers for keeping me warm during the winter months.

And some cute kitty socks too!

Teenbeat XIIII - Steely Dan is "Collected"

This week post nearly didn't happen thanks to a severe migraine complete with flashing lights and electrical storms in my brain but here we go.
The Jazz influenced sounds of Steely Dan, comprising of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker  with other assorted helpers have long been a favourite of mine but between a sad story of sticky analogue tapes saved to a digital format that itself had issues like a major corporation that lack a playback machine for it and the odd decision to bump up the low and high notes and squash the gap between loud and soft sounds on the current  editions tying to find decent sounding Steely Dan has been challenging shall we say.

This is a band who had a way with lyrics and arrangements  as evidenced on songs like Rikki Don't Lose That Number, Reeling In The Years, Aja and Do It Again and recently I found this triple cd compilation issued in the Netherlands by Universal that does sound rather good with a generous selection from their 1972-1980 albums including the song FM from the movie of the same name.
It'll do until some one can remaster the studio albums anew.

Our day out

As kinda hinted at last week, the week was gonna be busy as I was going out twice and also has the effect of putting out of sync chronologically what should of been the next post but anyway after getting Chat  and Tumblr to work fine in Pale Moon, my default browser we come to this weeks post.
Going out had it's own ahem difficulties thanks to Cheshire East's decision to rapidly move forward resurfacing work requiring closing our main road off completely with very little notice so setting off required literally walking a mile and a bit through the fields to catch a bus to the areas super important rail station catching the train where upon its arrival I met with Jennifer.
Shock alert: I sent a text to Andi on the cellphone!
Traversing the road network in South Staffordshire isn't bad considering the population density outside of the peak hours obviously and it may surprise some but there are a  number of really nice buildings in the towns we went through such as St Peter's, the Parish Church of West Bromwich and the delightful Sandwell Nature Reserve.

All of this was enhanced by the brilliant sunshine and blue skies  on what had turned out to me a warm September's day.

(Above Miss Maisie bunny)
It wasn't long before we arrived at our destination and met with Andi.
Maisie and I  introduce ourselves, sorted our overnight stuff out and proceeded to read this weeks Beano comic  that we'd bought at the Station to the accompaniment of Jean-Michelle Jarre playing from a music server. I'll bet that beats getting up every 18 minutes to change lps!
Andi rustled up a most delicious home made Cottage Pie which was much appreciated while apart from talking about everything and anything including Camp, Andi treated us to hearing the original Captain Kremen  lp, that out of his head radio space fantasy of the DJ , the late Kenny Everett, in a series I remember well for the characters and amazing vocalizations.
I have this vague recollection of going to bed after changing into my kitty nighttime attire and brushing ones teeth sometime before Midnight and waking up around 7:30ish. Maybe it was the Elderberries??? Even Maisie was on that!
Before dashing off to catch the train back, Andi made a lovely cooked British breakfast complete with fried bread.
We'd like to thank Jennifer for the lift down and company as well as Andi for having us as we sure appreciate it all the way.

An enjoyable day

I never do things by halves, people and  this week isn't an exception for reasons that will become clearer with the passage of time as on Saturday September 6th I was away and leaving our Town our driver decided to go via the Rail centre that is Crewe, the delights of the market town of Nantwich and the tranquil Bunbury near to the Shropshire Union Canal (aka the "Cut" to people in South Staffordshire).

Enroute it looked rather dull especially over the Halkyn Mountains with a shower too but as you can see it was actually very sunny at this place. I think its overall feel is just that actually and it was heaving with people.

Got where this is yet? Okay it's Llandudno, North Wales about 15 miles from Colwyn Bay and as it happened just as I arrived boats were out taking people out to see the Great Orme and here is one with would be passengers.
That was taken before I went for a coffee, went to a large Magazine vendor and visited a surviving HMV music store armed with a voucher and walking out with some cds that effectively cost me nothing.

There are many ways of getting around but the most intriguing is this road train that goes from East to West Shore with it's colourful livery. I wonder if it has a steam engine to power it?
Talking of power, we must of had some as Mommy and I won two prizes each on the bus raffle with a box of chocolate Fudge and a diary for me and wasn't it some co-incidence,eh?

A more conventional way is this special tourist bus. I just love the seaside, something that's a constant with me from childhood.
I had fish and chips for lunch out before strolling along the Promenade, just relaxing as you do between fighting the Seagulls off and running around suitably kittyfied.
Mommy and I visited some clothes and gift shops which was fun and then decided to go for tea and some cake in the afternoon where I had a really big slice of a lemon and cream cake which was delicious to tide me over until we returned a couple of hours later.

Restoration post

Hi! We're back by the power of the Pale Moon after last weeks problem with the 'toplap' and trying to make the treacle laden old desktop actually do something that makes actually using an manual typewriter seem almost liberationly quick which was one of the first useful 'toys' I ever had.
While the original toplap is waiting repair or cannibalization for the spare parts, I has a new to me toplap that is smaller than that and has a more typewriter feeling keyboard which for those of us taught to type on a proper typewriter is very much appreciated.
Fortunately much of my music was backed up in many ways, vendor clouds, usb sticks and even on the cards of the music player  used to play from without having to fire up the computer although this leaves a few albums potentially missing that probably underscore the need to back up by whatever means the things that matter on your computer.
Equally having a back up of your bookmarks with those sometimes hard to recall web addresses helps in getting re-established as does having somewhere your passwords for sites you joined and contribute to.
While I didn't have a really update list the one from de original Treacle machine was at least serviceable and having been exported and the imported to Pale Moon using a usb stick on here only required two additions and one change to be of use in getting back online.
Thanks everybody for being understanding  during this period.

A short message from me

Hello and welcomes to this weeks edition bought to you  by de power of de Pale Moon (not Sailor Moon!) and a computer that just come out of the toy box.
I'm sorry I haven't been able to talk with a number of you on various sites such as Tumblr or Google Plus  but this computer it slower than running through treacle even loading up those sites never mind handling all those rapid media heavy posts as great as they are. It so bad it not even do the chat room at IK at all so I not sure if I able to even be with you in chat this next week apart from just going from site to site being slow that reduces the amount of time I have available to do all these things.
I hope something can be fixed so I can keep in better touch with you all.
Regards Jo.

A somethings extra post

With apology to the marvel that is Stevie Wonder's songwriting abilities, seeing it was the Bank Holiday and I has been playing a few of his albums here (see the Music Posts for a selection of his discs I have) here's an extra edition.

Those who follow the album charts can't helped to notice Tom Petty recently topped it in the States with Hypnotic Eye that came on cd in late July but it wasn't until last week I got my copy because it is the 140 gram German lp pressing simply cos it sounds a bit better (and has more dynamics) than the cd version plus came with a free download code for 24bit (48K) High Definition lossless digital audio and regular slightly more compressed Mp3. Amazon did also give me a free Mp3 but I didn't think it sounded too good personally.
Being the sort I am I downloaded the 24bit and downsampled myself a Mp3 from that using the Batch Format convertor in my cd copying program which sounded much better.
Favourites from this altogether really good comeback album are Burnt Out Town which with American Dream Plan B  and Power Drunk are good examples of Tom Petty drawing from current affairs to write spirited songs about the World we live in.

As some of you are aware, I do buy specialty reissues that offer better sound than the originals and one that recently landed my was this, the late 1989 Presto album by ace Canadian rockers, Rush that I bought when it first came out. 
I felt around the time they issued Hold Your Fire! in 1987, they were losing their way, sounding too close to bland 'Stadium  Rock' for a band who impressed me from a very early age with more complex lyrics and musicianship but This had what was missing - 'bite' in the lyrics.
It also helped some of the songs used childhood settings such as playing Rock,Paper,Scissors in Hand Over Fist and examining self deception and vanity through play in War Paint  to make their points clearly.
This copy sounded warmer and less brittle than the original.

Earlier in the year, this rather more longer Progressive rock inspired opus from 1978 was re-issued that not only completed the space fantasy story of Cygnus X1 started in 1977's A Farewell To Kings album, give us a parable on forced equality in the form of The Trees but gives us La Ville Stranglato a marathon over 9 minute totally amazing work out just showing how accomplished at playing their instruments the band really are.

 I also picked up the 2013 issue in this series of Counterparts from 1993 which includes Animate, Cut To The Chase and Cold Fire.
All three of  these discs are super audio compact discs  (sacd)  designed to give better sound on suitable players that also  have a regular cd player for the rest of us.