Dunworking’s Domain

“Copycat Crime”

I was reading earlier this month that CD sales were down in the UK …whilst browsing the CD racks in a local supermarket, I noticed that two CDs I wanted were on sale for £8…I also knew that self same CDs were on sale as downloads from my ISP at £5.95…bit of a “no brainer” then….happily downloaded said CDs, and grabbed a couple of blank CDs to burn these which I had legitimately paid for. Because of the completey stupid protection on the CDs I’d downloaded, I was unable to burn them to CDs.

The so-called “ DRM ” security measure employed meant that I could (a) Play them on my PC or (b) put them on my MP3 player. Now, given that my PC is less than portable, and I’ve also got a Hi-fi system with excellent speakers, neither of these measures were suitable…I’d, in effect, wasted £12. Yes, I should have checked that the DRM would allow me to burn to CD first, but hey, I’d paid for these items. Imagine paying your TV licence and finding you could only watch the programmes on your TV and not record them onto DVD or Video. It’s no wonder people turn to “Peer 2 Peer” software when legitimate downloads are restricted in such a stupid way !

“Football Stories”

Pagham’s season started last Tuesday with a loss against Littlehampton Town…then we won against Predators 4-2 on Thursday, followed by a “double header” yesterday against Chipstead. The first game ended 3-2 to us, and the second was a 0-0 draw. Today we welcome the Chelsea Old Boys FC to fortress Nyetimber for a charity friendly. As the weather has held off (more on that in a minute), we should get a good crowd.

“The Weather”

The more pictures I see of the floods that have affected certain parts of the UK, the more concerned I am about where the money is going to pay for flood defences and water supply maintainance in general. As I live VERY near the sea, and not that far from a small rife in reclaimed saltmarsh, any threat of flooding is very real. Thankfully we have escaped the tragedy that has befallen others, but with climate change possibly pointing toward a warmer, but wetter Britain, it does make you think….

“Harry Potter”

In answer to the incessant pestering from “R” , no I haven’t finished chuffing Harry Potter yet ! And despite the rumours revealed elsewhere on here, there isn’t any chance of Harry having children, ginger or otherwise….

“BBC moves into the 21st century”

Linked in with my first post today, I’ve signed up for the beta of the BBC iplayer which seems to be an extension of the service they offer already. I’ve used Channel 4’s 4oD service for quite a while, and it works well. Both of these offer services which give a limited time to watch programmes on your PC. 4oD also allows you yo buy programmes/films to keep indefinitely. With the phasing out of the analogue TV signal, and video recorders being made obslete, this is another solution to those who either can’t afford or don’t want to get a dvd recorder for their TV.

Peace at last
After all the too-ing and frowing I’ve had with the interweb and the new graphics card over the last couple of weeks, this week has been relaxing in the evenings. Even the traffic lights that annoyed me intensly are on their way - the roadworks look all but finished.

Is it that time already ?!
Today was the last “football free” Saturday until May 2008. Yes, ’tis true - Pagham’s first friendly is next Tuesday, and then it’s all hands to the pitch as we start the new season in a couple of weeks. Scary isn’t it (”no, it’s chuffing annoying”…R).

Becks toes the line (and in doing so breaks another metatarsal)
Talking of football, David Beckham’s move to America just gets funnier and funnier. Having pocketed a massive contract, it now seems he’s injured and may miss the friendly against Chelsea not to mention the M.L.S. games he’ll miss when he plays for England again if he’s fit. Add to that the fact that L.A.Galaxy are…well…”not very good” as a team…has he made a mistake ?

Toys for the boys

Because “R” looks upon me for her techie advice sometimes, she by chance e-mailed me asking what phone she should choose on her new “3″ contract…so I had a nose, advised her and in the meantime noticed they had the Nokia E61 as one of the phones you could choose…so…given that this was on my “wish list” back in March…and that Vodafone had refused to give me an E61 without me paying an extortionate monthly fee…

…I signed up with “3″ for £20 a month which gives me 1000 texts and 100 minutes. I don’t need even that amount of minutes, but the extra texts will come in useful. As for the phone itself, all I can say is…well…this is a superb phone. it’s big (the screen itself is just under 3 inches) and there’s no camera. However these are minor details on what is in effect a PDA with all I could want from a phone. E-mail, web surfing, connects with MS Word and Excel, deals with zip files, has “Realplayer” pre-installed for banging choons, came with a free 512MB memory card, has a full qwerty keyboard, Heck, it even makes phone calls

(”is he going on about that damn phone again?!”…R)

Bet you thought I’d forgotten….

But no…I have also bought the new Harry Potter book today (well, I ordered it ages ago and it turned up today). As I say on my Telegraph blog, I can see no shame in reading it, it’s a good book, is escapist, and should prompt Michael Gerber to write another in his excellent “Barry Trotter” series…ALthough the whole thing was nearly spoilt by “R” who triumphantly told me this morning that she’d already read the end of the book before the beginning…she’s the type of person who would tell her nephew and niece that Father Christmas doesn’t exist….:smile: