In next months issue of Empire magazine Chris Hewitt reviews the new DVD of Frank Darabont’s The Green Mile. Talking about the DVD extras he finishes by saying :-

Oh, and yet again that Hanks fella comes across as the nicest guy in the world. Just once, can’t the guy be caught DUI with a dead hooker in his trunk?Chris Hewitt - Empire

Today I received an envelope in the post which looked familiar. I used to see the same envelope each month when I bought Premium Bonds by standing order. At first I thought it was a confirmation that the bonds that I sold last month had been processed. I had checked my bank account the other night and noticed that the bonds had been sold and that the money had been credited to my account.

I opened the envelope to find that I had won £50 worth of Premium Bonds. When I sold the bonds I had kept a note of the numbers, as recommended on the form. Low and behold the winning Premium Bond was one that I had just sold. Luckily I had ticked the box to only sell the bonds after the next draw.

Rancid

I almost didn’t go.

I was not in the best of moods. I left work and managed to get slightly lost getting into Manchester. Luckily the new Hilton Hotel building can be seen from miles around to I just pointed the car at that. The NCP car park that I was heading to is just next to it, which was fortunate.

I managed to get something to eat and wandered around the centre for awhile, trying valiantly to kill some time. I didn’t really fancy standing outside The Academy for over an hour. But after walking around the town hall a couple of times I decided to head off down Oxford Road.

At about a quarter to seven there was already a fair few people milling about. In front of me were about 5 or 6 blokes and in front of them were 4 girls. Two of the girls were really the worse for drink. One of them kept asking anyone who would listen if they like Rancid. The other one was either lying on the floor or was leaning against one of the buses as if her stomach contents were about to make a hasty exit. “Do you like Rancid? I love Rancid me.” One guy with a mohawk helped the girl who had trouble with gravity up off the cold pavement. Punks do have hearts.

I can’t understand why people can only enjoy a concert when they are completely drunk. So out of their heads that they cannot function. Why would you buy a ticket to a concert months in advance, count off the days until the gig, only to get plastered a few hours before.

7:30pm came around and we filed in.

I had seen Henry Rollins at The Academy back in March but I’d never been to a concert there. Being one of the first 40, or so, people inside it was only a few people deep at the barrier at the front of the stage. Or at least that’s what it looked like from my spot in front of the mixing desk.

Kamikaze Sperm started things off and must be one of the few punk bands to have a saxophone player. That horn really cuts through the fuzz of the guitars, but after awhile the songs started to sound the same. The Unseen, who were energetic and passionate enough but I just felt that they suffered a similar fate. Possibly it’s because I hadn’t heard their material before. I remember listening to one of the more recent Rancid albums for the first time and thinking the same thing.

Speaking of which… the lights dimmed and the Rancid logo was projected on to the backdrop, then the faces of the band members. The first song kicked in and whole place went apeshit. Don’t ask me what it was because they all went by in a blur. Lars looked great in his grey striped suit jacket. I’ve never seen anyone in any band move around as much as he does. Tim kept spinning around and jumping off a box at the front of the stage and then off the drum riser. Matt just kept to his own side of the stage nailing those bass lines down hard. Brandon, the new drummer, was astounding considering that this was his first concert I think Lars said later on. All the while the screen is flashing up stills from zombie pictures and more Rancid logos and art work. As musicians they can’t be faulted. Tim and Lars exchanged the majority of vocal duties with Matt singing a couple of songs. The majority of the songs from And Out Come The Wolves was aired with an Operation Ivy song thrown in for good measure. For the first encore they played a couple of songs unplugged before blasting through Ruby Soho before the end of the show. I’m pretty sure it was Ruby Soho as this was the song that was buzzing around in my head as I wandered back down Oxford Road.

And to think that I almost didn’t go!!

Panasonic DMR-EX75EB-S
HDD/DVD Recorder

A few weeks ago my trusty JVC video recorder stopped showing the on-screen displays. As with most things now-a-days everything is done through menus and cursor movements so if you can’t set the recording times you are a little stuck. But I thought that I could just use the display on the recorder itself. At least you can see the start and end times and the program number. This worked fine for a few weeks. I would check what I had already set-up to record and add any new programs to record at the beginning of the week. Great. Until the clocks changed. I dug out the user manual and tried to set the time using the display on the unit but all the manual said was ‘move the cursor down to the Clock Set option’ not much help if you can’t see the display on the screen. I did try to re-set the times of all the programs using British Summer Time but realised that this kind of messing about wasn’t going to last long.

Time for a small purchase, a Panasonic DMR-EX75EB-S HDD/DVD Recorder.

Having used it for a couple of days I really wish that I had bought one sooner. On long play mode it can record about 170 hours of programmes. In the past I’ve recorded using long play onto a 4 hour tape but the picture quality does suffer. This is only the 160GB model they have one that has a 250GB drive in it. I can’t honestly see why I would need to store 170 hours of TV. I’ll usually watch something and then delete it. If I want to keep it I’ll burn it to a DVD-R and delete it from the drive. Of course this time next year I’ll wish that I’d splashed out the extra £100.

The thing that sold it for me was that the machine has a Freeview tuner built in. At the moment only the TV has a digital tuner so if I wanted to record from one of the other digital channels I could but I would have to have the TV on and set to the right channel. I’ve only ever done this once as you can imagine. With this Panasonic recorder I just have to select the programme from a TV guide on the screen and that’s it. You can even watch a programme while another programme is recording. I know, I’m getting too excited. But this is a joy for someone like me who rarely watches live TV because it stops you doing other things. It even records the full wide-screen picture whereas the video would only record a 4:3 screens worth and I would have to zoom in which made the picture look even worse.

Of course I can’t just ditch the VCR as I do have about 200 videos, some-of-which aren’t available on DVD. So I did have to buy a new SCART lead, to run the video signal into the HDD/DVD, and a fibre optic cable to run the audio signal into the amplifier.

After I had finally plugged everything in what I really wanted to try was transferring from video to HDD, so that I could archive some of my videos. This all worked perfectly except… the on-screen display came back on the video. It may have been a loose connection after all.

iPod nano 8GB

A few weeks ago I bought a little 8GB iPod nano. Yes, I realise that I could have spent about £30 more and bought a 30GB iPod but, to be honest, I didn’t want something that big. The iPod isn’t that big, when you think of the storage and the display, but I did need something that would easily fit into the top pocket of my shirt.

The first generation 1GB iPod shuffle, which I ordered when it was announced, has served me well. I never needed a screen because I only ever used it when I was doing other things. I just loaded it with songs and switched it to shuffle play and that was it. Of course there were times that I needed a display. I would buy a new CD, import it into iTunes and transfer it to the shuffle so that I could listen to it. If the shuffle already contained 200 songs then the new tracks were completely lost in the mix. You could listen on shuffle play and hope to hear a new song or you could switch it so that it played the songs in sequence and press the skip button until you found the new album. Obviously, on occasion, I would just transfer the last few albums that I’d purchased and leave the rest of the iPod shuffle empty.

The other thing is pod-casts. The iPod shuffle isn’t built for pod-casts. I listen to a few pod-casts while I’m sat at my iMac. But, I find that I can’t do anything that requires concentration when I’m listening to something. Yes, I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. Yes, I can’t walk and have a telephone conversation at the same time. Not that anyone ever rings me.

Last night I transferred the pod-casts that I hadn’t listened to during the week to my iPod nano. Just so I could listen to the Penn Radio and Ruby on Rails pod-casts while I was washing clothes and cleaning and hoovering. Of course I don’t know what the neighbours think. They no doubt hear me laughing when I’m watching something on TV but to hear a laugh surrounded by complete silence must seem strange. No stranger than usual I suppose.