Today was the first day our son had to go to his new school. Though not a real schoolday, he sat in the class for over an hour for introductions, and afterwards he received his books. Now those books are a problem. First of all, I'm glad I went along with him, because they were quite weighty. Secondly, when we were home and took a closer look at the books, they were all ...how to put this kindly... pretty old. Half of the books were clearly used more than one schoolyear, while others were in such a bad state that if I had to hand out books, I'd be ashamed to give those. Some were even in that bad a condition, that they were taped with ducktape by the school After contacting the school, our son has to report at the administration tomorrow so that the they can exchange / mark the books as seen "used" and we don't have to pay afterwards for them...

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Finally it's time to sell my old PlayStation 2. After we didn't play with the console for about half a year, and while last 2 years we've only played about 10 hours with the console, we  though it was a waste to let it collect more dust than it did so far... First off the PS2 itself... We've put a lot of money in this one at the time, putting an Infinity chip in it, making it region free, allowing us to play non-EU games as well... And the stuff we've bought for it is a lot... 2 memory cards, 2 controllers, 2 extension cords for the controllers and a couple of (original) games. Then there's one jewel amongst the games, and one I will miss for sure: ICO. This game in it's original form, along with the 4 cards is one of the real collector items for the PS2. I was lucky to have found one, I played it with a passion, and I feel sad to part from this game But is it the end for all consoles for me? Yes and no will be the right answer. I'll stick to PC games for sure from now on. Because of the sheer power of PC's, they'll always be better than console games. But I will keep my PlayStation Portable fos sure. Though not really a console, I will keep this one. The PSP is (for me) one of the better handheld consoles with great titles. It's also very handy to have one when I'm travelling

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No, I'm not talking about some fetish here I'm talking about old vinyl records... For the younger ones reading my blog, just ask your parents what they are. You might be lucky and your parents have saved some of them Anyway, a couple of months ago I bought the LP from Caro Emerald, where you'd get the CD for free. Since then I wanted to play the LP to hear her sing. But it just didn't come from it to buy a turntable, until last weekend. Last Saturday I went to the store and bought myself an Akai turntable. I know, the turntable itself isn't much, and I'm looking for a new cartridge, to replace the standard one (looking for a Stanton Tripple-E, my mother used to have one of those, and I loved the superb sound it gave). I also bought a couple of 2nd hand LP's from the local store here and started to listen at home. One of the first LP's I played was Jesus Christ Superstar, which I also have it on CD (copy, but that doesn't influence the music quality). I immediately had the feeling the sound from the LP was warmer than from the CD. And when Gethsemane started (my favorite track of the whole LP), goosebums rose all over my body, something I never had with the CD or DVD... Just the sheer quality of the music, and the emotion you feel that was put in the song by Ted Neeley... Well, since I already tossed away the CD, I could not compare the 2 recordings... It's a good thing I also bought a Kate Bush album (Lionheart). Since I also have The Whole Story, I could compare that one track from this album: WOW. First I listened carefully to the LP and next was the CD. On the LP I immediately heard Kate clearly keep her breath at the point she sings "holds his breath" in "You know it's not for real, he just holds his breath". After I completely listened to the LP, I turned on the CD. At first I thought I was missing some of the musical quality - the bass and high notes just seemed a bit flat compared to the LP version I just listened. So I took the track on the LP along side, and switched from turntable to CD constantly, and I was right. The turntable made the song sound so much fuller. The lower parts seemed actually alive, where on the CD they sounded somewhat flattened and numbed. And when on CD I came to "holds his breath", I hardleay could hear Kate hold her breath... I immediately thought that The Whole Story was remastered, but looking at the CD booklet, there was no word about remastering. Only Wuthering Heights was edited with vocals. Think it's clear for me... Whenever possible, grab the LP instead of the CD Oh, and get an even better cartridge for that turntable... If a crappy default cartridge like this sounds good, I wonder what a Stanton Tripple-E (or something alike) would do to the quality...

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Ealier this week I said I received the ASUS My Cinema card, the last week I've been recording a dozen Video8 tapes on the computer. Because I was not sure how the software would respond to multi-tasking, I didn't do much with the computer, other than record the tapes. By now, I've recorded all tapes of our son on the computer (a total of over 18 hours) and am starting to edit them and after that burn them to DVD... The recording was pretty quick. Okay, it's over 18 hours of video, but the software records it real-time. So including the starting of the software, check settings to record and stuff like that, I was 19 hours busy with that. Now I've started editing the first video (93 minutes total), and that does take a bit *AHUM* longer. Searching, cutting and saving as DivX coded movie is a lot of work. So far I've finished 26 minutes of video, and it took me around 3 hours to get this done. I hoped to have 2 DVD's finished today, but I guess I'd be happy if I manage to have only one of them done by the end of the day. Good thing is that the editing software supports multi-tasking, so I should be able to play a game during that time

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Last week I ordered an ASUS My Cinema P7131 from MyCom. Well, ordered... I actually won it in the auction on their site for only € 19,04. Because we were extremely busy with the living room floor, I finally as able to install the card yesterday and give it a try quick as well. Though the software and drivers for the card are for Windows Vista (32-bit I guess), it all works fine under Windows 7. And now is the big day to give the card a full test. While I'm writing this, the card is busy recording the 1st tape of our son. This tape starts on his 4th day. And looking at it, so far all goes well *keeps fingers crossed* After this tape, I have 5 more tapes to record of which I'm sure Max is on. These tapes range from July 30, 1998 till April 21, 1999. After those tapes I have 7 more tapes, of which one is certain to hold our wedding day. Of the other 6 tapes I have no idea what's on them. It'll be a surprise to see what else we recorded around the turn of the century And why are the tapes of Max so important..? This is because Max was born extremely premature at 29 weeks and 4 days. He's one of the very rare children born so premature to have no mental and physical problems (other than the Asperger's Syndrome he has from me, but I figure that he'd have that anyway). I'm sure I have to make at least 4 copies on DVD of these recordings. One for us (of course), one for my mother, one for my parents in-law and one for my sister in-law. And I assume my brother might want a copy as well, but he doesn't yet know I'm busy with the recordings now...

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