2012 — 13 December: Thursday
Mercy me!1 On Saturday (which should find me briefly up in Birmingham with my cousins) I will have been driving without training wheels for five years exactly. Indeed, it's still less than five years since I first drove myself up there, with Dennis the driving instructor riding 'shotgun' while I clocked up the "Pass Plus" certification and got used to my first dominatrix-in-a-box telling me where to turn.
Closer to home, I have a lunch date today and then I really must do a spot of packing. I wonder where everything is? I know where the ice is; that's still outside, though in dwindling amounts. I didn't know, but have just been told, that Picasso did the sets for Stravinsky's "Pulcinella". I could wish that BBC Radio 3 would play more than just fragments of music — the Overture of that lovely piece is nowhere near enough...
While I agree...
... that Dickinson's lines...
There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons—
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes—
... have a certain je ne sais quoi I suspect Professor Wilson's essay would cut little or no ice in the boardroom of an organisation that can compensate a red-haired Corporate officer and friend of the boy Cameron (and Bliar before him, apparently) nearly £11,000,000 for her "loss of service". Good God!
"The Rich are different from us". Never mind. It's already time to root out a stale crust for breakfast :-)
It's still -1C out there...
... at 09:59 so I've just resorted to a thicker layer — one of Junior's cast-offs made, in all probability (judging by the static crackles), from recycled plastic bottles. The living room is at a slightly balmier 20.2C and the house thermostat is set to "20". I'm about to start battling with the meta-tagging of that subset of MP3s in subfolder "D". Anything beats packing.
It seems...
... like only yesterday that my terribly nice energy supplier was bringing me his "extra peace of mind" (in suitably large font for one of my advanced dotage). Now he's telling me "my prices are protected" until 24 October 2013 despite what I "may have heard" about him putting them up. I shall fling open a window and turn up the wick. Not. Meanwhile, my son tells me 'molehole' was off the air for 50 minutes yesterday afternoon while the ISP "had problems". And I have now learned not to opt for the chicken 'burger' at the King Rufus. All part of Life's rich tapestry, as dear ol' Dad was wont to remark.
Recall my mysteriously "missing" Scott Walker sings Jacques Brel music when I was viewing my music library with the diabolical iTunes? I put "Sherlock" Len on the case and he's cracked it. (So despite there being No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, he earned his today.)
The fields causing the trouble (Sort Artist, Sort Album, Sort Album Artist and a couple of others) are not actually mp3 tags at all. They are "extended" or "enhanced" tags and are only recognised by a limited number of players. Winamp ignores these fields which is why it works as expected. Looking at your tracks, most have extended information (in particular they have Walker, Scott in both ARTISTSORT and ALBUMARTISTSORT. However, the Jacques Brel album lacks the SORT fields and thus defaults to sorting on ARTIST or ALBUMARTIST (both Scott Walker).
The moral is don't use invisible extended tags that get their data from gawd knows where and keep it where you can't edit it with your paid-for tag editor — use a freebie called 'mp3tag' instead. Gr(rr)eat.
One can go...
... for many moons without hearing from my son's lady friend then, when she does call, I'm mid-way through my simple little evening repast. Still, it didn't sound like an emergency, so I asked her to call back. Now, of course, I'm hovering by the phone. [Pause] Turns out she was wondering if I still felt happy driving up to the midlands "in view of all the ice". What's she trying to do? Undermine my resolve? I'm a chap, dammit. Chaps do what chap's hafta do.