Showing posts with label #ATuneaDayinMay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label #ATuneaDayinMay. Show all posts

Monday 29 May 2017

So Much For Obsession


Well the last two days I haven't made my 11K steps, I still am 12K ahead of my target and could possibly nip out for another walk and make up the 3.5K steps that I am short today.

I am feeling lethargic and apathetic, because I am waiting for a call that means that I need to drive down to Coventry and back, that's eight hours driving and I'm not a huge fan of driving, but it's far better than being stuck in hospital which is Fiona's situation at the moment.

I didn't even write yesterday but managed to catch up on "American Gods" so that's fine. The weather is grey, so not exactly inspiring.

The problem is when you are waiting on a call, you can't really start on something else or go out to a film or a gig, there's more important things in life than being selfish. I'm looking forward to having Fiona back and catching up on TV and then having a week's holiday next week.

So I though "The Waiting" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would be appropriate for the whole of this Bank Holiday Weekend. See I can't even write that many words even though I haven't written anything for two days. I am still keeping up the number of posts so have maintained #ATuneaDayinMay but I really should be writing more about stuff that is interesting really.

I'm sure the journey to Coventry and back will give me lots to write about, and I suppose the 250 or so words that are in this piece is not that small. I seem to remember doing 100 word essays at school, or maybe I am just imagining that, I wonder if my teachers ever counted how many words I wrote or was it just a threat to make sure I wrote enough to be read.

Who knows.

Anyway I will go out for another walk now , even though the weather is still greay.

I may have an early start tomorrow






Saturday 27 May 2017

Obsessed? Moi?


I started walking today before 5AM, did lots of things was absolutely shattered watched the English Cup Final and glad to see Arsene Wenger get his hands on some silverware and he still has his outrageous French accent and I love it.

When he came to Arsenal from the J-League's Grampus-8 (if my memory is still functioning) he transformed "boring" Arsenal into THE team you want to watch and that has been the situation for most of the last twenty years, no mean feat and while ALex Ferguson may have been a little more successful there's no doubt that Arsene Wenger transformed modern football.

But after the football I decided to rack up another thousand steps because I wanted a drink. I could have gone to the corner shop but went to the next one along, because I knew it would be further to walk and would mean I would hit 14K for today, that's a 3K surplus.

So am I obsessed? I see it as building in contingency for the days when I can't hit 11K and that may happen this week as a drive to Coventry and back in a day beckons, I am not sure an 11K (5 miles) walk will be first on my list.

This is my third post today so my average of #ATuneaDayinMay has been maintained and then some. I will leave you with Air's "La Femme D'Argent" which was the first thing I ever heard by them and is a perfect day closer, and maintains a tenuous French Connection.

Sleep well my friends

Tuesday 23 May 2017

On The Move


I'm Top 10
Rightly or wrongly, these days I probably listen to most of my music on the move. The is wholly due to my decision to walk 10K steps a day after Fiona had asked if I wanted to take part id a 15K step challenge. Then she told me about Diabetes.org One Million Step Challenge to raise money for Diabetes research. Amazingly when I searched on Google two of my posts in the top ten, how long they'll be there I don't know.

Anyway, as usual I digress, but when I say wrongly  it' because I love listening to music either on my player in a room at home, preferably loud. I remember the first time I played "Court of The Crimson King"  by King Crimson on my home cinema system on the remastered DVD audio, I was stunned, the sound and detail was amazing (it still is), this was a late sixties album (admittedly by some top notch musicians) but this was a revelation to me.

When I was a teenager one Christmas I got Blue Oyster Cult's "On Your Feet or On Your Knees" and put it on my record player. I was so disappointed. This was one of the top heavy metal bands and it sounded , well weak. Then I thought,  TURN IT UP. I did , and I was blown away. My parents weren't too happy, so loud stuff like this had to be heard on headphones, or just when I had the house to myself.

I also love hearing music live as well and have recently seen The Coyotemen, Simon Wood, Staggerin' Jon Lee, Go Go Midgets, Brent and The Brads and next Sunday I am going to see my friends Sophia and Sophie debut with their band The Citrines here.

Anyway I've not really kept up the #ATuneaDayinMay , but given what happened last night, I'm going to put in New Order's  "Blue Monday", Manchester will bounce back. Just feel for the families devastated by the cowardly bullying attack.

Keep positive... don't let the bullies win.

Thursday 18 May 2017

Wide Awake


It's almost midnight and I am wide awake but shattered. I finally finished watching The Fall, and managed almost 11K steps today. I didn't intend to write anything, but thought maybe I could have a midnight themed #ATuneaDayinMay , I mean there are load of songs with a midnight or night time them aren't there....

The first that comes to mind is "Midnight Rambler" by The Rolling Stones then you have "Midnight Rider" by The Allman Brothers both very worthy songs, and both favourites of mine. I remember I was going to do a post about Half Man Half Biscuit but that's just fallen by the wayside at the moment.

I've just had a decent payout from TopCashback which I took as an Amazon voucher and have spent some of it on a Digitech guitar pedal processor thing which you can see here. It's funny whenever you put a link on the word here Blogger messes up the link processing.

Hopefully this will make me do something with my home recording set up, which is probably better than a lot of bands had in the sixties. My basic problem is having the discipline to do it all on my own. I have an idea of the sound I want and need to actually create some recordings before I can think of playing live again. Another problem is that I am not a musician, I am undisciplined , but I used to record a lot of solo stuff to tape, it;s just getting the hang of my digital tape recorder. I have a lot of fragments recorded , so it's just a question of putting them together and getting stuff done.

Anyway, it's now crept past midnight so we will go with The Rolling Stones "Midnight Rambler" as that's what I am doing now, midnight rambling when I should be sleeping.

Goodnight mes amigos.

Monday 15 May 2017

Time Sharing


When I started first in programming at Littlewoods we were given access that used a "Time Sharing System" which we were told would make it seem as though we were the only person using the system. It was a lie of course but we dealt with it.

In life we often have to work out how to share time between work , chores , stuff that needs doing , time to be alone, do what you want and rest , and spending time in a social environment with friends, family and loved ones. I try to load mine in favour of the last two, but each of these groups can also be subdivided into sub groups.

Today I have to go to work so that's eight hours out of my day , after six hours sleep, ninety minutes of getting up and showered and writing this, then an hour to walk in to work , to try and hit my 11K for today, but I need to get the bus home as I have a delivery from Iceland coming. How mundane is this post? Still these things may be the highlights of some people's lives.

Ideally aim to do what you want and enjoy , and be happy. Life is difficult and confusing at times, but if you do things you want, then life improves wonderfully.

So before I leave , here's #ATuneaDayinMay , what more appropriate that The Buzzcocks "Boredom" from the "Spiral Scratch" EP. This allows me to have a brief rant on the genre of "indie" music. Many "indie" bands are on major labels, so how can they be "indie". It's 1984 doublespeak (which the governments in the UK, USA and Russia seem to use as a matter of course where the words used mean the opposite of their real meaning) . "Spiral Scratch" however was real "indie" , the Buzzcocks first release which they organised end to end. Ironically in this digital age we all have the technology available to record and release stuff from our own bedroom or office.... and that is still on my "To Do" List.

I decided to include the whole of the EP for you so you have eleven minutes of real "indie" music.

Anyway, have a great Monday everybody.

Sunday 14 May 2017

Catching Up


Due to one thing and another , rain and Andrew and Glen's wonderful wedding , I didn't even hit 6K steps yesterday, although I am still 1K steps past the required target, so today I need to catch up.

As a start I thought I would walk down Two Ball Lonnen to Westgate Road, then back all the way up Wingrove Road to the Central Motorway , then along the Motorway to Morrisons, pick up a few essentials and walk back down Two Ball Lonnen then eventually home. That clocks in at 10.5 K steps which puts me just ahead of the required number but I need to do another few thousand. We shall see.

Yesterday I ran out of data on my EE phone plan. Because of EE's grabbing top up policy (like every mobile phone company) I am going to try not to buy a day add on. They put a time limit of a week on the data you buy, 1Gb would last me a fortnight, but there's not much one can do if you want to stay on the same number.

It's a bit weird not having information at your fingertips but if you walk along Westgate Road there is free on street wifi provided by the shops via XLN and it works (unlike As You Like It when I was at Andrew and Glen's wedding, which spent an age before timing out, like several bus companies I could mention), a sensible concept but mobile phone companies like EE won't like it.

Without data the step monitoring app doesn't update (but it records steps) , so having done 10.5K I wanted to hit 12K, but had to just guess and when I got home I found I'd done another 5.5K so that's 16K for today and I am back to 6K over my required target.

I wrote this in two parts as I was incredibly tired after my first walk, and still feel awfully tired and achey, almost as though I have the physical aches of 'flu' without the cold symptoms , I should have really had a bath , but it's too late so I will probably just go to bed.

I haven't really done much today apart from catch up on some TV (Broadchurch, The Fall, The Aliens, Doctor Who) and am enjoying Darwin's Armada although Charles Darwin liked a fight and hunting animals, odd as he wanted to be a clergyman.

So #ATuneaDayinMay, , what's it to be, it's just come to me , as my may walk today to catch up on my walking was a big rectangle we'll have Dave Brubeck's "Unsquare Dance", which all based on the handclap rhythm then everything hangs of that. The piano is almost superfluous.

There's a load of  other things I was going to write about but they will keep for another day.




Saturday 13 May 2017

Sleeping In


My body has stopped letting me sleep in at weekends. I used to be able to sleep til mid day quite easily. Now it's like I have an internal alarm that kicks me out of bed as early as 6 am, sometimes leaving me til 7 am. But both are a lot earlier that it used to be. My eyes are tired and my body and brain are, but something is pushing me to get up, and by the time I have washed and shaved I think I may as well have a shower and by that time I am awake and up.

So while it's 7:45 when I am writing this, I have done everything I mentioned and gone out and got the papers, done my first thousand steps of my Million Step Challenge , and need to iron a shirt or two because later I am going to Andrew and Glen's Wedding.

I need to update Song of The Salesman , and see if I can fly that drone again , write some songs (and more importantly record them) and walk at least another ten thousand steps and probably a lot more things.

I have ripped a couple of music DVDs including The Who at the Isle of White, Public Service Broadcasting at Brixton Academy and Van Der Graaf Generator at Metropolis Studios, because I am now so lazy I can't be bothered to get up and put the DVD in the player, though that same Sony Player plays the ripped DVDs from my home network as I become "Homo Sedens".

I also found a load of rare David Bowie songs on Youtube and need to update the MP3 tags and ad to my already vast Bowie collection, and although I've used it before I will use the Spiders from Mars version of "Holy Holy" which is not on official CD release but in my opinion one of Bowies's finest songs (but how many songs could you say that about). His original was good but a little pedestrian and both version are available in the Five Years Box Set here, a ittle expensive but ten discs for £90 is not that bad really.

Anyway I will let you listen to both versions so you get two candidates for #ATuneaDayinMay,  enjoy your Saturday my friends.


Friday 12 May 2017

Stepping Into Space


I'm still ahead of the game on the Million Step Challenge and I am managing at least #ATuneaDayinMay musically. Today has been a grey day, but there wasn't any rain where I was, so I managed another 13K steps. That was helped by a working app and a walk into work this morning and a walk up to Wildflower for lunch and the back to work.

This weekend I may fall off a bit as I have two of my good friends Andrew and Glen geting married , although that is later in the day so I need to get my walking done early.

I have just tried booklet printing on my Canon Printer to print a copy of The Hawkwind Log to go with my vinyl copy of  "XIn Search of Space"  by Hawkwind. Some of the print is small , but for an original copy you would pay upwards of £50.

So it has to be "Master of The Universe" just a simple riff , six minutes of space rock to take you into your heavens , loved this as a teenager and it's a perfect song because anyone can pick up a guitar an play it, with only the most rudimentary musical knowledge.

Time for me to hit the sack, spacemen.



Wednesday 10 May 2017

Books, Evolution and Heavy Metal at Download


A lot of my reading recently have been influenced by books I've been reading , namely "Tom Waits on Tom Waits" (I don't know if the pun was intended) edited by Paul Maher and "The Age of Bowie" by Tony Morley , so I thought my next would be fiction, possibly in the realms of Michael Moorcock, JG Ballard or John Niven. I'm amazed to find this is the first time ever in this blog that I've mentioned JG Ballard as he's my favourite author. But no, I picked up "Darwin's Armada" (another FOPP capture from Edinburgh) by Ian McCalman and very good it is, essentially the grounding for the Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin and contemporaries. Here's the blurb:

"Darwin's Armada tells the stories of Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Joseph Hooker and Alfred Wallace, four young amateur naturalists from Britain who voyaged to the southern hemisphere during the first half of the nineteenth century in search of adventure and scientific fame. It charts their thrilling voyages to the strange and beautiful lands of the southern hemisphere that reshaped the young mariners' scientific ideas and led them, on returning to Britain, to befriend fellow voyager Charles Darwin. All three crucially influenced the publication and reception of his Origin of Species in 1859, one of the formative texts of the modern world. 

For the first time the Darwinian revolution of ideas is seen as a genuinely collective enterprise and one that had its birth in a series of gripping and human travel adventures. Many of the most urgent ecological and social issues of our times are seen to be prefigured in this compelling story of intellectual discovery."

I do find it amazing that the idiotic anti thought concept of Creationism actually exists, but when you look at how easily people are influenced , a thoughtless concept that means you don't have to think becomes attractive to some people.

I'm agnostic, there might be a God, but I have certainly seen no evidence of a God in my lifetime and doubt I will. Also the "you can't prove that God doesn't exist" is not really a valid argument. The only God I will acknowledge is on Facebook here. In fact I just this minute signed up to his mailing list.

So today's #ATuneaDayinMay obviously has to be "Charlie" by The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing , who I first saw at the behest of my friend Gillian and recorded it on Spoongig here in November 2014. I found a live performance of them at Download at Donington and "Charlie" starts about three minutes in after some serious metal assault. I once described them as a cross between Anthrax and Chas and Dave. Watch the clip and you will see what I mean. Enjoy.

It's a beautiful day, so enjoy yourself and I hope to see you soon.

Tuesday 9 May 2017

Always Crashing


Tried the drone again tonight. Crashed it several times . Doesn't want to fly when linked to my phone but it takes photos and videos when it has crashed. It is resilient I'll say that.  You can see it in action below but I am along way off that at the moment.

I've passed 100K in the Million Step Challenge after nine days so I am just slightly ahead of schedule, but I do need to keep ahead of the game because I don't think I will hit 11K every day. Rainy days make it difficult , and we are supposed to be getting rain at the weekend , plus I have a wedding of two great friends to attend, so walking won't be at the top of my list.

Another slightly worrying thing is that my knee is giving me a lot of pain tonight. My joints are generally ok (though I am no athlete), but hopefully it is just an extreme twinge. Pain however is a way of telling you that maybe something is wrong. Though I remeber true pain being my burning hands when I received the ferula at school (I was an annoyance to authority then too, and it never stopped throughout my life).

Anyway that scenario has just brought to mind Malcolm Mclaren's take on  Puccini's "Boy's Chorus" from the wonderful album "Fans" , a heavenly choir juxtaposed  with Mclaren's cocky cockney artful dodger figure. I loved it when first heard it and I love it. If you don't have the album get it, a culture and rebellion cocktail, and it'll do for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence,

Sleep well my lovely friends



Sunday 7 May 2017

Too Many Things


I'm male.. so I can only do one thing at a time. Sometimes if I am well prepared I can start things off and let them run on their own while I get on with something else, but often that means I forget that I have kicked things off and then usually I'm pleasantly suprised when that task is done.

This morning I was feeling under pressure because I needed to print a CD with my new Canon printer but the software included is atrocious and and only has pre prepared templates that you can use. I also knew the lawn needed mowing and some of the  surrounding jungle needed cutting back. But it looked like rain.

Add to that that I wanted to fly my new drone , and also needed to do my 11K steps for the Million Step Challenge , I sort of feel that everything needs to be done at once.

The thing is , it doesn't. I sorted the lawn out, had a wander out and then had some unfruitful searches to sort out the printer. I tried the old Epson CD Printing software but that only works with an Epson printer. I eventually found some free software from NCH. and it does the job perfectly, I've been trying it with these vinyl style CDs here. 

I didn't get to fly the drone, but did get my steps in for my Million Step Challenge .

The thing is you need to schedule things, which means sometimes putting things off to the next day. Also when you get something new it takes time to learn it. I'm still getting the hang of my Sony Xperia, but I know things will come good.


So another for the #ATuneaDayinMay,  sequence Imelda May and Jeff Beck's cover of the Shangri-La's "Remember, Walking in The Stand" from the Les Paul Tribute Concert. 

Sleep well my friends.

Sunday Morning


And it hardly looks like summer, the ground is wet and the clouds are grey and it's cold out at the moment. Yesterday the five o' clock EFL League Two program was very exciting , if heartbreaking for Hartlepool fans, and their most famous one Jeff Stelling. Sky have cruelly put it up on their web site here , am I evil for sharing. The thing is they will be winning next season and that will put a smile on his face. The coverage was far more animated that the Premier League coverage early in the day.

Anyway it's Sunday morning and I have some much to do today I can't begin the think about it. I have a more reliable step counter (I think, for my Million Step Challenge, I'd hit 68K steps in the first six days and this was missing, I reckon about 10K steps from Thursday and Friday). I'm using Google Fitness and manually recording my daily steps on Google Sheets.

Anyway I will leave to with John Martyn's "May You Never" for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence. I have a feeling I won't keep this going, but this is a week so far and I have had only one deviation with David Bowie's "All The Madmen" , but I did have to include that.

So have a brilliant Sunday my friends, either relax or do something really fun and positive.

Saturday 6 May 2017

Sometimes The Dream is ... Well ... Weird


I had a dream last night. The bit I remembered was looking out of my window on to may neighbours' garage / extension (they don't have one) to see their big cat sitting on the roof. Then I something and said something along the lines of "Bugger .. look at that..." A rather large snake appeared and made short work of the cat ... my neighbours' cat world never get bested by a snake. Just a totally weird dream.

I have found a solution to my Step Counter problem, I installed Google Fitness and then found a "Track Workouts" button in Samsung Health, switching it on seems to have let it capture the steps I'm making, I will be able to certify that tomorrow.

Anyway today I got my drone and crashed it three times, also got a few photos out of it. My new Canon printer has been set up and used to print a couple of duplex sheets. I also want to print a couple of CDs so am going to try that tomorrow, as well as mowing the lawn and watching the Championship season come to an end.

I also want to look at printing a copy of The Hawkwind Log from the album "XIN Search of Space". I got a vinyl copy of the album to add to my collection for the wonderful Barney Bubbles cover and packages , but the Log would complete it but an original copy would set be back about fifty quid. I managed to acquire a PDF version of it, so that is a challenge for me as well.

It's time for bed so I'll leave with "Hair Like Brian May Blues" by Half Man Half Biscuit for my #ATuneaDayinMay sequence, sleep well my friends.


Friday 5 May 2017

Sometimes The Plan Just Falls Apart


It's that thing called life. On Monday I started my Million Step Challenge, but my phone started playing up , which I was using as my tracker. My printer failed so I bought a new "small footprint" one, and I bough a new phone. The new phone had a major flaw so I got another one, which seemed to be doing the business, but yesterday I took a walk down to Denton Burn and I thought my phone wasn't tracking my steps, well the S-Health app on my Sony Xperia XA phone wasn't.

A walk to the Post Office depot this morning proved it wasn't tracking correctly last night, and today it stopped again (it's more that 200 steps from Wildflower Cafe back to work, even if it is downhill, and it recorded 800 steps to get there, though with my old phone it recorded closer to 1500 steps. So my step recorder doesn't seem to be working, so I will have to choose another pedometer app. For the first time in two months I haven't hit 10K steps in a day according to the app. Still it's another challenge to get that sorted.

Then my printer, and it is very good, but obviously some new previously unknown definition of the word small, but I have managed to deal with it and fit it in with all the other stuff on my desk.

That's life , if stuff were guaranteed it might become very boring. My life is certainly not that (although it may seem that way to you).

Anyway it is late for me, although I will probably wake up in a few hours, but one of my #ATuneaDayinMay, is Kevin Ayers' "May I" (in English this time, I let you have the French one on Monday) , but if I remember rightly this features a young Mike Oldfield on guitar.

Sleep well my lovely friends.



Thursday 4 May 2017

How Mad Must I Be?


One of the the problems with anything new is that you have to learn how to use it. One of the benefits of the Sony Xperia XA is that I can use my bluetooth headphones but I hadn't sorted random play so I went for "The Man Who Sold The World " album by David Bowie.

"Width of A Circle" has that ace opening riff and goes on for eight minutes or so then next.....

.... next .....

    .......next .....

Black and White Madman Sells The World
"All The Madmen". I had forgotten how awesomely alien and scary this song is, and it is truly wonderful. Like when I first heard it 45 or so years ago , it still sound as fresh and threatening as ever. The dark malevolent spirit of Bedlam and abandoned Victorian asylums when the inmates have been left behind to fend for themselves.

The cover of the album was the two colour black and white Bowie not the original dress cover, and the song cuts your mind in black and white slices veering from rock to creepy children's song with some disconcerting woodwind sections.









I know this song has nothing to do with theme of May but it ii a song that hit me as hard this morning as when I first heard hit. It's frightening but you don't want it to finish... like fraying rope on your sanity .. you become more and more frightened that it's going to break .. and after five minutes ... wel did my mind break?

You know what I'm like , would I have been different had I not heard this?  Probably


For better or worse?

We'll never know

Listen and Experience

Tomorrow is Friday.

So Much For May Songs

Games For May - 1967

I was going to post a tune a day in May but I thing two songs in four days has scuppered that idea, although I will maintain the May theme if I can, and today's will be "See Emily Play" by Pink Floyd which features the line "Games For May" the titles of summer events Pink Floyd were involved in around 1967.

This week has been a little fraught to say the least, starting the Million Step Challenge then my Samsung Note becoming unreliable, replacing it with a Huawei P8 that wouldn't run the Barclays banking app (this has been the situation since January with no resolution in sight. Huawei blamed Barclays, Barclays pretend nothing is wrong much like Apple. EE gave me a refund on condition I bought another phone. I pointed out it wasn't actually fit for purpose and they replied "we just sell the phones"


Anyway I ended up with a Sony Xperia XA which was much cheaper and isn't too bad, apart from slow start up. I'm also worried it is not recording my steps properly . What I was sure was 4K steps recorded on the Samsung (home to Denton Burn) was recorded as less than 2K steps. Tomorrow I will walk to the Post Office Depot to pick something up and that should be about 2.2K . If it's less I will know I have a problem.

Anyway if I post another May Song tonight I could be back up to speed tonight, though I am feeling very tired.

So that;s what's happened this week so far, I'm sure it's not finished yet.

Monday 1 May 2017

...and Another and Another


It's May Day and the first day of my Million Step Challenge , and what happens? The phone I use to track my steps finally gives up the ghost (well it's a bit like Meg Shelton, it keeps pretending it's OK then when you want to do something returns to it's death state) , but I have just gone for a new phone. The old one probably just needs wiping and reflashing, but I think it's quicker to go with a new one.

The old one was a Samsong Note 4 and the new one is a Huawei P8 Lite with a much faster processor and apparently greater reliability that Samsung. We will see. It took and age to copy my stuff but then found it needs a nano SIM and the Note has a micro SIM, so have to sort that tomorrow.

I managed to get my step data over and I have managed to clear 13K steps today, that's six miles which is good considering the technological problems. I think I've had enough technological failures today and intend to be a bit closer to normal tomorrow.

So it's back to work tomorrow, and I will leave you with "Puis Je" by Kevin Ayers, so we have the first two #ATuneaDayinMay songs on the first day, it's one to hold in reserve in case I miss a day.

Time for bed 

One Thing Leads To Another


My phone has been playing up, but I have a feeling it's the battery, so I ordered one online. It came quickly, I put it in and nothing. I tried leaving it charging a few times , but nothing. My current battery just seems a bit temperamental and can shut the phone down when it gets down to less than 30% charge. So today I will hopefully buy a new battery (hopefully from the Asian guy in the Grainger Market near Pumphreys coffee, reasonably priced and knows his stuff but the battery is not a Samsung - the last one lasted over a year for a tenner so that's good, my current Samsung one has lasted six months BUT it had been sitting in a drawer for over a year so you know).

Anyway to return the faulty battery I need to print off a label and an email, then I find my printer has decided it's not printing three colours including black. The printer is an Epson, and prints CDs and has been fine, but it's way past it's sell bay date (I do have a grammatical problem with when I should use "past" and "passed" so apologies if I get it wrong).

The point is the the failure of by phone then just highlighted the failure of my printer when I needed it. My printer is like a spare tire, I only need it every so often. Anyway I managed to find a Canon printer for under £50 that prints CDs , is also does double sided printing and uses wifi, so I've ordered that here , it's not a scanner but I can use a camera or the local library for that.

So I have a feeling that this Samsung battery may sit around for a year in a drawer too.

The thing is I need my phone to track my steps for my Million Step Challenge that starts today, and I need to maintain 11.5K steps a day. SO far I have done 104 steps, but I still haven't taken drugs or had a shower.

So do I do the #ATuneaDayinMay with May themed music? I did one in 2012 here, but that was just a post a day in May and I did 37 posts that month, and you can see lots of link failures due to the fact that technology changes, companies go to the wall, and things don't work any more, much like the initial reason for this post.

I will start with Queen's "Keep Yourself Alive" which features Dr. Brian May on guitar , no synthesisers and a great phased guitar intro and great lyrics, which was one of the reasons I bought it straight away when I heard it on John Peel. Amazingly this doesn't appear on Queen's Greatest Hits. I loved Queen's singles but the first album I liked was "Sheer Heart Attack" still one of my favourite Queen discs.

It looks beautiful outside so I thing a wander into town to track down a new battery is called for.

Have a great Bank Holiday Monday my friends