So, you’re looking at the screen and thinking “Who?” I know I normally post these things about somebody famous, then slap a tasteless joke somewhere in the midst. This, is not the case. I’m afraid I’m going to have to go into reminisce mode again, I’m afraid.

Dorothy, or how I knew her, Mrs. Pettler, was my junior school teacher during 1989 and 1990. I would probably put her as the best teacher I had during the whole of my junior school teaching. I have more memories about her class than I have about any other teacher.

I will refrain from typing paragraphs about the whole year, though I could quite easily do it. My most vivid memory has to be when we made plaster-of-paris figures for Christmas. This, was in itself, awesome. Obviously, after the figures had dried, we got to paint them. The particular one I’d chosen (or got given, can’t remember) involved a girl lying on a bed. After mixing the paint to cover the stuff such as the bedsheets, etc, I then spent a full morning trying to mix paint for the girl’s face. I had clearly used a lot of paint for this part of the project, enabling Mrs Pettler to chastise me for wasting a considerable amount of paint. I agreed to use the paint I’d mixed on the figure, therefore, the base of the figure was an odd, off-pink colour.

Not that it mattered. My mother loved it anyway. Allegedly.

I have not seen it for a while. I have a feeling I may have binned it, though it may be somewhere in the loft.

That’s just part of the list. Around the same time that happened, I was in the school play. I was Jacob Marley to Narbi Price’s Scrooge. It got recorded, and I still have the tape somewhere.

The acting bug didn’t leave me for another year, and I played the Wizard of Oz in the 1991 production of… um… The Wizard Of Oz. Narbi Price also featured in this production playing the scarecrow. I think.

There are photos in existence of the whole “cast”. In fact, it even appeared in the Hartlepool Mail. My mother bought a copy of the original print, but after borrowing it to someone to show his parents, we never got it back. The same person also never returned my copy of “Bubble Bobble” for the Commodore 64.

I’m moving wildly off topic, so I’ll just draw this to a close. December has also claimed other lives which have upset me, including someone I met during my visit to the PRoT flickr meet back in September. He was only 24.

Well, Jamie, you’ve gone and done it again. Congratulations.

Yes, I have, once again, stuffed up the website good and proper. It all happened a few hours ago. I awoke, early enough for me to not contemplate getting back to sleep. It was about 3AM. After tossing and turning for several minutes, and thanks to a coughing fit, I awoke from my pit. The laptop was there in front of me.

“Ah.” I thought, scratching my very short beard, which I am growing again.

“This will take my mind off this fucker of a cold/chest infection. I’ll play with the laptop for a bit.

And I did. And I fixed a few things with the gallery. I noticed that Andy The Iridium Fan had left some more comments on the site, and I noticed one of the photos was rotated. So I checked a few more, and fixed those also.

While I was connected I thought I’d change a couple of other little things, so I did that, and synchronised the database.

Ker-blammo. 1,724 images removed from the database… including all of the information about them.

Shocked monkey, you say it better than what I possibly could.

Ok, so I dug out today’s database backup, thinking it would be a case of just uploading that. Well, I was wrong. It didn’t work. The database was too big to be useable by phpwebadmin. It hung for a few minutes before the connection timed out. And what little of the database it DID restore was horribly corrupted. Fark.

I thought of trying a few other things, all to do with the database, only to find it was getting more and more corrupt, error messages and blank screens were greeting me left right and centre.

Therefore, I had to use the “restore” feature that my webhost so lovingly provides. Now, this isn’t automatic, so I have to trigger the backups myself, and it appears the last time I made a backup was… 8 days ago. I apologise to those on the RSS feed who have had the last couple of posts duplicated.

It turns out, however, that the RSS feed actually SAVED those particular posts. I use FeedDemon, and subscribe to the feed myself. I had no idea why. Maybe there was a bit of vanity in there, so I could check the stats and see a number of hits on the RSS feed. Maybe I was subconsciously thinking that something like this may happen, and that a backup of the posts were needed. Either way, I was able to grab the info from FeedDemon and paste it straight back into WordPress.

Now, I have to go through the whole rigmarole of updating to WP 2.7 again. Sigh.

EDIT:

Things missing are the comments since 11th, both in the gallery and on here. And all of my email since then too. Aaaaargh.

Two posts in the space of a few hours. I’m really spoiling you. OK, sorry, I clearly meant “really boring you”. Either way, the postie has just been, and through the letterbox plopped a certain record. One I have yet to hear in full stereo, in half decent quality.

It all goes back to the heady days of the late 1980s, and of course, Chad “And you wear your Z-Fronts in bed every night, and you know you do” Phillips.

During the summery days of this period of my life, when the streets were lit with mercury vapour, and every garden in the cul de sac had a tree or bush of some description. Chad was my main musical source. He had the ability to tape songs off the radio, copy cassettes, and other shennanegans I would have never thought possible as a wee child.

In one of his occiasional tape clearouts, I bought a (literal) copy of “Bridge of Spies” by T’Pau. I loved the album, but found that it actually fitted on just one side of a C90 tape. The reverse of this tape was either blank, or filled with music of no interest to me at the time.

Up steps another one of his collection. This one was a C120 tape, with a collection of songs recorded from the radio. They certainly weren’t the best quality, but when you’re 8, it didn’t really matter what they sounded like. He offered to do me a copy of some of the songs on there and the B side of my old T’Pau tape. Of course, I accepted, and one afternoon, while I wa doing something else, he copied the tape.

Halfway through the copying, I finished what I was doing, and went back ho to his house. During the recording of “Respectable” by Mel + Kim, I interrupted the recording by flicking the record mode from “Copy Tape” to “Microphone”, meaning that part of the way through the recording, you hear me go “Laaa la la laaaaaaa”, clearing my throat, then Chad explaining to me that he’d written the track listing on a piece of paper, and that I shouldn’t lose it, otherwise I wouldn’t know what was on that cassette.

I never saw that piece of paper again.

It’s a bit of a weird tape, as some of my best childhood memories can be linked to it. Going down to Roker lights with William or “Willy”, who I no longer have any contact with, and returning, only to play the tape a few days later, only to find that the A side (Bridge of Spies) no longer played correctly, presumably thanks to some magnetic damage after it was left on top of my dad’s removeable car stereo. Ironically, the last few seconds of the tape, includes the opening bars of the “Ferry Aid” remake of Let It Be, which was done by Mark Knopfler. The tape ends with me switching the recording back to microphone, and the exact last words on the tape are spoken by Chad, whilst discussing what he put on the tape for me. Ironically, and coincidentally, the last words you hear him say are “the tape ran out”.

Other memories include playing on my C16, coincidentally purchased from Chad’s parents when my ZX Spectrum went pop.

But the reason why I remember all of this? Well, it’s nothing special at all, but I’ve slowly been trying to collect as many records from that particular tape as I can find, and today is the latest one to be scratched off the list. But what record am I talking about that just so happened to be on this hallowed tape? Why, it’s the 1985 Everton football team’s rendition of “Here We Go”.

No, seriously. OK, I accidentally bought it off ebay. I was going to bid, but accidently “Buy it Now’d”. But the cassette tape in the picture is the one I’m talking about, and is the one I’ve owned for what must be at least 20 years now.

I believe this is the penultimate record which I don’t own from that very tape. It saddens me to say that at this point in time, the tape is unplayable, so I can’t check for sure. Unfortunately, it looks as if it’s had something spilt on it. I attempted to move the spools a few moments ago, and it appeared that the tape had bonded with the cassette housing, so it’s ripped a large section of the magnetic oxide off. Also, the spools aren’t moving, it seems as if it’s just stretching the tape. This will have to be fixed. I can’t lose this tape.

The only other song from it which I don’t have in a solid format (CD/Vinyl) is “I Surrender (To The Spirit of the night) by Samantha “Yes, *the* Sam Fox” Fox. Her musical career was abysmal. but I really liked that song, and to try and cover my back, I had no idea it was Sam Fox singing until many years later, and yes, I do remember a little bit of sick rising up when I found out.

At this point in time, I’m about to listen to the record. It’s a bit of a strange moment. It’s like I’m expecting a rapturous, deeply orchestrated version of Sousa/Offenbach’s classic work, yet I know that all I’m going to hear is a synthesised chorus of arse.

For the record, Everton lost 1-0 in that particular final, meaning that the lines “Getting stronger every day, we are winners all the way”. Clearly they forgot to include May 18th 1985 in that particular equation”. Incidentally, accodring to Wikipedia, the source for 100% factual information [citation needed], this was the first match that a player received a red card.

OK,. so here goes.. Needle’s on the record. It’s… awful. I must admit, it did sound a hell of a lot better with the flatness of an age-old cassette tape, radio broadcasting, and duplication onto another equally old cassette. I’t s not aged well. It’s the first time I’ve actually played a record, and it’s sounded considerably worse as an original than as a copy.

I’ll have to see if I can flog it to some one who had a record player, and an interest in Everton. I guess I’m keeping hold of this one then.

On a slightly different subject, and seeing as Chad hopefully made his way down this, the challenges aren’t going well so far! I realised, at some point tonight, that when I’d written the original “Before I’m 30″, I’d subconsciously slipped into some kind of depression, and posted things that were a little more deep than I’d originally intended. I was hoping, when I’d originally set out to post the page, I’d imagined something a little more challenging, and obtainable, and a little bit of humorous stuff I could blog about.

It may require a rewrite.

Well, seeing as WordPress 2.7 is finally out in the wild (it seems that it’s been months since they officially announced it), I thought I’d do a bit of a test post to see how it behaves. The backend looks completely different, which is a bit of an annoyance, considering I’d only just got used to how it behaved in the previous version.. It’s not bad, but it’s a lot more cluttered than the previous version, I’m sure I’ll get used to it though.

Firstly, I’d like to say thanks to everyone at work, and everyone who contributed to my birthday boxes, which were a pleasant surprise after returning after 9 days off.

Er, anyway, that’s the first bit out of the way. Now I have to type randomly about what I’ve been doing over the last few days. In fact,I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing over the past few weeks. It’s a job I wish I’d never started. It involves cataloguing all of my “loose” CDs into a rather elaborate database and folder arrangement.

By “loose” CDs, I mean the ones that have been hanging around the house, in old folders, and on spindles, on the floor, in boxes, etc. Basically, it had no order, it was impossible for me to know what was on them, and some of them didn’t even have titles on them…

That was, until about a month ago.

I got sick of finding old disks on the floor, scratched or broken, with their silver foil lifted to the point where they were unreadable. I also found that my huge, years-old Maplin CD wallet had bit the dust, I thought it was for the best that I made some plan to sort them. When I ordered my new PSU from ebuyer, I also ordered 5 CD wallets, capable of storing 160 CDs / DVDs each. I thought that would be enough, and there would be plenty of space left for future growth. HAHAH. No.

It turns out I’d massively underestimated the amount of CDs and DVDs I’d written over the years. Usually, the disk contents were scrawled on in permanent marker by me, with terrible handwriting, and very little information on what was actually on the disk.

Therefore, with the help of the lovely DOS command “tree”, I was able to create a text document with the contents of the disk, looking something like this…

Folder PATH listing for volume Disc
Volume serial number is A364-0F9A
F:\
IMGP1443.JPG
IMGP1444.JPG
IMGP1445.JPG
IMGP1446.JPG
… etc
Each disk was also given its unique ID number and the number of which folder it was in, as well as a brief transcript of what I’d scrawled on the disk. The contents were then inserted into a searchable SQL database.

WIthin a few weeks, I have a shelf looking like this…

That’s what 792 disks look like. “But wait”, I hear all of you mathematically wise people shout, “Isn’t 160×5 = 800″? Well, yes it is, but during my haste, I accidentally skipped a page, meaning that there were 8 spaces left empty, and due to the way I organised everything, it means it’s not possible for me to reuse them. Oops.

It means that I’ve found hundreds of files I’d forgotten about. For a bit of an experiment, Chris was round the other night, and we were talking about one of the disks I’d located during this massive haul of data. After a quick search, I was able to locate the exact disk. We then spent the rest of the night watching some other random files I’d recovered during the search.

My life, really can’t get any more exciting. I’m off to bed!

Everyone has a favourite CD. A favourite piece of plastic which life would feel so different if it hadn’t existed. My particular favourite album is an upbeat little number by Bruce Hornsby And The Range, entitled “The Way It Is”. Of course, the title track is one of my favourites, as any fool reading this website will know.

However, as I originally had this album on one of those odd things called a “Cassette tape”, in order to get to the good stuff, you had to listen to the rest of the tracks, and eventually, they became as much an integral part of my musical life as the afore mentioned 4 minutes and 57 seconds.

Whilst Chris and I were listening to the CD, and discussing the front cover of the CD, and the significance of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, I headed to the fridge.

On my way back from the kitchen, Chris said “Is that supposed to be spelled like that?”

I took one look at the back cover of the CD box, and instantly burst out in a fit of laughter…

Yes, that is a typo. Sklyline indeed. I have, in the past, made fun of obscure typographical errors, and I was truly amazed that after at least 10 years of owning this particular CD, I had never spotted such a glaring error.

And no, it’s not just down to one pressing. I have two. B-5734 A on one disk (the original), and B-5734 C on one I bought several years later. Both of these have the exact same typo. And it IS a typo, as the disk lists it as “Skyline”, and so do the lyrics on the inside booklet.

It’s one of those things I’ve been thinking of all day. In fact, I was even in Netto, staring at the Twirls at the counter, and thinking “Hey, my favourite CD cover has a glaring typo on it”. Unfortunately, my mind soon changed to the fact that if I’d decided to get a 9p carrier bag instead of a 3p carrier bag, I’d have been entitled to 2 doggy stickers.

And, before any Bruce Hornsby fans comment on my typing and spelling erors, do I look like I work for RCA?