Is it nearly 2008 yet?

Bloody Christmas nonsense. And the traditional "is it next year yet?" thing tonight. Great.

Still, I've got a big pile of DVDs to wade through now. Which might keep me going for a bit. And by the time I've got through those, I'll be able to get lots more for free.

Just got a cheque for 20 quid and another 5 quid Amazon voucher. Which brings my final total for the year up to £636.74. Pretty good. If I keep that up next year, that covers the big long list of DVDs and CDs and books that all seem to be appearing at the same time. Or I might just save them up and by the time I have enough, I'll be able to find a Wii for sale.

My new drive does not contain bank account details

No, really. The new harddrive I ordered from Amazon does not (or at least, shouldn't) contain 25 million people's bank account details. But possibly someone thinks it does. That would explain why it seems to have gone missing. Amazon seemingly sent it by TNT. The company that delivers mail, not the explosive. (That wouldn't really work, would it? Exploding people's packages and hoping they get thrown many miles and just land in the right place?)

So obviously someone is thinking "Hmm, looks like a harddrive. Wonder if it's got anything interesting on?" Or maybe it's just got delayed. Of course, you have to wait 3 days after the expected delivery date before complaining to Amazon. (That expected date being 6 days after it was sent, and 8 days after it was ordered). And then they'll chase it and let you know within 2 days. Good job I'm not desperate for it.

But Amazon generally seem to be quite good at sorting out problems. Never had any trouble, and things do go wrong or get lost now and then. To be expected with the amount of stuff they must be sending out.

And I've just added £28.07 to my total of free stuff (a cheque converted from $50 makes it an odd amount). Making £611.74. Which is pretty impressive. Let's see if I can get more than £700 next year.

How quickly can I fill a hard drive?

A couple of months after buying a new PC, and I've only got 17% of my disk free. Ok, so that's technically more than I had free on the old PC, but the drive is twice the size. And because it's a faster and fancier PC, I'm installing more stuff. (How much space did the Half Life 2 Orange Box take up?? Worth it just for the glorious Portal, obviously).

So, having just got another 15 quid of Amazon vouchers (£583.67 now), I've just ordered another drive. 320gig should last me a little while.

Problem is, with my fancy box for my guitar, I can record my guitar doodlings. Record those at CD quality, making sure I record both pairs of outputs (the one with the effects and the clean one), and that's about 345Kb/s. Or 20Mb a minute. Or 264 hours on the drive. (Allowing for 320gig drives not really being that big). About 11 days. And given that if I ever get around to trying to record something approaching a proper song, that's 3 or 4 guitar parts, each one taking 3 or 4 attempts before I get fed up, and we get 16 hours. Which would be quite a long song, I guess. And my fingers would probably explode.

But then there's all the other stuff I'll shove on the drive too. I give it 6 months at most before I need another one. At which point, they'll probably be 1/4 of the price or something silly.

So 500 quid is possible then

Another pair of £5 Amazon vouchers, and 2 cheques for £50 each, and my total of stuff for the year is now £568.67. Which is pretty impressive.

And probably about another 50 quid still to come this year, maybe more.

Wonder what target I should set for next year?

Still playing with my fancy box

But that might change, what with christmas coming up. Although I have got the pedal board for it coming as a christmas present, so I guess maybe not. It's still causing me to perform 20 minute guitar solos though. And by "20 minute guitar solos", I just mean I get some drums and maybe some odd noises going, and then fiddle with the guitar for ages, with all the effects neatly in time.

And I've also added £6.63, plus £15 quid of Amazon vouchers to my total of "Stuff from the Internet". Making £458.67. With about £150 to come, which might get to me this year.

Fancy guitar box and more vouchers

15 quid of Amazon vouchers today, bringing me to £423.15. Oh, and a DVD that would cost £13.89 from the people who supply it in exchange for points. Making, erm, £437.04.

And my fancy guitar box came. Plug the guitar in, pick one of 40 different amps it can pretend to be (ranging from nice and clean to downright dirty and almost painful), one of 121 effects (the usual choruses and flangers, and some weird ones), plug the USB cable into the PC, start my software to play some other noises, and then play the guitar until my fingers hurt. All the effects being nicely in sync with the tempo from the software. Handy for those delays where you want to get a nice rhythm going by playing in time with the echoes of the previous notes.

It's very nice, has 8 big knobs to play with, and 10 buttons. And flashing lights. Need to make sure the software is recording things properly. In time. Minor issues with the delay between playing something on the guitar in time with the PC, and then finding it's not quite in time because of the delays in the PC playing the sound. But it's definitely worth the bargain price of 80 quid.

And the PC still isn't quite right

3 weeks of fiddling with it, and I've still not quite got it working how I like it. On the plus side, I've not had any real problems with Vista, despite what all the horror stories about it have said. It's a subtle improvement over XP, but probably best kept for new machines with hardware that's guaranteed to work with it.

And I've solved one of my problems, with the aid of a little USB midi interface. So now I can make some sort of attempt at music with it. Oddly enough, the extra processor power means I can add even more layers of instruments up to the point where it still manages to complain about the lack of processor power. Whoops.

And the year's total of free stuff is now £408.15, so looks like 400 quid was a bit of an easy target. Now I just need to spend all those Amazon vouchers on something fancy. A nice little box to plug my guitar into the PC which just happens to do all the effects and "amp simulation" I could ever want for a bargain price. Should do me nicely.

I've recovered from seeing Siouxsie last week. Was certainly a good night out. Possibly not the wisest choice to get right at the front in such a small venue. Especially when she came on and launched straight into a handful of old Banshees songs. About 2 bars into Israel (the first song), and the whole crowd was going a bit mad and bouncing about and it was getting all hot and sweaty and mildly painful. Which, of course, is just what you want.

Not convinced by her health and safety worries though. She shouldn't be having to wipe up water from the stage. (Someone gave her flowers that kind of leaked a bit). She should have people to do that for her.