paul capewell’s blog

I realise Truck Ten is about seven months away.

But it is going to be fantastic. I have big plans. I realise that it is mainly Camp A Low Hum making me start thinking about this, and that this may be ridiculous. But doing today’s podcast, and spending the evening listening to new music, and sorting out a few gigs to go to over the next month or two, and spending serious time playing with last.fm has just all made me pretty excited for this stuff in general, and Truck Ten seems the natural peak of all of this.

BBR will grow, and will get more and more fun. It doesn’t need more listeners, or more contributors, but obviously these are useful to its development. It just needs to become something I take more and more seriously, whilst having larger amounts of fun with it and the results of it.

Its time I took pride in something I create, and its thanks to many of you that I am inspired to.

I know none of this is blog-worthy, but it needs writing down while I am full of tea and nicotine.

Things that excite and inspire me are often too few and far between, but I am really up for taking this particular bull by the horns. I hope some of you will feel this enthusiasm, and continue to help me however you can.

Somehow, my love for music, photography, video, and sound production will all pool together and I will start to become proud of what I can achieve just because I want to.

I can do this.

Well over the weekend I sort of, by accident, on purpose bought a new computer. Luckily the beast I bought is pretty old. It set me back £75 and its a five year old iMac. Hopefully you know about my relatively recent conversion to the world of Macs, since buying an iBook in April – which I kind of did on a whim. I had never used a Mac before, and looking back, I don’t really know what I’d have done if I didn’t enjoy using the new OS.

Anyway, that doesn’t matter now – I love Macs and just about everything to do with them. With this and my love of gadgets in general, I’d been half-looking for a cheap iMac for a while, to stick in the corner for music and internet purposes and just to look great.

Turns out that what I got was a pretty capable machine – she’s more than happy with surfing the web – with several tabs open – at the same time as playing MP3s, or streaming audio from radio stations. Perfect! She’s pretty quiet too, just a low hum from the CRT screen and the odd click from the HDD. With it sat on my bedside table, the ability to put it to ’sleep’ instantly, and ‘wake’ just as fast is a real bonus too. I’m loving my slightly-oversized digital radio for my beloved 6music and 95bFM.

Ironically, with my iBook in the repair shop, I have been Mac-less for over a fortnight now, and to have this iMac has been a godsend. Not only can I get my Mac bug going again, it also means I can update my iPod! Its been a bit excruciating not being able to stick new music on it recently. Yeah, I formatted my iPod for Macs only, meaning I can’t use it with my windows laptop – foolish in hindsight.

If you need a compact, low-power computer for music or whatever, I recommend you look for a cheap-ish iMac. It’d be a good introduction to Macs too. Its a very easy OS to learn how to use.

Happy Ne’erday. (I think its a Scottish phrase and I’ve never heard it before but I like it a lot).

New Year’s Eve was a bit of a washout for most parts of this country. The Glasgow and Edinburgh Hogmanay celebrations, amongst many others, were cancelled due to rain and very high winds, and there were lots of power shortages in the lowlands. I survived unscathed, barely marking the stroke of midnight, just as I wanted. I could hear hundreds of fireworks exploding around the city, and foghorns or something coming from the shipyard. Rather cool.

I hope whatever you got up to was just as you wanted.

I think later, Vicky and I will watch a combination of All The Real Girls, Elizabethtown and Garden State, and weap openly. Tomorrow Vicky’s back to work, but I’ll spend the extra Scottish bank holiday in town, seeing what shops are open or finding Victoria Park or exploring the shipyards. We shall see :)

Then on Wednesday I’ll leave when Vicky goes to work, and get some supplies for the train and head back south.