Twisted Kites

I know I should have posted this ages ago… but… there you go. The next two parts I’ll write now and schedule them for other times in the week, get it finished!

Monday
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0930: Needed a lie in this morning. Finding it very difficult to sleep at night, it’s so hot and humid 24 hours a day, even the open window doesn’t help. If I knew the forecast I’d have payed extra and booked a hotel with air conditioning. Went the other way up the coastline today, to Howth (rhymes with ‘both’). Nice hillside fishing village, bustling harbour. Took a walk to the top of the hill, Howth Summit. It didn’t look far but about 4o minutes later I was there. Gorgeous views but a lot of haze again. Returned along the cliff path, a bit longer but nicer than the road. Wanted to take a boat ride out to an island just off the coast, Ireland’s Eye. But where the boat leaves from, there was nothing. Never mind.

1230: Time to move on round the coast to another harbour town. 45 minutes or so on the DART straight into Dun Laoghaire (read: Dun Leary). Most people know this town as where-the-HSS-ferry-goes-from. But there’s more to it. Lots and lots of boats, an old red lightship, very long piers giving nice views out into the bay, ships passing by. Popular with fishermen sitting on the rocks. Quite a surprisingly large shopping area too considering how small the town is. Scampi and chips while sitting in the middle of the harbour watching people learning to sail (must be, a bunch of little yachts going round in circles) was lovely.

1615: Back into Dublin pausing for a break at the hotel, the had a wander round the Docklands which is being heavily regenerated. Walked through to the East bridge then back on the north side of the Liffey, past Trinity College to Pearse station.

2000: Back to the room early tonight as I’m up early tomorrow, nice to just relax for a couple of hours.

Tuesday
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0600: Up early as my mum is coming over for the day, as she’s never been to Ireland before and fancied a day out. She arrived about 0700 so took her for a quick walk around while everywhere was still shut. Then for breakky at my favourite Lemon seeing as I’d miss the hotel’s.

0900: A quick tram ride over to the Guinness Storehouse exhibition. I’ve been there a few years ago so knew what to expect. Still a great place. Worth it for the complimentary pint in the Gravity Bar alone! Spent about 3 hours in there I reckon then straight back into Connolley then onto Sandycove which lies on the southern coast of Dublin Bay. That’s the location of the James Joyce museum, housed in an old circular Martello tower. Only a little place but quite charming.

1530: Returned to central Dublin for lunch, then a couple of pints in Temple Bar. Well as it was my mum’s first time in Ireland I had to show her a traditional Irish pub, with live music. The pubs over here are great, so friendly and interesting with plenty of character and charm. Unlike the majority of English ones which are basically just places which sell booze, seen one seen them all. Then a short time shopping before seeing her off at Busaras at 8pm.

2000: Back to the room as I was kerrrnackered. Put the telly on, lay on bed, started falling asleep. Thought ’sod it’, turn telly off and actually go to sleep. was so tired I didn’t even get chance to offload the days photos from my camera and do the journal entry (I’m writing this bit at 11pm on Wednesday).

The new CD, Set The Woods On Fire by Art In Manila (I’ve mentioned them numerous times before I think ) plopped through my door yesterday direct from Saddle Creek in the USA. Plopped, flumped, whizzed or dropped, whatever, I was working at the time but it was there waiting for me when I got home

Shame it took a bit longer than most but that’s down to shipping across the pond, always the same when things come from America so at least I roughly predicted when it should arrive. But I am a patient person, if I’m not in a rush…

Much anticipated, this CD went straight on, ripped, and also zoomed onto my iPod the same evening. The music is as deep, lively, smooth, melodic, harmonic and simply beautiful as I though it’d be.

Stream/download/read about/buy:

Art In Manila band page on Myspace (Band info, download, music stream and messages)

Art in Manila band page on Saddle Creek (Click enter U.S.A, then choose Bands and find Art In Manila on the drop down list; band info, downloads and entire album stream)

Art in Manila music on Saddle Creek shop (only $11 plus $3-4 P&P, works out about £7-8 total, how’s that for a fair price! Try buying a new CD that cheap in Britain…)

Here’s the new music player for the car. Decided to upgrade, and it’s a treat for the car for behaving well this year.

Decided to get an Alpine iDA-X001 from Elliotts in Coventry and it’s a lovely bit of kit. This unit has no built in CD player, it must be one of the first, if not the first, unit with no moving parts inside. As it comes it has the usual RDS radio tuner (FM/MW/LW) but in addition is the main feature; it’s fully iPod compatible.

A USB comes out the rear which plugs into 5th generation iPods and also certain Nanos I think (other iPods can be used with a different cable not included). The beauty of this is flawless control and browsing, top sound reproduction (bypasses iPod’s DAC for Alpine’s own), the ability to display album art and also charges the iPod at the same time. I’m going to get nother iPod and leave one exclusively for car use. The iPod fits nicely into a car cassette holder and can be safely stowed there permanently.

Also a standard USB memory stick can be used (although without fancy album art), and a CD changer is available as an accessory. The faceplate detaches, as they all do, but is only about two-thirds of the normal size, handy for carrying around. The illumination can be red or blue, although as the 6 grid buttons are actually transparent blue, with red light shining through in some light seem purple, which matches my car. Bonus.

Sound tuning is simple (Kenwood had a myriad of audio tweaks!) yet sounds amazing, well as good as the standard speakers will allow. Menu and navigation is good (apart from the search/enter buttons should be the other way around, read the review linked at the end to see what I mean). Various wallpapers can be set with others downloaded from Alpine website, a nice touch.

One thing was that the dimmer cable isn’t attached on this (my JVC and Kenwood were pre-wired) so I had to plug the loose cable into the spare ISO socket. That meant buying a spare ISO connector from Halfords at a silly cost, take the orange wire out of that and put it in mine, simple to do. So now when I put my headlights on the unit dims (3 levels), making night driver better.

And now for some pretty pictures:

1: Simple install on my centre dashboard. 2: Ipod sitting in the armrest cassette holder.

3: Main panel lit. 4: Alternate blue illumination. 5: With main panel removed.

6: Clock-view mode. 7: Main menu front screen. 8: iPod album selection screen.

9: Radio title-view mode. 10: iPod main-view mode. 11: Main panel detached (size compared to payment card).

12: Illuminated at night (before dimmer-wire connected). 13: A home-made faceplate protection case (Police sunglasses case and spare Alpine sticker, I’ll make a smaller one sometime).

Links: (new windows)

Alpine product page (UK) / Alpine product page (US) / ZDnet Review

The latest album from the Manic Street Preachers…

…nice album cover there…if I go over to New York (that is new York isn’t it?) will I find Miss Naughty and Miss Nice casually strolling around? I wouldn’t mind bumping into them lol.

As for the music, a very good album. Catchy and rocky with the classic Manics sound (which some critics may complain about, but it’s the Manics, I want it to sound like them!).