Random comments on Christmas in our household:
Unfortunately Mrs B was right – Pere Noel did not pop a plasma widescreen TV down my chimney this year. Bit of a shame really because I wanted to watch High School Musical in super-screen mega-colour but what can you do? I have taken to wandering aimlessly around the house, staring blankly at the space where we would put an enormous flatscreen TV if only we had one. Roll on Christmas 2007.
One relative told us there was snow in southern Australia – where it is of course mid-summer – and another relative who lives a few hours north of Toronto in the Canadian wilderness said they had no snow at all. Global warming? I wouldn’t mind but it’s very cold here and a bit of warming would be very welcome.
People don’t often realise that it gets so cold in winter in the south of France, at least for short spells. At the moment night time temperature is about -10 centigrade and during the daytime it rises to about -5.
This keeps Mrs B on edge, because a lot of plants suffer at temperatures much colder. Mimosas for example, start to drop dead below -10 C, and we have several – every couple of years they all get killed off and then start again as small shrubs the following year.
Technology did turn up in the shape of an MP3 player for one of our daughters, but I haven’t yet worked out how to get songs onto it. Seems that the music we have bought from itunes needs an ipod and can’t be used on a standard MP3 player? Please correct me if I’m wrong.
I passed quite a lot of time searching for a ‘legal MP3 download’ site but haven’t found one yet that seems suitable. I also downloaded some software that I thought would convert the files to the right type – that made the PC crash a few times and has probably added a few viruses while it was there, so i’ve got rid of it. Since half the world has MP3 players I know I’m missing something completely obvious…
For Christmas breakfast we had truffle sausages, truffles being a regional speciality. For Christmas dinner we had capon, which went very well – a bit tastier than turkey, and quite the traditional roast in France at Christmas. In principle that was to be followed by a traditional French Christmas log. In reality the freezer had turned off, the log had melted into an unattractive puddle, and we had banana splits instead. Perhaps it’s back to Christmas pudding next year.
We have mistletoe hanging above the doorway to the lounge but nobody has stopped me and demanded a christmas kiss. The family bought me clothes and an electric shaver for Christmas. This second fact is not unrelated to the first.
My sister embarrassed me for about the tenth year in succession by buying presents for all of us that far exceeded the thought and trouble that had gone into our own present buying. As always, must try harder next year.
We watched the High School Musical DVD for the third time in not very many days. My daughter has printed out the words to one of the songs and roped me into singing a duet with her. Apparently we are going to practice every day until we can ‘go public’ and perform to a live audience. That should be a treat for our New Year visitors.
The Painting by Numbers that my daughter has been battling with would be impossible to complete accurately without the aid of a Scanning Electron Microscope and surgically designed instruments. Painting the invisibly thin shapes with a paint brush more suited to home decoration is simply not possible.
Our ten year old told us she is the butt of jokes at school, because she believed in Santa until she was nine, whereas everyone else found out the terrible truth when they were still at nursery school. Most troubling for her, she has spent the last four Christmasses laughing at the other children for thinking that Santa didn’t exist, when she knew very well that he did.
The statistics for my websites show that Christmas Day did not stop people from playing and working on the internet all day. That tells you something interesting, and perhaps something worrying, about the modern world.
That’s all folks. I hope you all had a good Christmas, and a very Happy New Year to all if I don’t post here again before then.
Good News: you can convert the ipod music to mp3.
Method 1 is free but a hassle. First copy the ipod music to a CD, then open each track in itunes and use “save as mp3″. You might think that you could just use “save as mp3″ without copying to the CD but Apple’s copy protection stops you doing that.
Method 2, buy ImToo (www.imtoo.com) for $35 and convert them directly.
If you’ve been loyally supporting Apple and have heaps of itunes I’d go for imtoo as it does loads of other things too although method 1 does have the advantage that you get a backup copy of all those songs that you bought.
Incidently, you can play mp3 on the ipod so you could have just copied the songs from CDs to begin with. If really pushed you can also play video on the ipods too but that’s rather more involved and produces a fairly naff quality of video.
Arnold
Ah, that makes sense. I’ll try that.
I wouldn’t mind, but I spent last Christmas struggling with a similar problem on a mobile phone for the same daughter. I think I’m getting out of touch with these things.
Thanks Arnold
I am blessed to mentioned in your blog and would like to inform your readers that I think your prezzie was just as thoughtful as mine as we seemed to manage to buy more or less the same things. as for the MP3 player, it should have come with its own software to make it easier to upload. most of the MP3 files on the net have copyright stuff attached which some players won’t play. you can download a free file converter from computeractive.co.uk. It’s called Cheeter. that might change the itunes to MP3. hope this helps.
Catherine
Of course, to save all this hassle the easiest thing to do is to buy el cheapo MP4 player on ebay for around EUR 20 or so.
Seeing as it’s el cheapo make, there is, of course, none of the copy protection software installed on it.
I have a lot of music on my computer and many mp3 players will now play more than just mp3 format as will mobile phones..some of these will play wma.wavs and more extentions… Hope you have got it all sorted!yup im a bit of a techno freak… not bad for an old bird!