Week Fifty In Which I Turned Fifty Myself!

The big birthdays are when you take stock of your life and at a stupid-sounding number, ‘fifty’, I find myself doing just that. I don’t feel that old and when I started all this malarkey and was in my twenties, I could just about be ‘down wiv da kidz’ on Maxy Power. As I went off to Fast Car, we were all quite happily of arrested development and just got on with it. But the last half-decade has been right here online on Talk Audio and I have been having a blast and certainly intend to keep on doing so.
The whole issue of desperately trying to keep a step of two ahead of the latest technology has become an uneasy acceptance that this is impossible and that just keeping on learning and playing with new stuff and technologies all the time is just the only way to go. A couple of years back, I was accosted at the awards do at the trade mag night and they gave ME the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award for which I was just made up. I guess the ‘Services To The Industry’ gong is the hardest one to win but who knows, I certainly care more about mobile technology than any other sort.
And at fifty, I have seen all the formats from Cassette to Blu Ray and or course now, the final trip towards total virtuality or ‘cloud’ based storage with your device sipping what it needs as and when rather than trying to keep the entire accumulated knowledge of mankind in its bowels. I was given a copy of MIB III and it features UltraViolet, a new movies HD Cloud based storage method of offering a digital copy as an extra. Myself, I love a digital copy on my iPod but like it to be usable when I am fishing in East Buttfuck, south of Nowhere and need my stuff to work for fun (as long as I have the power, and that is sorted) without needing the Fat Pipe connection. But it will come and sweep all discs away for ever one day.
I had quite the most loved-up day yesterday, with literally dozens of folks wishing me well from all over the UK, USA, south America and even down under on Facebook, by text and Twitter! It was lovely and thanks to everyone who sent me their wishes, made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside all day! The warm and fuzzy bit just could be the little bit of a cold I have been fighting off, though&;
I have headunits from Sony, I have that new FLAC machine to try out from Kenwood and I have a little collection of Christmas audio novelties to bring you details of. The Damson Twist, which is a cute wee BT speaker I told y’all of last week, the tiny but poky DeadMau5 speakers which have arrived to Swag out and even a small eggy lump of plastic called the ‘Kolay Egg’ link that acoustically amplifies your MP3 iPloppy’s output! I will get at it all ASAP.
Adam Rayner On Line Editor