Year: 2011

Mac OS X Lion – first impressions

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A screenshot of Preferences in Mac OS X Lion

I made the plunge and installed Mac OS X Lion last night. The install takes a little under an hour all in all, including 2 reboots. During the second phase, i.e. between the two reboots, you can pop open a log file viewer which shows you what it’s actually doing, of which at least 10 minutes is spent running an fsck check on your disk and then creating the recovery partition, which you can use in case your Mac won’t boot properly. (In the past, you would have used the install DVD for Mac OS X, but as Lion is a digital download you won’t have this option anymore).

Anyhow, the install went okay, so here are my first impressions:

  1. Natural Scrolling – I immediately turned off ‘natural’ scrolling, because it felt like anything but natural. I suppose I could have tried to get used to it, but I use a Windows machine at work which has a scrollwheel that works the ‘classic’ way and would rather have consistency. It’s bad enough having to cope with two different keyboard layouts. Natural scrolling is fine on touchscreen devices like the iPhone but I just don’t think it works with a mouse and separate screen.
  2. Scrollbars – I’m very much against Apple’s decision to hide scrollbars by default, and only show them once you already start scrolling – how do you know whether to scroll something if there are no scrollbars? So I’ve told Lion to always show them. On the other hand, I do like the new minimalist look of the scrollbars.
  3. New theme – Lion brings a lighter and more understated look to its windows than Snow Leopard. I like it on the whole, barring the lack of colour in some places and the very light colouring of the new title bars. I’ll probably get used to it though.
  4. Mission Control – liking this so far – really improves on Exposé, and still very quick.
  5. Launchpad – a good feature, but poorly implemented. When you install Lion, it enumerates all of the applications in your /Applications/ folder and subfolders, and then adds them all, putting the apps that came with OS X on the first page. Problem is that it includes all of your applications, including uninstallers, patches for World of Warcraft and other stuff that just doesn’t need to be there, and, as I mentioned, Apple’s own apps are on the first page regardless of whether you’ve used them or not (which in the case of iDVD, iMovie, Garageband etc., is never). What’s worse is most apps cannot be deleted from Launchpad unless you downloaded them from the Mac App Store, and for most long-term Mac users this isn’t the case. I hope an update will allow you to remove any kind of app and have more intelligent sorting, based on actual use, when Lion is installed over an existing installation – I’d consider these to be quite major bugs. As it was, I had to spend quite a bit of time moving things around to suit me, although now that I’ve done that it works well as a way of accessing programs that aren’t important enough for the Dock but still need to be within easy reach.
  6. Mac App Store – I found the App Store application to be a bit slow and unresponsive in Snow Leopard; unfortunately this hasn’t been fixed in Lion. Frequently when I click on one of the 5 tabs at the top, it does nothing but show the spinning beach ball of doom for a few seconds. Some visual feedback registering my click, and a change of the content pane to ‘Loading’ would feel much better. Also, if the App Store is now the preferred way of installing new applications, then Apple need to do more to help developers grandfather their existing users into it – i.e. if you’ve bought a program before the App Store, then you should be allowed to have a special code to switch to the App Store version without paying for it again, for example. This would be especially useful for programs like Adobe PhotoShop Elements for which I have the retail copy and don’t want to spend another £55 on the App Store version.
  7. Full screen apps – not had much chance to use this as only Apple’s own apps support it right now. Where I have used it, it seems to work okay but is a little slow due to the animations – or at least it is on my 2009-era Mac Mini. Faster animations, like with Mission Control, would have been better. Getting out of full-screen is also a little unintuitive as you have to hold your mouse at the top of the screen to show the menu bar – Apple would have been better having the close button in the same place on the window itself.
  8. Apple Mail – since this got some love in this update, I decided to give it a try and see how it stacked up to Thunderbird. I wasn’t really impressed – it’s a bit ugly now that Apple have removed all the colour from it, and the fonts didn’t seem to render very well in the mail listing pane. Although it started up quickly, I found it slow when working with multiple IMAP accounts in comparison to Thunderbird.
  9. New voices – You can now download several extra voices for the text-to-speech feature. I downloaded ‘Serena’, a British English voice that sounds like a Radio 4 newsreader. It’s a big improvement on the existing voices, sounding more natural and less robotic than ‘Alex’ which was the voice added in Leopard, although it’s not quite perfect yet. New voice packs are a 200+ MB download though.
  10. iTunes – just a note that if you installed iTunes 10.4 before installing Lion, you’ll need to do so again as Lion will revert it back to 10.3 for you, and it’ll throw back an error when you try to launch it saying that your library is for a newer version. Again, hopefully a 10.7.1 will correct this.
  11. Software issues – only major software issue I’ve encountered is with NTFS-3G, which allows read/write access to NTFS volumes using MacFUSE. MacFUSE itself needs an obscure beta version to work, but even then NTFS-3G will sometimes pop up an error when mounting an NTFS volume. However, in my limited testing it was still able to write to NTFS volumes. There’s also some niggles with Dropbox – it works okay but some smaller features are missing. A beta update is available.
  12. Bigger desktop icons – something I noticed was that icons that appear on the desktop are larger than before. I think I preferred them smaller.
  13. Performance – I haven’t noticed any real differences in performance, bar some initial sluggishness whilst Spotlight rebuilds its database which may take an hour or two after installation is complete. Previous OS X updates have brought minor speed improvements, the lack of perfomance improvements in Lion is therefore a bit of a shame.
  14. Resume, Autosave and Versions – none of the apps I use support this yet, so I haven’t tried it. However, NeoOffice will support these features in a beta version due out next month.

On the whole? I’m slightly underwhelmed as I can only see myself regularly using a few of the new features. There are also a few niggles that Apple should sort out, as well as some bizarre and unintuitive user interface changes. In Lion, Apple’s direction was to let the computer get out of the way of the user, yet the ‘bugs’ in Launchpad, natural scrolling, no scrollbars by default and my issues with full screen applications actually get in the way of the user, in my opinion. But, it’s early days, and this is a .0 release. Allegedly 10.7.2 is already available to developers so 10.7.1 must be on the way soon and will hopefully alleviate some of these issues. My advice would be to wait a bit.

Getting motivated to go to the gym

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/66551670@N00/388434590/
Photograph of Mr Motivator by Dave Tett, used under a Creative Commons License.

Since moving to Sowerby Bridge in November, we’ve been walking past a brand new gym and swimming pool which opened the weekend we moved in, with the full intention of signing up at some point. Unfortunately, that intention never progressed into an actual registration. Until now.

In about an hour’s time, Christine and I are off there for our induction. We both need to lose weight; when I lived in Bradford, my walk to work was half an hour each way, but with moving that’s been cut to around 15-20 minutes and consequently I’m getting quite a bit less exercise. Likewise, Christine is overweight and though she has dropped a couple of dress sizes in the time we’ve been dating she wants to go further.

At present, we’re not looking to formally join the gym, and instead pay each time; if we only go once a week it’s cheaper that way. Although I may join if I’m in a position to go 2-3 times a week, but primarily we want to go together and exercise as a couple, for moral support.

With a bit of luck, there’ll be new, slimmer Neil and Christine by the end of the year.

Also, Mr Motivator is 58 years old. Crikey.

Wakefield and the Hepworth Gallery

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Hepworth Gallery

On Saturday, Christine and I went to Wakefield, to visit the Hepworth Gallery, a new art gallery and museum built to house the collections of Barbara Hepworth, along with some works by other artists and sculptors inspired by her. The gallery is located next to the River Calder and is in easy walking distance from Wakefield Kirkgate station. Despite costing £35million to build, entry is free, and you can easily spend a couple of hours here.

The architecture of the building is interesting – it’s a thick concrete shell in the 1960s brutalist style, but with a clever use of windows to let in a reasonable amount of light. Of course, the thick concrete walls mean that you probably won’t have a working mobile phone in here.

I didn’t take any pictures inside as photography isn’t allowed (being modern art, most of the works are still under copyright restrictions) but I did take plenty out and around the gallery. It’s sited in an area of Wakefield that is in need of regeneration, so hopefully this will act as a catalyst to get people and businesses into the area.

Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin

Across the road is Wakefield Bridge and the Chantry Chapel of St Mary the Virgin, a 14th century chapel on the bridge itself – one of only four in such a location and the oldest surviving example. Although it’s around 650 years old, it is still regularly used for church services. Certainly worth a look if you’re about.

Although I’ve lived in Yorkshire all my life, this is the first time I’ve been to Wakefield, bar passing through on the train, and so we went into the town to have a look around. Parts of the city centre are very run down, although work is going on to regenerate it, including the new Trinity Walk shopping plaza which, like the Hepworth Gallery, opened a few weeks ago. It ties in with a refurbished market, with a striking overall roof.

The city, which is the smallest of the three in West Yorkshire, still has some way to go before it’s looking as nice as Leeds city centre. In particular, the smallest of its two railway stations, Wakefield Kirkgate, was described by the previous secretary of state for transport Lord Adonis as probably the worst ‘medium-large’ station I have seen in Britain[source], and having seen it for myself I can see why – those buildings that are still standing are boarded up, it’s dirty, there’s no staff around, there’s paint peeling off the walls and just looks generally dilapidated. Not a nice welcome to the city. The other station, Wakefield Westgate, whilst not the most pleasant of stations, at least has some amenities and a staff presence.

It’ll be interesting to go back to Wakefield again in a couple of years, once some of the regeneration projects have progressed further. We also didn’t visit the cathedral or the Wakefield Museum, so they’re there for a future visit.

Leventhorpe Vineyard

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Leventhorpe Vineyard

At the weekend Christine, I and a couple of friends visited Leventhorpe Vineyard near Leeds. It’s one of only a few in the UK, and one of the most northerly vineyards in Europe. It’s around 5 acres, so while it’s large enough to produce a reasonably big quantity of wine each year it’s not as large as some vineyards elsewhere.

5 wines are produced at present – 3 white, a red and a sparkling, and these can all be bought from the vineyard itself which is open for visitors at certain times (it’s worth phoning if you’re travelling a distance to get there). It’s around 10 minutes walk from Woodlesford station if you prefer public transport.

Alternatively, you can buy the wine from a number of independent merchants and farm shops, including the excellent Keelham Farm Shop near Queensbury, and some pubs like the Jubilee Refreshment Rooms in Sowerby Bridge.

We tried two of the whites – a Seyval and Madeleine Angevine. The former is quite dry but the latter is quite a sweet wine, and both were good on the whole. At around £8-10 they’re somewhat more expensive than some of the big brand new world wines, but certainly worth trying.

How to do London without spending too much money

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South Bank

Though Christine and I are not badly off financially, we’re still in a situation where we really want to save money where possible, and this includes holidays. Despite this, we went to London a few weeks ago for a long weekend, which is probably one of the most expensive cities in the world. But it doesn’t have to cost the earth and I’m going to go through some of the things we did, or could have done, to keep costs down.

1. Don’t stay in a hotel in Central London

As a general rule, the closer you are to central London, the more expensive your hotel will be. Go a little further afield and you will find some good value hotels, many of which are close to Tube stations. And you’ll probably find that the money saved by going for a cheaper hotel further out of London is more than the cost of travelling into central London on the Tube. The only disadvantage is the extra travelling time to get out there, so it’s harder to drop by your hotel room on an evening before going out, for example.

2. Consider a budget hotel

Whilst it’s nice to stay in hotel that offers everything, sometimes all you need is a bed for the night. I’ve stayed in a couple of good budget hotels – Holiday Inn Express at Royal Docks and Premier Inn at Collier’s Wood – both of which were very good value. if you don’t mind sharing a room, a hostel may be even cheaper.

3. Skip hotel meals

Budget hotels often unbundle meals from the price – this makes the headline price of the room cheaper, but means you may be paying as much as £8 per person, per day for breakfast. If you don’t need an all you can eat breakfast every day, skip it – you’ll be able to get something cheaper from a supermarket or a café. You can even save time by eating it on the Tube on your way in to London, if you’re staying in the suburbs.

4. Get an Oyster card

If you’re following my advice and staying outside central London, you’re likely to be using public transport a lot. An Oyster card will not only save you money, but will also mean you won’t need to have change for bus or Tube fares. Fares are as much as 50% cheaper with an Oyster card than without, and fares are capped at the price of a one-day travelcard, so if you do lots of journeys you won’t end up paying a fortune. Say you’re staying in a hotel near a Tube station in zone 3,and travel in and around central London a lot on one day during off-peak hours – you will not pay more than £7.30 that day, regardless of how may tube journeys you do in zones 1-3. Because it’s a top-up card, you just need to top it up at a machine each time the balance gets low (and they take cards). You can pick them up from major Tube stations for around £5, which includes £2 of credit, or order them online; unused credit doesn’t expire and you can register the card online to protect your balance in case the card is lost. It’s accepted on all Tube trains, plus all buses and mainline rail services within London zones 1-9.

5. Don’t go to restaurants on main streets

Restaurants in more prestigious locations will be more expensive. Go a little off the beaten track and you can find some nice places that don’t cost too much. TripAdvisor is your friend here, as are local guidebooks or recommendations. If necessary, stick with a chain restaurant that you know, like Pizza Hut or Nando’s – it’s your call whether you want something cheap and familiar or want to push the boat out a bit.

6. Look for special deals and vouchers

I often mention Money Saving Expert and there’s a good reason for it – the site is huge and is full of really good, impartial advice about saving money in all aspects of life, and this includes going out and holidays. You may find that some attractions will offer you two tickets for the price of one, simply by printing a voucher off their web site, or a restaurant will allow your kids to eat free, and Money Saving Expert gathers many of these in its Deals section. Also, have a look at sites like Groupon, Living Social and Keynoir for deals in London, which may include cheap accommodation, reduced price restaurant meals or cheaper entry into attractions, although be aware that they usually ask you to pay up front for a voucher so make sure you use it so you don’t waste money.

7. Visit free attractions

London is home to quite a few national collections like the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, which are both free, enough to fill a full day and great for people of all ages, including kids. But there are also plenty of other free attractions and once again Money Saving Expert has a list of some of them. Of course, if you don’t want to spend any money you can just walk around and see the sights, eschewing the sometimes expensive open top sightseeing buses.

8. Consider buying a London Pass

If you’re spending a few days in London, and want to visit a number of attractions that charge for entry, you may wish to consider buying a London Pass. The price varies depending on how long you want it for, starting at £44 per person for a one day pass to £95 per person for a 6 day pass, which at £15.83 per day isn’t too expensive. Again, you’re paying up front, so unless you’re sure you’ll visit enough attractions for it to be worth it, don’t get it.

9. Book in advance

This applies not just to your travel and accommodation – some attractions offer a discount if you book ahead. Usually it’s only a modest 10%, but everything helps. If you’re going to London by train, remember that the cheapest tickets tend to be released around 3 months in advance, so order them at least 2 months in advance to get the best deal. Avoid sites like thetrainline, who charge a booking fee, and go directly to one of the train operators – it doesn’t necessarily have to be the one you are travelling with. See my Buying rail tickets guide for more details. Similarly some budget hotels have room sales with some very cheap rooms available if you’re quick enough to blag them.

10. Use the bus, or walk

The Tube is popular with visitors to London as it’s easy to follow, with each line having its own name and colour, and Tube stations are plentiful and located in useful places. But it’s not the only way to get around. London also has plenty of buses, and with an Oyster card, a single bus fare is only £1.30; and, like with Tube fares, they’re capped at £4 per day – this compares favourably with the Tube where a single fare in zone 1 is £1.90 with Oyster, rising to £2.90 if you’re travelling from zones 1-3. Also, because buses are above ground, they’re sometimes quicker than the Tube as you don’t need to spend as long as 5 minutes walking from the street to the platform, and they stop at more places. Use TfL’s Journey Planner to work out if there’s a bus you can catch. Alternatively, it may be quicker to walk, and there’s a handy map showing where walking between Tube stations would be quicker than actually taking the Tube (although the map is from five years ago so is a little out of date – it doesn’t include the Overground).

If you want more information, as well as the aforementioned web sites have a look at Money Saving London and London for Free for some ideas for free or cheap things to do.

Back from the wilderness

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South Bank

I’m back from my weekend away in the Wilderness – we stayed in a bunk barn in Dentdale, and out of the 10 of us no-one had a mobile signal for most of the time we were there. Considering it’s very, very sparsely populated this is not particularly surprising but slightly annoying when you briefly get enough signal to receive a text message saying you have a voicemail message but not enough to be able to access your messages to find out who called you…

It would also explain why no-one has ever checked in at Dent station on Foursquare. Although only around 8,000 tickets were sold to it last year so it’s not exactly a hive of activity.

Despite the not so brilliant weather, I managed to take a few pictures which will be uploaded to Flickr later this week. We didn’t get back until late last night, so I couldn’t do them then, and tonight I’m off to see Avenue Q at the Alhambra Theatre in Bradford (which I saw in the West End in London in 2007). I haven’t even seen this week’s Doctor Who yet…

You will also have noticed that I’m now posting my Delicious links here in a weekly digest, on a Saturday. I’m trying to get more of my stuff on other sites available here without overloading the blog with endless posts consisting of single images from Flickr or links. I’ll see what I can do other the next few weeks.

Goodbye Melody, Hello WordPress

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Leeds Station

It is with something of a heavy heart that I’ve decided to abandon Melody and move the blog to WordPress.

Long time readers will find this as a surprise – in the past, I’ve defended Movable Type when I’ve felt it under attack from WordPress ‘zealots’. Back then, WordPress was the new kid on the block, whilst Movable Type was much more established. Today, however, the situation has changed, and this is why I’ve made the change.

Movable Type

I left Movable Type earlier this year for a few reasons. Firstly, after trying Movable Type 5, I found it was aimed at large, professional blogs and not personal blogs like mine. The 4.3x line is still being maintained with security updates – MT 4.36 came out last week – but not with new features.

Melody

I hoped that Melody would provide a good continuation of MT 4.3x. Unfortunately I’m not that impressed – whilst it has improved some aspects of Movable Type, it hasn’t been the major step forward that I’d hoped it be. Furthermore, a number of plug-ins that I found really useful in MT didn’t work properly (or at all) in Melody, and as some of them were several years old and seemingly abandoned by their authors there was a slim chance of this happening.

It’s well known that the past few years has seen Movable Type stagnate. When I first started using it in 2002, there was a very active community developing plug-ins and themes for the platform. But this community has all but died out, and despite the best intentions of the Open Melody group it hasn’t re-ignited. The MT community is, basically, dead.

WordPress is where the community is. Whilst blogging in general is past its prime, WordPress still has a large number of themes and plug-ins which work with the latest version, plus active support forums. The documentation has even improved.

I’ve also changed. I don’t revel in spending all night adding new features and installing plug-ins. I want a blogging system that just works.

WordPress

What made me choose WordPress is taking over administration for the web site for one of the student groups that some friends are involved in. This previously used WordPress, and rather than try to shoe-horn it into Melody, I decided to stick with it. The system proved to much easier, more manageable and more slick than MT or Melody ever was. Upgrades, in particular, were very easy. So having used it for a while, a few hours ago I decided to migrate this blog too.

Getting the blog up and running in WordPress has been pretty easy. The import process from Melody was quite straightforward, and worked fine. I’ve then spent no more than a couple of hours trying some themes and getting the configuration in place. Despite being a completely different system, migrating from Melody to WordPress has taken about the same time as Movable Type to Melody.

The current theme is somewhat temporary – I haven’t yet decided on a final one. In the meantime I’d welcome any comments you may have.

Flat-warmed

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Lloyds TSB

At the weekend we had a flat-warming party, barely 3 months after the last one in the previous flat. Hopefully it’ll be the last one for a while.

Now that spring is here, Sowerby Bridge is lovely – there are plenty of trees and the view across the valley from our balcony is now very lush and green. There’s also a number of ducklings and goslings on the rivers that run through the town.

On Friday night we went to see Uncaged Monkeys in Manchester – it’s roughly equal parts stand-up comedy and science lecture, and was very good. Speakers included Professor Brian Cox (whose wife I met a few years ago), Dr Ben Goldacre, Dr Simon Singh and a few others. It was at the O2 Apollo theatre near the university campus, and was a sell-out – full of several hundred geeks who were happy to spend their Friday night being lectured about the silliness of homoeopathy, our tiny insignificance in the universe and why we’re fortunate that we’re not male anglerfish.

At the university the exams have started, which means that I’ll be invigilating a couple of them. Five years ago, I was the one sitting them, and whilst invigilation isn’t the most interesting of tasks, I’d rather be doing that then having to do the exams again.

This weekend sees us at a friends’ house in Leeds to watch the Eurovision Song Contest. It’s always good fun to watch as a group, especially when there’s some alcohol involved.

Why I’ve voted Yes

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Shark Statue

Today I sent off my postal vote, with a ‘Yes’ vote for the referendum on the voting system which takes place on the 5th May. I’d like to take a little bit of your time to explain why I voted yes, and why I hope you will do too.

Before I go into my own personal reasons, have a look at the Why Vote Yes? pages on the Yes to Fairer Votes campaign, and in particular the AV myths page.

I’ve had personal experience with the AV system whilst studying as a student, as we have used the system effectively for the student union elections for some years now. In particular, I’ve been involved with the counting of votes, and it really isn’t a difficult system. If you’ve watched the ‘No’ campaign’s referendum broadcast, they would have you think that it’s really complicated – trust me, it isn’t. It’s the No campaign telling you that you’re not intelligent enough to do simple maths, which is rather insulting. Jessica Hynes, the actress who appeared in that advert, should be ashamed of herself.

I also feel that the AV system is better than the First Past The Post (FPTP) system we have right now. At present, a candidate can be elected with less than half of the votes cast; in other words, a majority of the electorate did not support them but they were still elected. AV will mean that candidates will have to gain wider support in order to be elected.

It’ll also mean the end of tactical voting. Under FPTP, if you support a party that is likely to come third, you may wish to vote for a different party that you don’t really agree with (but has more support), to prevent a third party from being elected that you don’t want. This is because FPTP does not allow you to select second or third preferences; AV does, so you could put your favoured candidate first and then another candidate second if you wish, in case your first choice is eliminated.

It will hopefully spell the end for extremist parties like the BNP. Despite the ‘No’ campaign saying that AV will help the BNP (without really explaining how…), the BNP are actively campaigning for a ‘no’ vote themselves. Under FPTP, a candidate can win if a significant minority support them (which is true of the BNP), but under AV, a candidate needs to be able to appeal to a majority of voters. Most people find the BNP abhorrent, so under AV, their chances of being elected are further diminished.

View post on imgur.com

And my final reason is because of the negativity and outright lies of the No campaign. There is a very good takedown of their leaflet here, for example their claim that AV will cost £250 million – it won’t. Part of that is the cost of the referendum which is happening anyway and will be spent regardless of the result, some of it is for electronic voting machines, which aren’t planned to be used, and at least £3 million of that isn’t even substantiated. Pure scaremongering and lies.

I care about this country and want our political leaders to put this country and its people – all of them – first. First Past The Post is not allowing enough people sufficient say in who gets elected to run our country and our local authorities. It may have suited us fine when we only had 2 major political parties – we have 3 now and parties like the Green Party, with its first MP, and UKIP are also on the rise. Our voting system therefore needs to change, so that more people can get more say in how our country is run.

Please vote ‘Yes’ to AV on May 5th.

30 Day Song Challenge Day 30

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It’s the final day! Apart from one day earlier in the week, I’ve managed to post something every day for the past 30 days, and I’m feeling quite impressed with myself.

So, day 30 of the 30 Day Song Challenge is a song that makes you want to help the world, help the environment, end poverty, help society…. Frankly, I couldn’t think of one, and as it’s such a nice, warm, sunny spring day, I’ve chosen “Hard To Beat” by Hard-Fi which suits the mood, I think. It’s from their album Stars of CCTV, which available from iTunes and Amazon.

I’ll try to stay in the habit of posting stuff regularly on this blog, although I can’t guarantee a post every day like there has been for the past month. Still, I hope you enjoyed this small insight into my musical tastes!