Posts by Chris Bell
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Riddley Walker, eh. Well, Mr and Mrs Walker are clearly more intelligent than Ms Turia:
"...in tu the hart uv the stoan hart uv the dans. Evere thing blippin & bleapin & movin in the shiftin uv thay Nos. Sum tyms bytin sum tyms bit."
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that, and jack daniels is a bourbon.
Now, hold on just one whisk(e)y-snobbing minute there, Mr Tibby! You wouldn't want to go shouting that around Lynchburg, Tennessee. Or in nearby Bucksnort, for that matter. Jack Daniel's is a sour mash whiskey. Bourbon is from Kentucky, like Jim Beam.
I, too, taste the sea, however, in both Laphroaig and Lagavulin. To my mouth, Lagavulin = oily; Laphroaig = medicinal. But what do I know, my preference for one or the other swings with my moods...
Russell said:
Just<i> reading</i> that makes me need a lie-down ...
Yes, my writing tends to have that effect on people.
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the peated whiskies started to all taste the same after a while. It gave me a renewed respect for Springbank, whose bottlles were rich and magnificent, and only lightly peated.
I can appreciate how that would quickly happen in side-by-side tasting, Russell. Mind you, "if all the same" meant they all tasted as good as a Caol Ila cask strength (as they might to my oikish palate), I'd have few complaints...
I think I've tried Springbank. Of the subtler malts - the sort that don't slap you about the chops, pull down your trousers and then pour a tanker-load of palm-oil over you while you're discombobulated - I very much liked a Glenfarclas sherry cask bottling I once tried. It made me happy. That's one of my "best kept health secrets". :-)
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the Cropwell Bishop Shropshire, a blue vein cheese of spectacular orange hue, which tasted like God's own marmite
God's own marmite. Love it.
I quite liked Lammerlaw, in a Glen Grant sort of a way, although my favourite single malts tend to be very peaty - such as a cask-strength Caol Ila or, failing that, a Lagavulin, Laphroaig or a Bowmore.
And I miss British cheeses. Sob.
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http://10layers.com/2006/11/itunes-new-zealand-ready-to-launch/
here we go, here we go, here we go.......
Really? Nothing happened while U2 was in the country, though - or are they still here, hanging around, like the rest of us...? iTunes is trying to take me directly to the Australian store when I sign in.
Yawn. It's déjà vu all over again.
Cute icon, though. :-)
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this is complicated by the fact that one of the major labels does not report to Australia (EMI) therefore its royalty stream from NZ sales cannot go through the OZ Opco.
[...]
Then there is the mechanical (songwriting) royalty which is still, I think, at a different rate for NZ and Australian sales, so all sales originating from the NZ side of the pond would need to be treated differently if it was simply a part of the Australian store.
Again, these are just IT middleware problems. In Europe, GEMA and the other societies or IFPI would intervene, the income would be collected and distributed once agreement had been reached.
There are people out there smart enough to solve these problems - it's not the first time they've had to work with different percentages, members and non-members of various industry bodies. The industry has been shortsighted to have focused on the differences instead of problem solving. Meanwhile, industry entropy looms.
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Tomorrowpeople wrote:
majors are working three times as hard to sell the same amount of product as they were previously.
This oxymoron had me laughing so hard I nearly gave away all my free promo CDs.
And the thing I don't understand about the arguments against an iTunes Store is what we're really talking about in terms of investment. It's a middleware problem: as a first step, all they needed to do was open up the Aussie store's transaction processing to accept NZ credit card payments. How expensive would that have been? It's too late now, but set aside the labels' Kiwi catalogue for a moment, and think global: with half-decent IT, the initial surge of purchases would easily cover the IT investment required, even if Kiwis didn't buy a single song after the first couple of months. And we all know that isn't going to happen.
It has never made sense - even if the local labels can't agree on a 'fair' licence rate, the naysayers are arguing that the reason we don't have an iTunes Store is because a) we're not important b) it wouldn't make enough money for Apple and c) the labels are subject to the whims of their global bosses ... well, it's true, they don't care about "little old New Zealand", so why don't they just take our money and run?
As far as I can tell, it's just more industry incompetence from blinkered Luddites.
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Yo Damian,
I had the same problem with my 80GB, but so far only on podcasts.
Is it doing it on podcasts, too...? Chances are this is caused by iTunes 7.xx's new Gapless Playback Information - it's something to do with Apple's proprietary encoding, according to bloggers geekier than I... with podcasts, as previously mentioned on NZBC, you can circumvent it by either:
a) Setting the podcast/track to start playing at 00:01
b) Setting your iPod's EQ to 'Off' for the offending itemsI suggest you try this with your tracks, too, before you do a 'Restore to Factory settings'. I've also cured the problem that way, but obviously it takes far longer...
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I have to spring to the defence of Renaissance - in fact, Apple support generally in NZ knocks PC support into a cocked hat.
I've lately had quite extraordinarily, above-and-beyond-the-call support from Renaissance regarding an iPod five months out of warranty. Of course, this may be entirely due to the fact that I've amassed some good media contacts over my years writing about IT, but I'd given up totally on Apple Support in Australia (I kept being put through to ever-so-polite but NZ-ignorant US call centres) or ever getting my iPod working again.
Two members of staff at Magnum Mac in Auckland independently went out of their way to help me when there was nothing in it for them - I wasn't presented with a bill, I hadn't bought my iPod from them and they didn't know that I occasionally write for the IT press.
Previously, I'd experienced similar excellent service from Totallymac.com where they provided top class phone support and replaced two successive faulty iPod Video 80GBs at their own cost... Needless to say, had the devices worked properly in the first place I wouldn't have needed their support, but that's another story.
iTunes 7.xx seems to be a giant leap backwards in many ways, as I've mentioned often on NZBC.
As to the iTunes Store, what can you say that Russell hasn't already articulated. But even if you don't plan buying lots of 'DRM-broken' music and videos, it'll be nice to be able to get album art for the CDs you've bought over the years without having to go trawling about on the net for .jpegs, or feeling like a leper each time you accidentally click on the iTunes Store tab instead of your iPod and are tersely told: "This Apple ID has not yet been used with the iTunes Store. Please review your account information."