Unexpected pauses

Unfortunately my much anticipated post for this week will not be happening due to a big technical hitch that occurred originally on Tuesday and after a resumption for a brief period has continued for a few days.
You might recall I bought a laptop around June 2012 and had been using that for much of the work as the desktop computer I have is currently 8 years old and probably was at least 2 years older than that before I bought it used but professionally refurbished around October 2006.
That's a very very long time ago, like  but a few months after I started this here blog and it's fair to say it's fallen well behind what is needed to use modern websites and social media was rather more someone shouting "Isn't that amazing" as they heard an Mp3 or video playing from the internet than the likes of Tumblr, Twitter, Google Plus or Facebook so a miserly 256MB of RAM isn't much use today apart from the sad fact that older computers just get slower as the years go by.
The short no technical bits of it are it won't come on and recognize what it is (a Compaq) and then load up Windows 7 preferring to flash every tw seconds  with a black screen instead. I hope a in a few days to be able to return to normal service but in the meantime to please bear with me as that ancient computer is very poor at media heavy sites like Google Plus and Tumblr and even stalls  on regular sites from time to time.

Back to square one (sigh)

Gawd, hasn't been a depressing week for news don'tcha think?
The whole business around the so-called "Islamic state" a perversion of Islam i.m.h.o., the capturing and selling into slavery of women and girls, the cheerfully murdering of what they call non believers, these events who appear to lack a single gram of humanity ending with the recording of the beheading of a American journalist who had only been reporting on the suffering of Arabs such as Palestinians in the world, really makes you wonder.
Wonder cos if like some of you you thought with the coming down of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War we were told the World would be relatively stable and yet from the first Iraq War, it appears the world is more unstable, lacking an rationality in negotiated evolutionary change in the governance of countries, internal and external relations and borders some of which around the Middle East were and are unsatisfactory in many ways, being drawn up the Victors of World War One with no regard to cultural and ethic cohesiveness.
Understandably, in view of the very real threat to World order, peoples liberties and freedom the Islamic State poses as the do not believe in nor recognize any existing boundaries believing instead in single unified "Islamic" state structure, the people of the United States and the United Kingdom through our leaders are in the vanguard of dealing with this situation from both a humanitarian standpoint, such as providing food and shelter in parts of Iraq and varying military assistance which may well alter in the upcoming weeks and months.
Like many of you, I am war wearily having seen enough dead and disabled from Afghanistan and previous Iraq wars, I've know people personally disabled and disfigured from terrorism not least in this Country and yet with sadness I have to conclude this threat to us and our nations interests has to be confronted even with casualties. It's that serious and we may have to strong action in our countries to deal with those who rather join forces with them rather than defending our institutions that uphold the principals of freedom and justice that are the very real Standard for the world to aspire toward.
Be strong.

Legends continued (Crank It Up)

Following on from Get It On, the matching disc was also obtained here:

 

This like it's predecessor also has a TimeLife pedigree with 17 tracks from the mid 60's to Mid 80's featured in their full album versions remastered for regular and super audio cd on one disc from their original masters which typical doesn't happen with compulations as much as we love playing them.

This one gives us the best sounding For What It's Worth by the Buffalo Springfield, Running On Empty by Jackson Browne,  Pretenders Back on the Chain Gang and Daniel (the latter besting the DCC Greatest Hits version even) amongst others on a single 70 odd minute disc that just rolls on back the years.

The set keeps the original Time Life booklet notes and pictures.

While generally I don't buy compilations from specialty companies preferring single artist albums, I felt these two were worth getting for the sound.

We'll see just how popular this excursion into compilations has been for California's Audio Fidelity label.

Tom Petty and Hypnotic Eye

I lived through the era that saw Tom Petty make it from the self titled Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers album of 1977 on Shelter that was more popular at the time in Great Britain to the commercial breakthrough around the time of late 1979's Damn The Torpedoes following them through the 80's and beyond so you can say I'm pretty much a fan of his.

Those who follow the album charts can't helped to notice Tom Petty recently topped it in the States with Hypnotic Eye that came on cd July 29th and got to #7 here in Great Britain but it wasn't until last week I got my copy because it is the 140 gram German lp pressing simply cos it sounds a bit better (and has more dynamics) than the cd version plus came with a free download code for 24bit (48K) High Definition lossless digital audio and regular slightly more compressed Mp3. Amazon did also give me a free Mp3 but I didn't think it sounded too good personally.
Being the sort I am I downloaded the 24bit and downsampled myself a Mp3 from that using the Batch Format convertor in my cd copying program which sounded much better.
Favourites from this altogether really good comeback album are Burnt Out Town which with American Dream Plan B  and Power Drunk are good examples of Tom Petty drawing from current affairs to write spirited songs about the World we live in.