Demacks of Salisbury

I haz a squeezebox

Spent last night installing the Logitech Squeezebox that I snaffled on eBay recently. List price for one of these is A$450, which is too much to pay. But there was a batch of four up for auction on eBay and they went for $130 each. 

I've always been impressed with the idea of the Squeezebox, and it has always scored very good reviews. It streams the music stored on your computer across a wireless network to your stereo. Suddenly you never need to find a CD again. At our place, listening to music in the lounge room had just about gone the way of the dodo, as the CDs are hidden away, and the DVD player/hard disk TV recorder was the only device attached to our stereo.

But now? All our (digital) music is only a snazzy black remote away. Plus there's the added bonus that the Squeezebox can stream internet radio stations ... just perfect for some classical or background jazz while reading.

And of course these days there's plenty of storage space for your music. Disk space is cheap.

The only remaining hurdle: digitising the record collection. Like that's ever going to happen! (Outsource it for $35 per LP!?! ... surely that's something you should send to Bangalore to be done for $5 per LP?)

School's out for summer

OK, so Amy won't like this photo even a tiny little bit, but its the best of a bad bunch I took at the Nyanda High awards night last week.

Turns out the principal of Nyanda is old mates with the Premier. So here's Amy receiving the Caltex All-rounder Award from The Hon. Anna Bligh.

Apart from Amy being a much better all-rounder than the likes of Symonds and Watson (like they wouldn't even know which end of a hair-straightener to hold), we were a bit intrigued about the Caltex part of the award.

I thought Amy would win something like a year's supply of petrol for being the CALTEX All-rounder. Or tickets to the next Test match. Or a trophy with an oil well on top, at the very least.

But she actually won the right to enter a nationwide essay competition, the prize being cash for yourself, your school and a charity. So here I was thinking Caltex were being all generous and such, handing out these awards at schools here there and everywhere. Turns out Caltex are coasting.

Back to awards night ... a wonderful celebration of the students of Nyanda High. We very much enjoyed it. And the graduation breakfast a few days later.

And now all our offspring have completed high school. Weird.

New music

The other Saturday night, I went to a concert event put on by some crazy kids: The Great Cover-up.

I went because I wanted to be supportive of some talented young people I already knew.

And I enjoyed their music, as always.

But there were some other exceptional artists playing as well on the night. Tim Nelson is a name I've never heard before, but I certainly expect to hear of him again. A soulful voice, spare, haunting piano style. Not quite blues, not really pop, a bit Whitlams, a bit Missy Higgins, but really himself.

Follow the link and listen to "If He Knew", and his surprising cover of "Toxic".

The weblog is bare

Here's a new strategy for my weblogging, to coincide nicely with the end of the year.

Demacks of Salisbury is going to revert to a family news type weblog. I'll even get back to sending notifications when I post.

Perhaps.

But the cycling stuff is going somewhere else. If you're interested in that, see you over there. If not, I've saved you some unneccessary reading.