Diva ex machina.

[reddragdiva]

Another thing I bought yesterday was a USB A-to-mini cable. From Maplin. Their in-house Nikkai brand (British-made cables with a Japanese-sounding brand name), gold plated, nine goatfucking quid. I know, I know. I wanted it NOW MUMMY to charge my MP3 at work. It turned out to do USB data okay but not USB power, which is what I bought it for. Today I took it back to Mister CRAPLIN's Emporium of Dubious Electrick Rubbish (and they gave me my money back without the slightest fuss) and I stopped by the paaahndshop on the way home and got a memory card reader that includes a 30cm cable of the requisite sort, which just happens to do the job perfectly. Serve me right, and a close call.

Did I mention I really like my cheap and cheerful crappy little MP3?

I also got a long-sleeved black T-shirt with an inexplicable Volkswagen bus on the front. Hey, it was three quid and I needed a long-sleeve.

In further excitement, the younger teen managed to burn her hand this afternoon when she knocked a frying pan off the stove and ... instinctively tried to catch it. Second-degree burns down her thumb, first-degree on some fingers; largely a lucky escape. This gave arkady a particularly trying afternoon. We got takeaway pizza and beer each.

Comments

[gothgeekgirl]

First, my sympathy re the younger teen. A lucky escape indeed, but still. Ouch.

What brand is your MP3 player? So far I've gone through two that have been complete pains in the arse to work with.

The first was a cheap one from Centon with touch controls so sensitive and non-intuitive that I never could point the thing at what I wanted to listen to without great effort and reading glasses (and oh yeah- it won't read an 8GB micro SD card).

The second is a SanDisk player with much better controls but the unfortunate habit of generating multiple pointers to the mp3 files I load on it. No, I really don't want to hear each song in an album five times, no matter how much I like it. There's no way of telling it to erase its database, though I can sometimes get it to fix itself by a seemingly random series of power cycling, removing & reinserting the SD card, resetting it, etc. Bah.

Suggestions for another MP3 player welcome. This is far more annoying than keeping a folder of CDs in my car ever was.

[reddragdiva]

The brand is TeckNet, but that's of no importance - it's one of the zillions of devices using the Actions S1 chipset. Which is, no foolin', based on a Z80. With a DSP attached. And a REALLY CRAPPY INTERFACE that I would recommend to no-one.

I've had three of the things. First died of being cheap after eight months. Second I was given by steer because he hated the interface so much he wanted to smash it to bits with a toffee hammer. Third is this one.

Its key feature to me, apart from being cheap, is that it plays Oggs.

I have no suggestions for MP3 players that don't suck. Apparently iPods are that nice, but I really hate iTunes and its way of doing things.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

knocked a frying pan off the stove and ... instinctively tried to catch it.

We've all done that, one time or another, haven't we? I wouldn't be half the cook I am today if I didn't have the burn scars to show for it.

[reddragdiva]

She got off very lucky! The doctor said a lot of frying-pan catches she sees are third-degree, skin grafts involved, often she can see bone ... she'll just have her hand out of action for a couple of weeks. Which involves no writing at school and, worse, her music assignment (and the rest of her GCSEs!) having to be put back two weeks because she can't play piano. And will be stiff when she can play it.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

It makes economic sense to manufacture cables in Britain nowadays, rather than getting them made in China?

[reddragdiva]

No, that doesn't sound right, does it. Possibly I misread the label. It's definitely Maplin's house brand of cables, rather than anything actually from them for'n lands.

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Yowch. Yeah, that's worse than anything I've done - I blame my poor catching skills - dropped hot pans, knives etc have usually just bounced out of my poorly-co-ordinated grasp.

[redcountess]

Only read this after we chatted, ouch!! Poor K!