grumpyf1

1745. That’s how many CDs I own. Yeah... that is quite a lot, isn’t it? Whilst prices vary enormously, at a rough estimate that means I’ve spent around £10,000 on music. Of course, that ignores the cassettes, CD singles, and vinyl 7”, 12” and albums. If only there had been some handy way of just paying a sum each month and listening to whatever I wanted – I wouldn’t have a wall full of shiny silver discs. Just to depress myself, let’s assume a streaming music service (like Spotify) costs £10 a month. On that basis, I could have used it for 1,000 months for the same outlay as the CDs alone. Or about 83 years. Ah. Still, there’s something nice about having a physical product, and I’d always presumed I was the righteous one – until I got the calculator out a couple of minutes ago. For those of you fortunate enough to be growing up in the time of streaming services for music, and video content, you can get just about anything recorded, ever, to enjoy whenever and wherever you w...

Big news as we plunge, screaming, towards a Brexity, Trumpy, 2017 with no idea how to stop - I’m obsolete. Technology has finally beaten me. It was inevitable, really. I’ve previously stated that people who don’t file their music alphabetically (by surname) are destroying the very fabric of civilised society. I’ve no desire to Snapchat. There’s still a radio/cassette player in our kitchen that is ‘digital’ in that you have to use your fingers to press the buttons. I’m trying hard to adapt to the fast-changing, technological, future that’s bunging a new and baffling development in my direction on a daily basis. For instance, we recently got one of those TV stick gadgets that allows you to stream programmes via the internet. Very clever. Unfortunately, I keep forgetting about it. You can’t see it, the remote is so small it’s hard to find and none of the programmes are in the TV guide that we buy each week, then circle what we want to watch with a biro. There are masses of TV sh...

You know you’re getting old when it dawns on you that you’re outliving technological breakthroughs. You know the sort of thing – something revolutionary, that heralds a seismic shift it the way the modern world operates. Clever, time-saving, breathtaking and life-changing (and featuring a circuit board). It’s the future, baby! Until it isn’t any more. I got to pondering this when we laughed heartily in the office about someone asking if our camcorder used “tape”. Tape? Get with the times, Daddy-o! If it ain’t digital then for-get-it! I then attempted to explain to an impossibly young colleague that video tape in a camcorder was indeed once a “thing”, requiring the carrying of something the size of a briefcase around on your shoulder, containing batteries normally reserved for a bus, and a start-up time from pressing ‘Record’ so lengthy, couples were already getting divorced by the time it was ready to record them saying “I do”. After explaining what tape was, I realised I’d ...