a week away and a small panic. we’ll be wisping across the west yorkshire moors searching for pieces of cathy and heathcliff in bits of dead sheep that were knocked over by porsche cayennes on the way to leeds and naturally we’ll be without the tadpole which is alright because who needs it I never really use it until I need to create an entire collabspace of presentation materials in about 3 hours in a hotel in colorado and so the unconnected electricals will just have to fend for themselves on a kind of week’s worth of self-discovery away from the mothership. I think they can make it. but hang on, what’s up here? that was working perfectly until I stuck the usb hub into it and now I’m only getting gemma hayes in my right ear and I don’t have the guarantee of course and anyway I dropped this thing straight after I got it and broke the battery compartment and now it’s held together with one of madeleine’s pink hairbands so if I stride into the sony centre in the mall they’ll just think I’m having a laugh which I try anyway only to find the sony centre is now closed down and the nearest one is in cambridge or something anyway so that’s that.
so, that’s 1 sony network walkman I’ll be without next week then because I can’t possibly justify buying another one when I really need to buy some food this month and so I face the prospect of a couple of weeks or even a couple of months without the waxy foam plugs clamped in my ears wherever I go which isn’t far but its always with the walkman so dammit I’m just going to have to buy another and not tell anyone and hope the new one looks like the one enough to get away with it which it won’t but I’ll justify it buy never buying any more shoes as long as I live or something. that was easy. after skulking around the mediocre electrical outlet selection in norwich for a couple of hours, having to listen to real people’s conversations in the street for the first time in about 20 years I head back to john lewis for the 4th time because actually they’ve got all the network walkmans and so why didn’t I just buy one there in the first place and end up thinking that the link might be an option. I mean, honestly.
so 120 quid lighter, I’m out of there with a shiny new NM407 which even has screensavers for a screen it doesn’t have an a flashable prom which must be good but most importantly has 1gb of flash memory and 50 hours battery life which is perfect for the northern jaunt and will afford me the luxury of around 450 tracks using atrac3 which is fine with me even if you do have to use sonicstage to get them on there but hell, it’s a sony and I’ll put up with anything for a sony.
but now I’m thinking that I have another problem with the absence of the tadpole for regular docking. the w1 only has a 256mb memory stick and if there’s any half-decent weather at all I’ll use 256mb up in about a day with around 101 shots of decomposing brontëesque sheep, closeups of bits of grass and dilapidated sheds and stuff which I think will make art but will just make placemats and so I’m thinking more along the lines of a 1gb memory stick and a couple of cloudy days. except that I remember that last time Iooked at those on amazon they were about 200 quid and so that’s probably less likely than getting a new walkman. which I’ve just done. sooo, let’s take a quick look then. a m a z o n . c o . u . k. right, let’s see. ooh. recommendations for you, mr tim. not now. search shops for “sony memory stick 1gb” including the double quotes, natch, and I see that although it doesn’t come direct from amazon but via one of their dodgy storefronts for some bloke who usually has a carpet laid out on oxford street (a model we might actually consider for our new ecommerce global storefronts incidentally) I see that a 1gb card is now only 40 quid. genius. there you are mr unknown quantity maybe reputable but I doubt it I’ve probably just lost 40 quid etrader, a sum of money. please let me have one of your lovely sony 5 year guaranteed 1 gb memory sticks and I shall be on my way good man.
it arrives on time and it’s even a nice shade of black – a ‘pro’ stick no less – complete with a handy explanation of their odd postage charge set by amazon and offset by the trader but who cares about that its a 1gb memory stick dammit. and look here, I can now take 420 ultrafine 5.1mp shots without having to delete anything. except I won’t have enough battery to look at them all, but it’ll be just like having my 35mm film camera again and not knowing how bad all my shots are until I get home. excellent.
Menu