Click images for desktop size: "Orangy Art" by Richard Mohler I've almost always lived in houses.
Compared to apartments, I mean,
When I've had to stay in an apartment or a condominium it put me on edge.
I don't like lying in bed and hearing my neighbor walk to the toilet and flush it. It gets too close to poetry staring at your own walls and hearing the life of strangers surrounding you and pressing ever and ever closer.
Since I've spent most of my time in big cities and major metropolises, and that in my home in London I usually had a dozen or so people staying on it might seem odd, but that's the way of it.
I like private houses that are full of people . . . or at least full of dogs and one person.

Yesterday my little blind puppy seemed to be on the rebound. The night before he dragged me tumbling down a hill. There was enough snow that neither of us were hurt. I was more irritated by it. He was excited. This falling down thing of mine is getting to be a drag. The puppy must have enjoyed it though, some small canine excitement. He tried to drag me back over the same hill last night. He was mad that I wouldn't follow him again.
My big surprise came off.
Not the way I wanted it. UPS is too unreliable to ever make plans around.
Its embarrassing to say but I bought an Apple TV . . . I got it second hand via one of the auction sites. The fellow selling it lived relatively close and . . . I used a small portion of my IRS Tax Refund. It was a fraction of the cost of the new ones.
I'm sure I'll regret spending the money in a week.
I was nervous it would be busted up, not work, twonky, what have you. It works like a dream, better than I'd imagined.
I got it mainly for music. H264 encoding with Dolby Pro Logic Sound doesn't interest me much, other than novelty, at least for now.
What surprised me was how easy it was to set up, to start seeing Flickr pictures and then using them as a screen saver was like totally YOW!

Click images for desktop size: "Night Angel" by Unknown And the streaming of music was perfect. We don't have a proper sound system set up here. I spent today re-wiring the stuff I have and it now works okay. Its listenable for sure and so nifty to play thousands of songs one after the other.
What was also impressive was getting podcasts. I'd never used them much because they were usually poorly mastered and took up a huge chunk of real estate on my iPod, where they'd sound terrible.
Going through the Apple TV they sound cool and much more viable and varied than listening to the radio. Some of them are totally bitchin.
I'm not much into YouTube, but it accesses those pretty easily as well. I watched a couple of my puppy's YouTube video and was annoyed with the poor quality of the encoding. Main reason I figured out how to host her video files ourselves.
But that's the stuff that interests me. The main purpose was for the music for my friend. She's chuffed and thrilled to be able to surround herself with the sounds she loves.
That makes me happy.
Its simple and easy enough that she can start playing her stuff right away and without having to ask me how to do it.
We watched "Pillow Talk", an 60's Rock Hudson & Doris Day comedy. The humor was pretty arch and the characters repulsive in any clear vision, but we laughed and played with it, enjoyed it.
With my little blind puppy making noises like he's going to be around a bit longer, my surprise being a success even with all the glitches, worries and stress, yesterday was a day to mark with a white stone.