The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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Anyone live around Manchester? Favour sought…

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Alas, I left a coat and glasses in a rental car returned to Avis at Manchester Airport car rental village last weekend (Sat 22nd). Realised immediately but a fellow traveller had posted the keys into the (unattended) booth by then. Avis don’t post to anyone – I need someone to actually collect the glasses at the place (the coat has been thieved) and post to me, in the UK. Happy to pay something or send a free CH book or the like. Otherwise it’s c.£100 for new glasses. 🙁

ATM – Apple Car Play cables

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I expect this has a certain poster here firmly in mind, but I’m at my wit’s end (or wits’ end?) with this particular first world problem.

I have a 2022 Kia Sportage (newest shape). It has wired Apple Car Play, which works very nicely, but…

The only cable I can find that reliably works all the time is an actual Apple OEM cable. All others (from Poundshop to Amazon quite expensive) either don’t work at all, or result in Car Play working for any time between 2 minutes and 1 hour plus, then suddenly just switching off, and it reverts to the Bluetooth connection. Re-plug it in and it reverts to working, but for shorter periods… The issue is of course, that Apple cables in that environment last about a a month before the plastic coating frays and it starts to fall apart. At Apple Shop prices, that’s expensive.

So, my questions are…

Can I trust the “Genuine Apple cables” on ebay for a fiver or better? What makes the cables so blinking special? Is there a recommended and reasonable priced third party alternative cable?

I have been told there are such things as “Wireless Car Play converters” (plug into » Continue Reading.

Help me spend £250

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I’ve just served 10 years time with my current employer and they’ve given me £250 to spend on (or put towards to) a special gift to myself. I have to hand in a receipt (via an expense claim) to get the dosh, so I can’t go to my local drug dealer/lady of leisure, or up in a balloon and throw fivers onto the plebs below.

Any ideas? Box sets? A better Fiio? Some decent in-ear cans?

I’m a bit stumped as I can easily spend a lot more (new car/bike) or a lot less (records… lots of records).

First World problems – the latest in an unending series

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It’s been some years since dog owners started using dog-poop bags to pick up faecal matter deposited on the footpath. It was a development I was really pleased to see, substantially reducing that hazard of dog-shit being walked into your home for one as well as reducing infection risks like toxicara to children. But in the last few years I’ve noticed a change in behaviour. Dog owners are bagging the shit and then just leaving it in the street for others to pick up. Last year my wife and I visited Snape Maltings in Suffolk. We went for a walk across the flat lands behind it. We were appalled to come across a tree “decorated” with dozens of bags of dog-shit hanging from its twigs. Now I’ve had someone deposit such a bag on our garden wall. It may be a small problem but it is really f*#&ing hacking me off. Does anyone have any other fresh, first world problems they’d like to add?

ATM: Sonos question (supplementary: Tidal)

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I’ve got a big birthday coming up soon, and Mrs thep, who is a woman of great empathy as well as taste, has hinted that she’s thinking of buying me another Sonos Play:5 so that we’ll have a stereo pair. (She loves the one we’ve already got so much that I suspect this embarrassingly generous gesture is not entirely disinterested, but never mind.)

Has anybody got experience of what happens when you put two Sonoses (Sonoi?) together? Is it aural heaven, or is the difference not particularly obvious? The one we’ve got sounds so impressive that I find it hard to believe that it isn’t already pumping it out in stereo, and they cost an awful lot…

But in anticipation of all this hifi goodness I’ve been fooling around with a month’s free trial of Tidal’s hifi streaming, which claims to be CD quality, but costs twice as much as Spotify. Certainly the remastered Sgt Pepper sounds very impressive, with Sir Thumbsaloft’s bass positively leaping out, but then I thought it sounded pretty good on Spotify too. If you try direct track-for-track comparison Tidal often sounds subjectively ‘better’, but not always, and I was always perfectly happy when I listened » Continue Reading.