Month: April 2026

Posted on

Ripping Music

Do you still buy music CD’s. The last few years I have really gotten into buying them again, using services like Tidal to find music as well as recommendations from YouTube and friends.

I like having my music with me, on my laptop and my portable music player so I still rip my CDs. Back in the early days I used iTunes but now I use a dedicated ripping tool called dBPoweramp, it has tools for ripping and batch converting files from one format to another, this is useful as I rip to FLAC and then create copies in an Apple format for my old iPod. Yes I still have an iPod classic going strong.

Once ripped, I copy them to my NAS and from there to the devices that need them, such as my Roon Core Server, my travel laptop and music players.

This week as I was in town I bought two classic Fleetwood Mac albums as well as one my Dire Straits. All for a typical months stream fee.

I also buy and play vinyl but my record player like my CD player is in need of replacing, but I still spin a disk occasionally, either vinyl or CD.

Posted on

Wanting a new camera again – Olympus; Micro Four Thirds

silhouette of a woman drinking coffee by a window. People can be seen walking by outside

I was in Lincoln again this week visiting a couple of data centres to resolve hardware faults. As always I had a camera with me and in my lunch break went for a walk through the centre of town.

I grabbed a few shots before heading into an independent coffee shop for a coffee and sandwich.

With my transport needs met by several different modes, the main one for work being a motorcycle to cut through traffic quickly, I again started down the rabbit hole of what small camera would fill a particular every day carry niche when my Leica or Nikon ZF were a little to big.

As always my heart leads me towards a Ricoh GR or Fuji X100. The Fuji is not really any smaller and the Ricoh is expensive for a compact. For that money one can get something a little more flexible and fun. So I have been looking at the Olympus Pen line up. I came close to pulling the trigger on the original micro four thirds Pen when it was first released and it’s still a fun little camera. I started to look around and one can pick one up for about £80 in the local camera store.

Lens choice would be tough. The 17mm would be a start but would also like something a little wider.