Dare to dream

All of us have done it - many times. Dream of that girl, the promotion, that life you could have. Call it fantasy or ambition whatever - we've all been there. I get it alot when I work late into the night - or as tonight AVOID work late into the night. I've been sat here for several hours supposedly writing a website that was meant to be finished weeks ago. I like to listen to quite dark music while I work, to blot out the noise and distractions. Stuff like Linkin Park, Creed, Within Temptation and so on.

I just caught myself sat staring contemplatively at my laptop screen - with the same song on repeat over and over again - dreaming. I think sometimes it's good to get lost in those fantasies. Mine usually consist of heroics, secrets, betrayals and war - kinda reflecting the music I'm listening to :) The moral? Dare to dream, it is worth it. But (and this is where I'm going to go against what your mother would tell you) don't forget that truly anything IS possible if you try hard enough. She will say yes, you will be the hero, you can save lives, destroy bad men, save the world. But only if you never give up.

Of course in the true spirit of hypocrisy I do it all the time (pretty much every day in one case) which either puts me in the perfect position to preach this or makes me a stuck up prick (please don't tell me which ;-) )

Oh and that song? One of the finest ever written. "Easier to Run" by Linkin Park. Look to the lyrics:

It's easier to run
Replacing this pain with something numb
It's so much easier to go
Than face all this pain here all alone

We are sent into this life to be trialled, if you face up to it you can do anything

(PS I hate 4am..)

Itooooooons!!

Last night I downloaded the new version of Itunes (V7. whatever). Ive been using Itunes 6 for a while and I really like the way it organises and looks after my music. I also like being able to buy online relatively cheaply. Whatever the arguments against Apple and Itunes it does work and it is the best solution on the market - end of story.

Actually V6 was getting a little old - or at least the competition was meeting it. So along comes Itunes 7, and my god its pretty cool.

The flashiest addition was the new CD browse view - where you can flick through your album artwork like they were actually Cd's. It needs to be seen to understand what exactly this is but it is really really cool. There are some bugs but essentially it works good. As a sort of compliment to this you can now tell the software to download cover artwork for all your music (not just purchased ones) this does take a bit of fiddling to get right (and might mean renaming some albums) but again it essentially works.

Actually that second feature is really cool as it is a feature I have wanted for a while - and for the most part it finds them automatically.

Other new bits n bobs include movies and TV shows in the store (and sub folders for them in the software). I got all excited over this till I found out that currently only US customers can access this. I don't know if Apple plans a UK roll out but I really really hope so - I love movies and a download system as good as Itunes for my films would be brilliant (and cut down on shelf space in my room!!). As to the TV shows I was hoping to get Prison Break series one - but again no UK version.

Another neat new feature is an upgrade to the backing up tool. So now you can back your entire collection and playlists to CD/DVD(s) and restore them at a later date. You can also do incremental backups - which is really useful (I did it straight away!!).

Other than that it just looks nicer. SO well done Apple, another good Itunes release means I'll be sticking with you for the future :P

(In other news I am downloading Vista RC1 as we speak - actually it has been going on and off all day!! so some time next week you should get a review - if it doesn't destroy my PC)