Transitions

Yesterday, a (temporary?) reprieve from a snow-laden garden brought out my latent - albeit limited - energy reserve as I manfully retrieved a spade from its hibernation; the wheelbarrow was also rescued from its angled reclination as I set to work. The task I set myself was to transfer some of the contents of the compost bin onto the garden's flowerbeds. Fortunately, I had the good sense to limit this exertion to two barrow loads; my state of being, this morning, confirmed that any further exercise could have proved disastrous. Shattered-ness has been retained at a degree only marginally greater than is my norm. Pacing is all!

Meanwhile, a slightly more passive pursuit has been the commencement of a project to transfer some of my vinyl and audio cassette collection to mp3 format. For far too long these musical and dramatic artefacts have been squirrelled away in sundry, non too easily accessed, hidey holes. I must own up to my preference for the sound spectrum derived from vinyl rather than CD but, unfortunately the turntable that obtains the best performance is also the most temperamental! For the vinyl transfer I'm using this hand-built turntable via a USB powered and connected phono pre-amp; for the cassette transfer a USB connected tape2pc deck suffices.

The transfer operation has more to do with potential ease of access, to the performances, than the overall sound quality; it has certainly taken me long enough to embark on this mission and, I'm hoping not to be too disappointed with the result! First transfers have come out better than I'd anticipated but, there's still a long way to go!