Slow day Sunday

The day has started well: up before sunrise at six a.m., breakfasted, read a few chapters of Terry Pratchett's "Thud" (in German, with apologies to the Lioness), now listening to Beethoven's Violin Concerto while blogging. This is a 1993 recording of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, soloist Gidon Kremer. I don't like it very much: Kremer changed the Cadenzas in the first and third movements (and credits himself as co-composer for it, such conceit).

The morning chorus of birdsong was nearly deafening, very rich and complex with many different species taking part. I would have loved to record it for posting on Senduit, but have no iPod for the next few days. Apple offers an exchange program when the battery wears down*, as mine has done after over two years of near-daily use: you give them your old iPod and 70 Euros, and they give you a reconditioned iPod (the same model! it's not an upgrade) with a brand-new battery. The downside is that the "new" iPod has a new hard disk: all your music, podcasts, contacts etc. are lost. This is an annoyance but it need not be a problem: you can re-load the new iPod from iTunes (unless you've deleted the music files from your computer, in which case you need a utility like Senuti to copy music from the original iPod to iTunes before you give it to Apple).

And now, for a walk down to the river. The weather continues fine: blue skies in abundance, bright sunshine, temperatures in the mid-twenties. It's been a very long time, possibly two months, since it last rained here; the ground is baking hard and dry.


* It is possible to replace the battery by oneself, there are kits available on the Internets. I read the instructions and a few user-experience pieces, and decided that learning to replace iPod batteries is a poor use of my limited time.