Decks fixed... DJK has arrived...

So I went out the other day and invested some cashish in fixing my decks. If you remember as stated a few weeks ago in this blog, I bought the Hercules Mark I DJ controller that doesn't have a soundcard incorporated into it (its the budget option at €99). That means that it requires your computer to have two sound cards to be able to listen to the main track on the speakers and the next track on the headphones.

However, being the intuitive physics student and generally resourceful young scallywag that I am, I solved the problem quite simply. For €35, I picked up an external sound card and some headphones for €25 from PC City (Spain's version of PC World). After some gentle coercion and some software jiggery-pokery, I managed to sort it out and now it works perfectly as a set of decks should. So in effect what I have is an improvised version of the Mark II for €159 instead of €219 for the real deal. Bargain!

The final straw that made me fix the kit was the fact that the day before I made an 80 minute mixtape without headphones: the tunes are cracking but technically the mix is far from ideal. Hopefully when I move back to England in early July I'll have another bash at it properly and put it online for all to enjoy. It's not bad at the moment but still too raw to put out there.

Real Madrid: Champions!

Congratulations to David Beckham for finally winning the Spanish League title in his final season with Real Madrid! Not a bad day out for the kids either!!

Support for Alan Johnston: missing in Gaza

Alan Johnston is a BBC reporter who has been the Gaza Strip correspondent for 3 years. He wet missing on the 12th of March and has now been missing for 91 days. I have added a button in my sidebar to support the search for him connecting straight to the Alan Johnston timeline on the BBC website. It goes without saying that anyone with information about his whereabouts should contact the relevant authorities. I also urge anyone to sign the online petition for his immediate release.

Visitor #2: Sean!

So it turns out I had another visitor to Santander, one of my friends from school: Sean. Had a pretty awesome 5 days: made some music; explored the town; caught some rays on the beach; met all sorts of chaps from all over the world; and had some pretty good partying (check out the photo albums in the righthand sidebar of this page). We also found the language school we studied at during a Sixth Form trip to Santander. The pillock didn't bring me any sodding tea bags though.

Cheers for the visit Sean! You are a legend (although about time I had a visit)!