Madonna live – not over it yet | beach walking

I’m still not over the live electro versions of Like a virgin, Erotica and Lucky star. Goddamn these tracks are just too cool. To whoever wrote and produced these new incarnations, I tip my hat to you.
Or I would, if I wore hats.

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Likes fine food, wine, coffee, music and long walks on the beach.

I don’t know what’s so cheesy about long walks on the beach, especially when the weather’s cooler and there’s no-one around. The beach has to be one of my all-time favourite places to go to meditate, doubly therapeutic these days as I withdraw from people more and more and need time to myself.
Last night the moon was out and shining, albeit shielded by a decent layer of cloud, but the ambient light was still enough to see fairly well by. I tend to head out to the beach when the moon is bright as the atmosphere is perfect, meaning most of the time I go to the beach at night, though sometimes on the odd Sunday morning I’ll head out there for a walk with the newly risen sun.
I almost always take my mp3 player with me, but generally half-way through the walk I almost always turn it off. When the tide is out, the low waves of the bay break out on sand-bars a fair-way off the beach, and the distant sound is truly amazing, particularly at night when the rest of the ambient noise is much quieter. Because of the sand-bars, the water nearest to where I walk is sometimes very still and really helps to provide that surreal, moonlit beach atmosphere I love so much.

One of the reasons I went for a walk last night though was because I just miss being in Kansai and walking every day. I jumped into Google Earth for a few minutes to trace some of my walks, and some days I would have walked close to 20 k’s, probably averaging about 15 a day for the duration of my time in Osaka and Kyoto. I walked less in Tokyo because I got the flu on the second day there, but I still did a decent bit of walking as I got better towards the end there. I love walking so much, and before I left for Japan I did several good walks down at the beach which, by the way is only five minutes drive from my house. I really am enjoying being by myself, though these days my thoughts tend to wander into realms that would be great to share with someone else, but nevertheless, they’re stored for safekeeping and I’ll always be able to recall them when the right time comes.
While on one hand I’m dying to share this beach and my thoughts with someone, I’m enjoying being by myself, and don’t want to just waste the shared experiences on anyone. I have a lot to say, I expect much to be said for me to listen to, and I also like many seek to enjoy simply being in the environment to appreciate it and someone’s presence without saying anything. It’s amazing how complex the needs and desires of a person grow as we get older – it is these intimacies which mark maturation I think, intimacies that grow beyond only physical affection and intellectual stimuli.

A big part of it is that ever-wonderful idea of appreciation.

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Oh yeah, by the way, I retired the aging iRiver H340 for one of these, though the stats you want are for the X5L. Yes, I realise it’s 10 gig or so less (8 in reality), but there was a lot of music I wasn’t listening to which was easily culled. What I got it for was the 35 hour battery. Again, I realise it’s not a Lithium-Ion Polymer, merely a standard Lithium-Ion, but there really is nothing like the old iRiver H series around anymore. I need a player that allows me to organise my mp3s in the rigid (read: anal) directory structure that I keep them in on my PC, no DRM hassles and a full-function LCD remote. The iAudio X5L is the best product on the market for this, minus the capacity, battery and slighlty less easy to use remote but still very usable, I gain a few handy features like of-course the initial longer run-life battery, a dynamic on-the-go playlist and a few nifty DSP features like a 5 band EQ among other things (most of which are useless, but one or two that come in handy).
Is this the last bastion of ultra-geek non meta-data managed mp3 players?
Two years will tell.