Friday 30 Jul 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

(Yes, that’s how they spell it. NI have a bit of a thing for giving their products slightly strange spellings. I think maybe it’s because they’re German?)

So last year I bought Komplete 5. As the name somewhat suggests, Komplete is a bundle of existing NI packages. Buy Komplete 5 and you get Absynth, FM8, Massive, Reaktor, Elektric Piano, Akoustik Piano, Kontact, B4 II and Guitar Rig (software edition). Now, if you bought all that lot seperately, you’re talking about several thousand pounds. (Reaktor on its own is £500 or so.) But Komplete &ldqou;only” costs £900. (The actual price is always quoted in USD or Euros.)

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Friday 30 Jul 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

OK, so no actual dancing in this post. But last night I drove to Wellingborough to scope out Friday’s dance venue.

The “contact us” page for the Railway Club lists the address simply as “Broad Green”, and the postcode points to a block of residential houses next to a large triangle of green parkland. But there are no large buildings anywhere near this location. (!)

(Obviously, they couldn’t include a map or any directions on their website. If they did that, people might be able to find this club and they might actually get some customers — and we wouldn’t want that now, would we? I mean, it’s not as if the club’s in danger of closing due to lack of attendance… much.)

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Thursday 29 Jul 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

OK, so reasonable weather, reasonable number of dancers. I spent some time chatting to Pam and Clive, trying to determine where the heck this place in Wellingborough is; I don’t think I really succeeded, but I did get Pam’s phone number. That’s something I suppose.

Debbie once again tried to get us to dance the Stroll to four walls, but quickly gave up on that idea, at least for the opening Stroll. But after that warmup, she stopped the music and got us to try again. And she said something very insightful: take three walks forward, and turn to the side of the foot you just tapped. Well, when you put it like that, suddenly it’s obvious which way you’re supposed to turn! Now the only problem is that the dance has two sections where you take three walks forward, but one of them is followed by a Scuff Turn as usual and the other is followed by a Quarter Turn (in the opposite direction), and you need to remember which is which.

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Tuesday 27 Jul 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Monday night, and once again I’m free to go dancing. Yay, me!

I got there and discovered there’s nobody on the reception desk. Apparently that’s because the kids classes have stopped now, so Laura is taking the money herself. Initially when I walked in it looked like we had 2 dancers, but in one of the recesses of the wall there’s another half a dozen or so. So in fact we had a reasonable turnout. I said hi to the two who were at Roade, but before I could say much Laura kicked off the opening Stroll, so I had to go find a spare seat and get my shoes on.

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Monday 26 Jul 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Oh no, wait, actually it was a message from Dell. It’s easy to mix the two up though, obviously.

Yes, Dell sent me one of those “Dear valued customer (who’s name we don’t actually remember), please could you spare just ten minutes to fill out this 80,000-point questionnaire (which we won’t look at anyway). Thanks for wasting your time on us.” Pointless, eh?

Well, just for giggles, I did it. I don’t suppose anyone at Dell will be in any way concerned that they got back one reply where everything was rated 3 out of 10 at best, but here’s to hoping. Of course, simply writing some numbers doesn’t to justice to just what a bad supplier Dell is to work with, so for anybody who hasn’t had the misfortune of dealing with Dell, let me explain what’s so bad about them.

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Monday 26 Jul 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Yeah. After the sensational events at Roade, Friday’s Ballroom & Latin class seemed tame by comparison. Still, that’s class for you. Great fun, but not as great as “the real thing”.

Anyway, no sign of Lois. (She didn’t answer my text earlier either. Still, nothing unusual about that.) Val was there though, so I spent most if not all of the evening dancing with her. She’s not the greatest dancer, but she’s a friendly person and I enjoyed her company. Paul & Pauline appeared five minutes after the class started, as is their way. In all, we had a reasonable number of dancers.

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Thursday 22 Jul 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

My mum bought me a new casual shirt — white with blue stripes. So I wore that. The rolled up cuffs are a bit tight on the arms, but it seems comfy enough. It’s a bit warm, but then, so is just about anything you can possibly wear! I kitted up with my heart monitor again. Unfortunately, in the process of trying to turn it off the other day, I seem to have enguaged some kind of “mode” where it constantly beeps at me as soon as I do anything. I gotta find out how to disable that!

Also mildly interesting: On both the way there and the way back, my heart monitor started displaying silly readings at one specific roundabout on the journey. I guess there must be some source of interferrence just there.

OK, so Mandy was on the reception desk last night. She wasn’t at the dance on Saturday, but I made it quite clear to her what an amazing evening it was. I went into the hall and saw Donna chatting to Pam and the other lady. I said hi, and again enthused about how great it was. Other lady had relatives visiting from all over the world, so that’s why she couldn’t make it. I don’t know about Donna.

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Wednesday 21 Jul 2010 by Orphi the AweKid.

Since I’ve still got the house to myself, yesterday I was able to attend Laura’s Monday class again. (Rock & Roll improvers.)

I wandered in slightly late. Pam was on the reception desk. We started chattering away about the events of Saturday night. I can’t remember what Pam said she was doing Saturday, but apparently the two of them were quite tired by the time they turned up at Roade, which I guess would explain why they didn’t seem to be dancing very much. She claimed to have had an excellent time though — which is the objective, after all.

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