It's been almost two years since we moved into our Lincolnshire home. It was intended to be a 'move in and don't spend anything' kind of place, but before four months were out, we'd added solar panels to the main roof. Another three months and we'd fitted a new, insulated roof to the sunroom/conservatory. At the start of the second year, we replaced the floors in the kitchen, sunroom, laundry and boot room. After that came floor replacement in the second study and repainting of every room in the house. So, it ended up not being the 'move-in-ready' kind of place we'd hoped for!
My listening room was next, but it's been a long haul! There was a fireplace which had to be removed and total re-plastering of the wall where it had once been, together with embedding power and speaker cables in the brickwork. I wanted a panel of vertical wooden slats for no particular reason I can remember or think of: I'm told they are currently fashionable, but I wouldn't know and I asked for them two years ago! That panel went in just before Christmas, after which ...crickets! The English workman likes his New Year break and after that their diary was full, so they couldn't squeeze us in to replace the floors until this past week. The week thus began with me moving all my books out for the umpteenth time, all my glass, all my comfy seats... and my computers. Which means I've been offline since Tuesday, kicking my heels: it turns out that a laptop doesn't really replace a desktop PC you're comfortable with 🙂
Finally, however, today the room was (more or less) finished, as you see in the thumbnail. The sun came out on the first day of meterological Spring to celebrate, too, which has cheered me up immensely.
I say 'more or less finished' because, though my main computer is working at last (it's hiding in the desk on the left), the music-playing PC is not (it's hiding in the central console, in front of the wooden slats). I'd been connecting it to the home network using cables dragged carelessly across the now-gone decrepit carpet, with no care for the aesthetics; but the finished room obviously deserves better than that, so WiFi networking it shall have to be ...and it turns out that I am fresh out of WiFi dongles that are Linux compatible. One should be arriving before 8PM tonight, Amazon willing, so hopefully there'll be a touch of Wagner or Haydn before midnight, though I won't hold my breath!
I'm relieved the 'works' are over and I can get back to improving some code and listening to some music at last. A week offline is about 4 days too many, I think! Anyway: by Monday, I'm fairly confident that everything will be as it was, meaning that a scheduled release of a new version of Semplice should hit the airwaves by Wednesday 5th March and the big new release (version 3.30) of Giocoso should follow by March 10th. Ish. As ever, watch this (newly-refurbished) space 🙂