At the record sharp end...

Way back in 2013 I wrote  a bit about how for those of us who use turntables that use removable (SME) type headshells we could have a easy to fit and install cartridge for getting the music on our records  to our amplifiers phono input so we could enjoy and did produce an update in 2016 but we're nine years on and things are a bit different.

There's always been some controversy in audio circles regarding the best cartridges and styli to use over the decades, the earliest being from the days of horn gramophones covering the shape of the stylus, what it is made from, to  the sort of cartridge it is attached to and so on.

Sometimes it is clear one is better overall such as moving magnet cartridge sounds better and causes less wear than a crystal one to your records but on other occasions its been "swings and roundabouts" depending on what you prioritized such as the moving magnets ease of replacing the stylus over the potential advantages of the moving coil although that has to be re-tipped by an expert (or you use a part exchange scheme to get a new one each time).

While more advanced stylus shapes can by being a  closer fit to the record grove wall, sounding better  for tracing the grove more accurately, some find the demands of keeping a record spotless clean to avoid more obvious noise from debris a challenge.

That is one reason I've decided to go slightly backwards and explore one of the best  regular eliptical stylus fitted cartridges, the Nagaoka MP 110 whose tracking is better than most in its price range.

For a good number of years Nagaoka of Japan had no official importer in the UK but that has changed over some 18 or so months, so they are back on sale with proper dealer support.

As purchased, it was pre-mounted into a SME style headshell to screw into my turntables arm so all the fiddly wiring was done for me and I'm looking forward to giving this ago alongside my  Ortofon Concorde 20 and 30 higher spec but more demanding .

I expect it to sound slightly warmer and with a tadge less extreme high frequencies.

Dear reader

Hi peoples.

I woke up with this idea for a post cos the next scheduled one would be a in a few days time but before I went to bed with Theodore, I noticed something on the Dorm Blog I want to talk about.
The first thing is while I've been doing my Math schoolwork this week, we have had a grand total of 18,814 views since the blog was started and in the last month 2,014 which is a lot of views.

People have many reasons for writing a blog, some being very much with the authors own needs such as making a dairy of their lives, interests and important events getting a great deal of satisfaction in reviewing them as time flies.

Well, that's partially true for me but another reason for writing a blog is to better inform people about some interest or aspect of your life because many do not understand it or worse still think they do on the basis of sensational stories in magazines and the popular press.

 For me, it is that I wish people who encounter this blog randomly, to understand what being an adult little girl is about, like it's not  seedy, a dirty little secret, a threat to society or worse still Children's welfare.

It's an very important part of a everyday responsible life that you're engaged with that is stacked with childlike innocence, fun and a refreshing spontaneity. We also have mainstream hobbies and  a sense of humour!

As well,  many of us contribute in different ways to making lives better for others by solving scientific problems, making things people like or helping people navigate complex personal needs.

That's why having people stop over at this blog as well as other peoples too is important because it helps to break down these erroneous preconceptions so having good viewing figures matter to get the word out.

Thank you dear reader for stopping by today and if you haven't already please either spread the word about this blog or consider following it.

A spot of colouring

The weekend was not particularly conducive to going out with strong winds on Friday so with even bigger and strong people than myself struggling I needed to stay indoors which as you probably aware isn't something I like at all, being an outdoor girl.
One thing you can do when it is like this is colour and so I had my colouring book out on Friday.

 Normally when I colour I use Staedtler colour pencils available in the Noris Club 36 colour pack as they respond well to different pressures for shading and don't easily break in the way some cheaper ones found in convenience stores do
They also sharpen well.
That illustration is from the Jacqueline Wilson Colouring Book published by Penguin UK and illustrated by Nick Sharratt who does the drawings in her stories.

Weekend studying

Another weekend goes and can you imagine what I've been doing over two days in this cold and snowy time?

 Yes, I had double studying this weekend where I actually had just sit down and work my grey socks off rather than either being distracted by other stuff online or otherwise and actual get started on time as I have from now on...
Is that an offstage Ow you hear? (lol).
So on Saturday in English I was working on backing up points by using quotations and getting to grips with making sense of Shakespeare, being able to read extracts from plays and make out what really is happening to the point of being able to show I understood  what I had read.
Shakespeare isn't like me  just coming out with it even with a bit of diplomatic license, it's often wrapped around long poetic descriptions and anything but direct.
I did manage to get every question right this week as well as drawing neat boxes to make the tables to put some of the answers in.
During the week the Ks 3 Math study and workbook arrived which could mean one thing, that like it or not I had Math to work on  and was required to get myself a Geometry set and traditional exercise book to write my work in on Friday when it had been snowing.
Can you imagine it, a increasing number of exercise books with "Joanne, [Subject] Month/Year and Form: 1EB" written neatly on the front that I am to fill out over the year?
Sunday I had to tackle Math starting on what you'd call basic number work such as how you put numbers in order to express them as Math and in English as well as size before moving on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division featuring patterns, multiplying and dividing  in decimal units which cause my fears to multiply(!) as well how to multiply and divide numbers like 20, 300, 800 which I can't recall being shown not that being truthful I'd of paid that much attention to back in the day.
I'm also working through Multiples, Factors and odd, even, squared and cubed numbers too and it's all starting sink in as although this is hard for me, I did actually manage it, even going back over one calculation three times until I spotted where I was going wrong which was very good for me as I'd of thrown the pencil at you cursing until very recently.
In a way it really underscores where the work on my attitudes and behaviour slots in because it's not that this isn't hard  for me but it is something with support I can grasp but didn't want saying in effect "Too hard, why even try" which is why a very strict line has and is taken with me.
It actually shows that with a no-nonsense approach when it's coupled with support and guidance I am able to do things, that I have abilities I can use and from now on I'm to put a real effort into trying. 

I CAN DO MORE WITH THE RIGHT HELP WHEN I ALLOW OTHERS TO HELP ME
That is what being a responsible disabled adult middle is all about

Also my BFF checked in during the days to see how I was getting on, like actually getting started and I did the same for her which does seem to work well for both of us and she did well too.

The Misses and Master

After Friday's more heavyweight piece I felt like sharing something else here.

Princess Natasha all in white making her way down the stairway. I had her for several years and is more the decorative sort of doll having a porcelain face

Morse sat on my chair. Although he's Scottish he doesn't drink Whiskey!

Jessica, as she'd just gotten up in the morning before I brushed her hair, living on the side of my chair in the front room from where I usually interact with y'all online.
I doesn't matter they and my other dolls and stuffies are clearly visible to my neighbours across the street as are my Wood's Cat teapots or if they come into the front room.
It's my space and I'm me.

Junior Art

Most of us encountered art either around us on maybe on the things people bought us such as books, packaging of toys and so on.
As you slowly and for some of us definitely slowly developed your fine motor skills  you may of started to doodle on pieces of paper, done some colouring before doing art in the nursery or infants class usually around the things you know starting say with faces of siblings and so on.
Later on in juniors you'd of had lessons where you might be given a subject to interpret and draw which in my case included drawing things like branches, pussy willow, acorns and flowers that we'd seen in nature study. In my case we went outside to draw them too!
A while ago I did draw some Canada Geese in pencil as I'm a bit of a techophobe when it comes to using tablet and computer software and here is the picture.

Yes that's a Hello Kitty pencil I used to draw it with!

Are there advantages of being ALG?

After our last Teen Beat special, I wish to return to an interesting topic  around those of us  who are Adult Little Girls and in particular those who take part in forum discussions and the like.

I haven’t really addressed this before but one thing that struck me about our groups especially at GT, is what an array of talents we happen to have in our midst, from artists, seamstresses, writers of fiction, people who in are Engineering, the Sciences and so on.

One does wonder about how much society actually gains from people like us who use childlike, non-linear thinking as well as problem solving to come up with solutions over our more regular colleagues and friends.

It wasn’t me but someone known well to this blog who remarked that thinking about the hundreds of people they’ve worked with and groups and forums they themselves have interacted with finds this group (at GT) having an unusually high percentage of   greater intelligence, wit, imagination, creativity compared with others.

Put like that, personally having been in a number of forums including TG ones and worked with a number of people in different fields, that’s how it comes over to me too.

I do wonder if  being inclined to think outside of adult boundaries and the social need self-censoring ones thoughts,  because we are childlike so never stopped doing so, you remain more open to possibilities exploring them?

Maybe this might answer the question “Do we have a role to play in society?”

Joanne is reading for pleasure

A return to work this week after being poorly but immersed in littleness for the preceding two  prompts this weeks entry.
Reading  for people like me who have difficulty recognizing words and following English grammar is hard going but we are getting somewhere as I actually enjoyed for once reading while unable to work.
A good while back we were talking in chat about favourite stories and Jennifer said she liked the Famous Five series to which my reply was one of once I'd finished paying back some money I spend on a big cd box set, I'd consider getting a set cos although I did read a few when I was officially younger, I'm missing a set.
The stories feature the adventures over their vacations of Julian ,Dick, Anne and George aka Georgina and her dog, Timmy. George lives with her father Quentin, a Scientist, next to Kirrin Island that George 'owns'. In total there are 21 stories the earliest being 1942's Five on a Treasure Island to 1963's Five are together again

That bundle of books is the "classic" edition which retains Eileen A. Soper's original illustrations not to be confused the 2011 significantly altered set and only set me back just under £25 shipped from Amazon that's really quite a bargain.
One bone of contention regarding all of Enid Blyton's books is, over the years some subtle and not so subtle alterations have been made.
While this set isn't too bad from that point of view with no loss of  or major changes in characters, some of those made make no sense such George - the girl who wants to present as a boy - we are told in this edition wears a jersey and jeans however the illustrations clearly show her in shorts (something boys under 14 in the UK did wear during the period these books were written) and further research I did showed this to a fairly recent alteration. Equally a reference to Quentin in Five on a Treasure Island  threatening a spanking to George for being very awkward as well as cheeky is removed (even though it would of been very likely to had been made back then) and yet in Five go off in a  caravan, Nobby the circus boy is still threatened with a whipping and gets it from Tiger Dan his circus step father.
For all cackhanded so-called Political Correctness though I'm enjoying reading these stories and it's interesting she made 'George' the way she did without any implied criticism. A heroine if ever one needed one.

Not unsurprisingly I love school stories especially boarding school ones and one series I've been slowly collecting inspired in part by our motley alg crew's tastes is by Anne Digby and is called Trebizon that runs to 14 stories.
If that sounds terribly Cornish it's meant to be cos it's based on this super school for bright girls next to the beach and being written and published between 1978 and 1994 covering a  period when I was in boarding school (yay!) we are treated to such cultural references such as British Rail, Wimbledon, duplicating machines with their stencils, cassette tape recorders and finally Television!

That is the 1993 first three stories in one hardback book edition as published by Deans.
The stories are centred around Rebecca who joins the school having been at a London Comprehensive following her parents stationing in Saudi Arabia with a common theme being her emerging talent at Tennis although (hurrah!) she does play Hockey too! Of the other major characters we learn about her best friends Tish Anderson and Susan Murdoch and her boyfriend Robbie. We learn about the trails of fitting in when you join a school in the second term after everyone's paired off with friends, about hard choices deciding what to major in and what you may need to drop to keep your schoolwork schedule manageable.

Fur side story

After all that standard Olympics stuff and don't forget we have the Paralympics too which the UK played a big role in establishing in 1948 I thought I'd write about something I've referred to in chat but not never really on sites.
When I was living in the Greater London Area, I used to travel out a lot across and just beyond the City and on one Saturday morning in the spring I was in the Covent Garden area, a favourite part of central London of mine where I came by this:

Aww she's cute, very fluffy and and a hand puppet being made by hand and I just had to have her, walking across the area clutching her tightly afterward. This was well before I had any idea of what being a little even was!!!
Well I used to take her to work - as this is the internet and a public site I won't say where - but the job was super important for children's welfare over here and every lunch time I'd put on an impromptu puppet show. We called it Peaches the Panda show and it was ever so funny. At all other times she was on my desk and I'd start playing with her as people drifted about the office.
Shortly afterward I got another fluffy thing but this was more a Plushie I named Spikey cos 'es an Hedgehog.

I found them a few days ago as I was sorting out my closet so I give them a bit of clean and fluffing up and their back out on display.

Online colouring

Just while checking this photo program out, I went over to a colouring book site site that links to online colouring books where you can can  click onto virtual paint and colour in.

 It's listed on the favourite sites page on this blog.

Here's one I did earlier:

As you can see the tools are well laid out so you just click to load your brush (cursor arrow), move to where you want and click to paint that part.

It's also the first post entirely made from the laptop as I've had to learn where everything is stored!

The Adventurous Four

I don't know about you but adventure stories have always had an appeal and two wonderful books in the series The Adventurous Four set off the Scottish West coast where four children with the oldest Andy aged 14 who's acquired already a good knowledge of the sea, islands and sealife is  helping his Dad,  encounter Nazi's thieves and gunrunners.
The series is very much set in Wartime arguably more so than any other of Enid Blyton's work and sees them taken prisoner by the Nazi's resolving to show them what Scots are made of.

These are my copies in the Deans Rewards series from 1973 where as with a few other series such as the Famous Five, the skirts and shorts worn by the children in the original  covers are replaced with Jeans although we all know children during the War never had Jeans!

Winter sports

I've always loved the Winter as cold as it often gets  not just for natural beauty but also for the many things you can do both inside and out on a Winters day.
One of my favourite sports to watch is Winter Skiing which is shown on the BBC as well as British Eurosport and it is sport many girls do take up although it is an expensive hobby to get into.

Off on the snow you really can move fast but it also requires good co-ordination too.

Here they are enjoying themselves in lovely girlish coloured attire, Who said girls can't ski or it's not feminine?

Chalet School

Reading is something that is very much linked to my actual childhood  and as an adult little girl remains a preoccupation of mine, loving to read story about schooldays and one series I am currently reading is the Chalet School series number sixty in total by Elinor Brent-Dyer from 1925 through 1960.

Here's a three in one omnibus edition from 1987from my meagre collection of this series.