I was never really into Def Leppard when I was younger, apart from Slang (1996), but then I was already getting old when that came out!

My brother loaned me their back catalogue the other week and I'm pleasantly surprised, particularly by their first two albums which I'd never heard in full.

I was surprised too at how many songs on Hysteria I'd completely forgotten about. When that album was released (1987) I was heavily into thrash (Metallica, Celtic Frost and Slayer, mostly) so Def Leppard was "false metal" and too glam and girly for me to pay much attention…

Bah! once more.

If I'm listening to WinAmp and then press FF to select another song, or double-click on another song in the playlist window that second song plays double-fast. But if I do it again then the next song is played at normal speed. It's very odd. And annoying.

And once again, the only fix I've found is to uninstall the Last.fm client.

Very annoying, given that I've just done a complete reinstallation of Windows XP.

The trial continues …

I'm having terrible problems just now – and have been for a few months – with my WinAmp, WMP and iTunes playing tunes at double- or triple-speed making everything sound like chipmunks!

What I've worked out so far is that it's linked with Flash player and my LastFM client. If I play WinAmp, then view a Flash video on YouTube, for example, and then go back to playing a tune in WinAmp it goes mental. And the only way to restore the WinAmp speed is to close my LastFM client.

I really don't understand what's going on. Something to do…

Bah! I've been listening to music all day today and only at 23:40 noticed that it's not been Scrobbling any of it … well, okay only two tracks.

I had to do a reinstall of Last.fm client to fix it.

Bah again!

Less than a week now until I see Celtic Frost and Kreator in Glasgow.

I've wanted to see both these bands since about 1986 … at long last.

Yesterday I bought a new guitar amp from Guitarguitar on St John's Road, Edinburgh. It was the Vox Valvetronix AD50VT and it sounds fantastic! I really wanted a Vox AC30TB or the new AC30CC2 but those are way too expensive for my current budget, and since the Valvetronix has an AC30TB model it was just the ticket.

I rehearsed it last night and it sounded great with my Burns Brian May guitar and Vox BHM-1 Special amp – can you see a theme running through here?

Still much playing around to be done with it, but it looks – and…

The last couple of weeks I've not been able to play any MP3s, as I've been suffering from soundcard (Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2) problems. Hence a lack of activity.

Whenever I would play something and type I'd get clicking and popping.

It appears to have settled down for now, but the Creative auto-update page tells me that I have corrupted settings! I have a new Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum to install soon. Hopefully that will banish my soundcard problems for ever. (Well, you can hope!)

I didn't realise you could blog here too! Amazing.