I've finally made a program (in C#, my new favourite language) that allows me to order files/folders for burning on a CD quite conveniently. All you have to do is tell it the folder you're interested in, and then you just manipulate the list of files/folders to your liking, and the program inserts the numbers at the start for you. All this with a usable GUI to boot. Not too shabby for a few day's worth of coding.

The GUI aspect is actually probably the reason why, for me, Java is my second choice. Java's standard library is a bit more mature than the .Net framework library, which is of course a very good thing, but when it comes to designing the GUI, it's no contest between hand-coding and using the Windows forms designer. An unfair contest, sure - I should really compare a Java GUI designer, shouldn't I? But the .Net designer is already there, nicely integrated into the IDE, whereas for Java I have to go searching and see which one I like and..other stuff that will take me, oh, I don't know, a few minutes. Laziness is a powerful force, my friends (as is ignorance, and I think I've demonstrated both).

But on a darker note, let's talk about the Velvet Undeground's White Light/White Heat, whose album cover I think inspired my current black & white site design. Actually, there's nothing dark about it, but it's truly awful, except for The Gift, which is at least interesting, even if it isn't a masterpiece or anything. Speaking of masterpieces, let's not speak of Reed's supposed masterpiece, Sister Ray. It starts off nice enough, but then it's 17 minutes of pain. It's quite clear that VU decided that they wanted to get everyone's attention with this album - lyrically, Reed's getting a bit less subtle, and musically it seems to be descending into chaos. Whereas the first album had some good melodies, which managed to keep my attention, this one just sounds like noise (ouch, that's a bit harsh, eh?). No soft ballads, of course, but the songs don't even have the creepy atmosphere of other numbers (like Venus In Furs, with that Indian-sounding viola). Of course, you might say, "Well, what did you expect - they're an avant-garde group. What, you want them to be wildly experimental and have tons of lovely melodies?". A valid point, but yeah.

Don't you love subjective music reviews? I know I do.