I'm beginning to think that Sony's new Hi-MD might be exactly what I've been looking for. The press releases are vague but their features seem to include:

• 1 Gb of uncompressed recording (100ish minutes)
• Digital "downloading" of microphone recorded music from Minidiscs to your PC

Both exactly what I've been looking for. But... my questions are:

• What format will the music be transfered in? WAV or something bloody stupid like ATRAC?
• Will I be able to transfer old-school MD's with this device?

The new player with PLAY old MD's but I don't know if I'll be able to download the data on them at high speed.

Even at $400ish for the base model it would be worth it for the time it would save me. Fingers crossed.

I've also read a few reports that they're a bit noisy when recording (like the hiss you get from a bad computer soundcard).

Speaking of money, I was looking at a $1600 amp today. It sounded so nice. I didn't really want a house...

Other random points. My band got t-shirts today. I'm wearing one now. That rocks my world. Oh, and I got a pay raise on the 1st of July. It was about half what I wanted. Oh well, it's still very nice. They're not exactly buying my loyalty though.

"Brazilian Sabor - Tributo Virtual ao FNM". The Brazilian Faith No More tribute. Much of it is rubbish... but a small section is brilliant. Most of the versions are significant reworkings. Some are the same except with accented female lyrics and somehow that is ten levels of cool.

Download via the forums here or save yourself a bunch of annoyance and get them via ftp.cv.org (/pub/Faith No More/Audio/Misc).

My current favourite is Caffeine, a demented mix of the sweet voice of my old cover from the late 90s, mixed with randommetal bars, slammed together with old-man-patton-voice and Secret Chiefs 3 bad harmonys vs. Mr Bungle/Aphex Twin fake noise breaks with guest appearance by Antonio Banderas.

Although the metal version of Introduce Yourself is definitely growing on me, as is the almost-the-same-but-with-female-singer-and-poppunk-elements version of Digging The Grave. But most of them just proove how good Mike's voice is.