A large part of my preparations for going to Amsterdam seem to be ripping loads of music into my MP3 (although I prefer WMA) player. I think I now have enough music to listen continuously while I'm away. That is all week, day and night. I'm also finding stuff that I never got around to putting onto my portable. In the long term all this effort will be of benefit I guess. It is certainly easier than any kind of work.

I'm very impressed with the CDDB system which lets you get track information for any old CD that you throw at it. I've found some quite obscure ones ("Boots the Chemist Rock Collection Volume 3" anyone?) and the database has contained each of them. I'd quite like to be the one that enters the track list for a disk but so far no luck.