2007 — 22 Apr: Dive, dive, dive!
We'd initially intended to accept a last-minute invitation to be driven in convoy down to the Submarine Museum as part of the Drive It Day run of the South Hants Vehicle Preservation Society. Alas, no can do on this occasion, but we'll be equipping ourselves with driving goggles in readiness for the next time.
Instead, a quiet day at home, methinks. Even though Loudon Wainwright III is appearing live in Southampton (thanks for the tip, Brian). Not counting the 51MB update to the iMac's X11 system (and the minor panic while I searched for how to disable the Caps Lock key — not that I even knew where it was, but it was stopping me from supplying the admin password for the upgrade to go ahead). Mrs Google assured me I'm not alone, by the way. What a subtle keyboard!
Now let's see if I can find out how to kick off any Open Office application other than the Writer. Or should I go to bed instead? Yawn. It is after one a.m. after all.
Hard core? Soft core? Apple core!
So, instead of a hard day out with some petrol heads, we've opted for a soft day out with gentle shopping, counting the (four at least) oversized floating council estates parked temporarily in the harbour, writing and posting the weekly snailmail despatches (here, if I've given you a password) to dear Mama in the Midlands and (just possibly) relocating the iMac to the other end of the study (under the skylight). I may even move the HP Media PC back downstairs, too. Though, if memory serves, I wasn't able to optimise the screen resolution under the dreadful "Media Center" software, which makes some massively simple-minded (one could even say pig-headed) assumptions about what it's being connected to.
Now, why would a Belkin KVM so consistently get wrong the image positioning on my 24" Dell? And, what's worse, get it so wrong that it's outside the range of adjustment? It can now take up to four re-tries switching between XP/Linux on the analog input and/or enlivening the mix by also switching to the DVI input second desktop from the iMac before it will settle down. I've noticed it's "happier" and thus gets it more nearly right more nearly initially if I don't park my XP program tray vertically down the left hand edge of the screen and don't use a black desktop solid colour. Presumably I'm expected to adapt, yet again, to the system's innate preferences?
Kicking off other Open Office applications? Simple; start from Writer (how intuitive is that? It's rather like clicking on a "Start" button to shut down your Windows system, isn't it?) go to "File" -> "New" and slide down over the type (of "document") you want.
Shopaholics anonymous
Since I last 'fessed up, I can see the following goodies sneaking their way into hearth, hearts and home:
- A couple of optical digital audio cables for stretching twixt the newest Sony minidisc recorder and the HP Media PC
I will not be using its "Net MD" facility, by the way. Life's too short for yet another proprietary audio format on my PCs - Emmanuelle which I remember we caught in London back in the summer of 1974. I'm amused to see its cover artwork sitting
alongside three variants of Jane Austen's "Emma"...
Usefully, I have discovered it's possible to "watch" the 30-minute interview documentary extra (between director Just Jaeckin1 and producer Yves Rousset-Rouard) on this DVD in about 8 minutes flat by playing it in the PC at 4x speed and just reading the subtitles! Nothing much seems to get Lost in Translation - Novo which is tagged as a combination of Memento and
Groundhog Day for every Romeo everywhere!
The British Board of Film Censors Classification tersely informs me "Contains strong sex". Now whose opinion would that be, I wonder? - The worst jobs in history compiled by David Wilcock and "Baldrick" aka Tony Robinson.
Apparently this was a series on Channel 4 in 2004. Passed us by, I fear, but I'm always up for a skim through 2,000 years of fascinating snippets about miserable employment — it seems not much changes in society! - Laundrettes and Lovers: from storyboard to billboard
A lavish £30 PR job on behalf of the "Working Title" film production company. But since I watch and enjoy a lot of their output, why ever not, particularly as "Works" is flogging it for a fiver? - And the pièce de resistance for less than £3! The Essential Guide to World Comics by Tim Pilcher and Brad Brooks
This has the following gorgeous cover:
Those devils at the Beeb
What have they done to my beloved Antiques Roadshow this time? I dunno. We come racing back from an emergency airlift of a couple of DVDs over to poor Eileen-of-the-cracked-rib and a swift cuppa from Len-of-the-next-Boston-Legal episodes for us, only to find nonsense in their schedules. How could any sane person prefer "Castaway" or "Castaways" or whatever crap they're transmitting at the moment? Oh well, back to the Freak Zone on 6Music for the duration.