2007 — 26 May: the weekend starts here

Baby steps, no hurry, few worries, and perhaps even sawing through a down pipe to plumb in the blessed water butt before the heavens open. (I expect they will open, of course, being as how this is a Bank Holiday and all...)

Let the re-ripping re-commence

<Sigh> My word, this is tedious. I am finding just enough overlooked items to make the exercise slightly less than completely pointless, but I must say I am pleased with the way iTunes behaves both as a player in its own right and a server to the Roku network box downstairs.

I've noticed a small ad in the back of Private Eye offering to rip your music collection for you. I recommend a careful browse as they have much of interest besides the conversion service. They charge "from as little as 70p per1 CD"! And, although their current spelling of "storage" is a little bit space-saving, you can see from the table here that they offer everything except variable bit rate.

Too silly for words

She and I sat down to start watching Déjà Vu but I had to give up about 30 seconds into the explanation of the marvellous "Snow White" surveillance system contained therein. Combine the (many) implausibilities of the crime-fighting technology used by Deckard in Blade Runner with a data stream from satellites rendered over a running 4+ day period to produce a real-time (albeit delayed) infinitely zoomable, infinitely rotatable, infinitely changeable point-of-view (through walls, and with audio) and my disbelief hits the willing suspension buffers! Though it will be a neat trick one day, if you can manage it, I grant you!

  

Footnote

1  I fear I would qualify for this lowest rate, which kicks in at 501+ CDs. But, at their rates, my self-imposed task is saving me rather North of £2,000 — us poor pensioners have to factor these things in, you know. I can't match their four-day turnaround promise though (but then I'm not a match for their non-tea-drinking robotic system, I suspect).