2008 — 10 January: wild, windy Thursday

Well, it certainly was buffeting me around on the motorway on the way home a few minutes ago (00:40 or so). What fun, heh? Tonight's1 film was Carne trémula — another of my Almovodars, but based on a Ruth Rendell story. Again, it went down very well2 with the lads. Perhaps I should try them on Kika next?

Festina lente... department

Next time I happen to be in Comet with a credit card in my pocket... stop me, someone. I could have bought a multi-region version of that Panasonic HD DVD recorder but, no, I had to go and buy in the "High Street" on impulse. Hence the Internet order (a few minutes ago) for a rental handset specially modified to make the beast permanently multi-region. Check this out.

The game plan is to make this device (with its built-in Freeview tuner and 160GB hard drive) the main signal source both for broadcasts and DVDs as it's capable of outputting a progressive scan signal, via its hdmi output. Thus (I hope) keeping things in the digital domain as much as possible until reaching the DVDO iScan scaler and thus (I hope) minimising visible conversion artefacts. Since I also have the Humax hi-def satellite (and, for that matter, the Helios upscaling DVD player) I bit the bullet yesterday and bought a couple more hdmi leads and a 4-into-1 hdmi switchbox.

This he calls "simplification"? Tedious report doubtless to follow. And before you comment, Brian, yes I fully realise this is the start of a(nother) slippery slope. Good God! It's now 01:56 and I need my beauty sleep.

Just time for another picture of Christa (and me, for a change). Big Bro took this in Portsmouth the day after I started my pre-retirement leave from IBM on 4th November 2006:

David and Christa

Good grief! Donald Fagen (think: Steely Dan) is 60 today! Time for brekkie, methinks, what with it being 09:43 or so. May even tune into the local radio to see if they're going to tell me what all the police sirens were about an hour or so ago. (Which has just told me that the card game "Uno" was launched in 1972. Truly we are in Orwellian territory.)

About time, too, I suppose... department

Finally, the bank's solicitors have provided what I need (to fill in) to take probate one lurch further forward. And I'd almost become reconciled to playing spaghetti hoops with the A/V system layout today. Typical! Business before pleasure. Just taken a call from a hospice volunteer "checking up on me". Lovely woman probably about twenty years my senior wanting to know how I'm "getting on". I restrained my first (and second) impulses and let her chat a little. I fear her advice — if typical — fell somewhat into the category that would probably provoke me to say something crass like "it's too late to tell people that now, don't you think?" (She had never, it seemed, encountered a brand new driver among her newly-bereaved clientele before, but seemed suitably impressed.) We politely concluded that a) she wouldn't be ringing again(!) and that b) maybe I should write a book about "it"!3 But not quite yet, I think. If and when I do write another book, and it's certainly quite high up my list of potential projects, it will doubtless feature Christa, but will be forward-looking, not back.

Meanwhile, as I glumly contemplate the dreary monsoonial weather, I'm glad I nipped out in the car when I did this morning.4 I also got it back into the garage with both mirrors sticking out,5 and with room to wriggle out of it. But I cannot move it far enough forward to avoid the need to take the aerial off. I wonder what's in all those boxes and bags on all the shelving that takes up about two feet of space? Mind you, I couldn't now (15:00 or thereabouts) get the car out. Shades of the old Max Miller joke, there's a gentleman with a large pneumatic tool blocking my passage. Gawd knows what they're digging up, or why, but (so far) all Mounce domestic services seem to be left intact.

  

Footnotes

1  Well, OK, technically last night's film.
2  As did the roast pork and apple supper, thanks!
3  She feels we are none of us quite as prepared for death as (in her opinion) we should be. I countered with the old "If we all thought about death every day we'd go mad, surely" argument, but (now that I'm older and just a little sadder and wiser) let her carry the day. Life's too short!
4  A swift burn down the M27 to get another couple of leads from Currys (one for the iPod — I swear audio minijacks are like coat hangers, ballpoint pens, and socks — they're forever disappearing down wormholes off to distant galaxies) and then a sat nav mediated pit stop at Brambridge where I cheekily availed myself of the output portion of their I/O facilities. (Gentlemen of a certain age, you know.)
5  It was by then already too damned wet, I decided, to get out and twist the left hand one and if I clipped either mirror going in, at least I knew they both swivelled...