2008 — 14 January: soggy/sunny Monday
It's now 00:57 and normally I'd make a start on the new day's diary. For once, I am too tired and feeling too low to muster the necessary enthusiasm. Sleep strikes me as a more attractive (and intelligent) option right now. More later, in all probability.
Far-flung readers
An initially sunny start to the day at a more conventional time (after 10:00, he added coyly) is bound to lift anyone's spirits. Big Bro notes my night-owl propensities while warning me he's heading out either to Brunei or London within the next week. Better spruce the place up a bit, I suppose. Wonder if dear Mama is willing to accommodate the pair of us, or remembers who we are!
The equally far-flung Brack has suggested an answer to my Time Machine thought experiment: "Same thing as would happen to you when taken back before your construction in the damn thing." I'm (almost) sure he doesn't mean to say that I was conceived in a Time Machine! But it reminds me of a neat SF short story from many years ago. A young chap who is dying from some incurable ailment manages to leave a note (to the future) to that effect in a tin box that he buries in the garden. He is "rescued" by a time traveller and taken "back" to the future when he can be cured by more advanced medicine. I love those temporal paradoxes!
Guvmint computers
Turns out, these really do talk to each other (about me, if not about anything else). The one that belongs to Mr HRC has just sent me a "Bereavement benefit enquiry" expressing sympathy, apologising for having to trouble me at this time, but euphemistically1 asserting that I can help them remove the right amount of tax from me by filling in their form. Closer inspection, particularly of the second page, shows that this is nothing more than a Tax Return printed in soothing pastel shades, hoovering up details of pension(s), earnings, Jobseekers Allowance and (once again2) sadly, still expecting me to remember, or be able to find, this mysterious 10 figure reference number which was on my tax return! As I said, what the State giveth with one hand...
Next adventure?
Having just (13:15 or so) bade farewell to young Nick, who popped round to pick up a piece of technology to play with, and left with my copy of the excellent Stardust DVD, my next jaunt is going to be out to somewhere near Salisbury, later this afternoon, to see a demonstration of another piece of technology: a Sony VPL-VW60 BRAVIA SXRD HD1080 Home Theatre Projector. Ostensibly, this is a potential replacement for Mike's now quite old (and built like a tank) three-CRT projector but — who knows? — it might even prove suitable in my own humble abode at some point. I shall certainly be interested to see this technology in action. Now, where did I put that sat nav?
Time now 20:03, the inner man's pangs have been staved off, without burning the house down, by an Aldi chicken pizza, half a grapefruit, a clementine or some such, and (of course) a long-overdue cuppa. Some of the incoming email has been responded to, but not yet the difficult one, and I can now draw breath and recap my little adventure this afternoon. For a start, there's another 84 miles on the Yaris counter... (I can't bring myself to use "odometer"). And for "Salisbury" read "Berwick St. John" while for that Sony, read "JVC"-clone, as modified by a company whose name I didn't catch. Not that it matters, as the device didn't exactly leap up and down saying "Buy me!" But it's interesting to see a full hi-def 1080p picture blown up, as it were, to a seven foot(?) diagonal screen size. The entire lack of visible line structure makes a big difference. We were able to contrast and compare three ways the same frozen frame from my standard definition NTSC Region 1 copy of Starship Troopers upscaled to 1080p on a Toshiba (Region 1) HD DVD player, with Mike's standard definition PAL Region 2 copy upscaled to 1080p on an Xbox console's HD DVD drive, with his recently acquired Blu-Ray 1080p copy played "straight" on our host's Sony Playstation Blu-Ray drive directly into the projector.
Not the most orthodox setup in the world, perhaps, but a fascinating exercise for those of a certain bent (as it were). The Blu-Ray copy (obviously) showed up as having the best resolution, but (to our surprise) the NTSC 480i picture was slightly better handled than the PAL 576i picture:
Should you wish to repeat this experiment in the comfort of your own home, you need to be about 42 minutes 21 seconds into the film, and looking at the scene where one of Johnny Rico's female troopers is walking to the exit gate of the boot camp. The trick is to see a) how many people you can detect working on the vehicle visible on the left and b) the clarity of the number displayed above the exit gate.
Still quite numb... department
Tomorrow, it will be exactly three months since Christa was last in the house with me. (Her daffodils are already shooting up in the front garden.) And exactly one month since I passed my driving test. Incredible.
She would, I'm certain, have been tickled pink by today's mail from our local council telling us about a new weekly food waste collection service. (Ever since her time in the early 1990s working for a company that designed and built waste incinerators she showed an unhealthy interest in this whole area.) They claim that almost 30% of the average rubbish bin is made up of food waste — not mine, missus! Be that as it may, I'm invited to attend cookery demonstrations showing how to make the most of what we buy, and what is fresh and available locally. Should be good.