2008 — 17 July: Thursday
Another placeholder. The witching hour means it's time for tonight's picture, which shows Christa on the phone in our Old Windsor hallway. As nobody would believe it, I trimmed off the squash racket at her feet. Her Dad made the two hanging bits of stained glass (they were remnants from the cathedral in Meisenheim):
Christa in our Old Windsor hallway
We had an excellent phone number, too — Windsor 60002. Why do I still remember that, I wonder? Oh well, g'night at 00:01 and a bit or so.
Another one gone... dept.
I'd missed the death of Lyall Watson — I still have the first edition hardback1 (and dust jacket!) of his Supernature which this chap seems a little scathing about, as he outlines his 10 rules for a successful pseudoscience bestseller. Here's #10 (with corrected spelling):
10) Remember those famous lines from Hamlet: "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Scientists don't know everything. The key to success for any good pseudoscience is to amass enough anomalies, coincidences, oddities, exceptions, prodigies and wonders that the sheer bulk of your data will convince the reader that your theory is correct. After all, if orthodox science can't explain all of this, then supernature or morphic resonance or ...(insert your own theory)...begins to look better and better.
Science cannot explain the fact that it's breakfast time and there's no Christa to share it with. But at least I now have a picture back on the plasma screen. And it's not actually raining (yet) at 09:17 so I shall saddle up the horseless carriage at some point this morning. Then see if I can find the new location of our Post Office. But there'll be no morphic resonance around these parts without a cuppa.
Reviewing (before I throw out yesterday's letter) the touted benefits of the credit card they've noticed I haven't been using (despite my status as a "valued customer") I note that it's "made from biodegradable plastic2 which is much more environmentally friendly than most other credit cards". Nope. Still doesn't quite do it for me. Perhaps if it were interest-free for life?
The new global report on cancer survival rates suggests Christa died, as it were, in good company. The UK is not doing very well. Unsurprisingly, "The results closely mirrored the amount each country was spending on health during the period". (Source.) Meanwhile it seems the newest Pope (that beacon of respectable infallibility) is telling young Australian Catholics "Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises". Spot the irony, anyone? (Source.)
As I glumly contemplate the jungle that is Christa's garden, and make sporadic forays to the BBC gardening pages on pest control and weed recognition, I note acidly in this lovely New Yorker piece that you can get a degree in turf management. (Is that like turf accountancy?)
The mix tape
Yep! I used to do this a lot. (Source.) And it was always technically illegal. But "home taping" actually never did kill music, did it?
Well, I tried... dept.
Having demolished the tasty barbecue chicken, prawn cocktail, and salad mélange that I shall call "lunch" I phoned the Pioneer UK customer tech support chaps and registered my disgruntlement with them at the fact (quickly established) that my particular slightly venerable plasma screen is "unfortunately, sir" just one year too old to have any chance of being retro-fitted with any form of hdmi/hdcp input. "We have looked into this, sir. You're not the first customer to mention it, and you won't be the last, but every point of the system would have to be reworked, and the costs..." Poop!
Anti-poop... dept.
Well, my new young chum Simon at the GameTrain may just have sold me the answer to an hdmi/hdcp-less chap's prayers. There's a little gizmo called (beautifully) the HDFury ...
... (which is roughly what I was feeling after my chat to the Pioneer folk). When screwed to the TV's VGA input socket (or, in my case, the one on the scaler) it even becomes, technically, part of the display device, and thus compliant with the HDCP "rules". How cool is that? Quoting from the website's FAQ:
I have a scaler or doubler with DVI inputs and an RGBHV output connected to my display device. I don't need an HDfury right?
Incorrect. You still need the HDfury if you want to use HDMI sources such as HD-DVD and Blu-Ray players that may have HDCP-protected content. The scaler, by law, is not allowed to output
content via RGB if the source content is HDCP protected. The scaler will simply turn off its analog RGB output. Only the digital DVI/HDMI outputs will remain on. To solve this,
connect the HDfury to the DVI output of your scaler, and then connect the HDfury to your display device. Simple!
Fingers crossed. Of course, now (for the third time) this will mean swapping out the Joytech RGB analogue video switchbox and re-inserting the Logik hdmi switchbox. Such good fun.