2008 — 2 December: Tuesday — hello again, Dr Fang!
Last time I published a photo of Christa and Peter from March 1983 (which was in June) was also the last time I went on a very similar walk near Minstead. It was a lot warmer in June than it was yesterday. And by the look of these two, it was a typical Spring day back in 1983 by Southampton water in Netley — rather breezy by the look of it:
Christa and Peter at Netley, March 1983
A nice pair of smiles, though. Wonder if mine will survive the dentist?
A vaguely philosophical aside
As I said in my footnote last June, these were some slides I'd then recently discovered, and scanned in. March 1983 was just five months before Christa's original cancer diagnosis.1
Just been listening to a marvellous documentary by Mark Lamarr about the late Roy Orbison. How can it be twenty years since he died? Apart from anything else, that means The Travellin' Wilburys are even older! G'night. (At — yawn — 01:32 or so.)
Good morning, sunshine
Though it's also a bit frosty out there (at 08:53) and there's a few minutes to go before I can phone Dr Fang for an appointment.2 I shall use the time well: conducting what you might call thermal tolerance testing on the exposed inner surface of the affected molar. Let's see... what could I use? How about the usual bowl of quick-setting cardboard cement (aka cereal) with cold milk and the usual cuppa tea at a greater average level of thermal agitation. That should do the trick. (It did; a large chunk of the filling has also now taken its leave — <Sigh>)
Oh, it all makes work for the (non-)working man to do! (I was quite tempted by, but finally resisted, a Flanders and Swann collection during my recent burst of semi-profligacy in the run-up to the Xmas spasm of insensate consumption.)
Perfectionism as a bad habit? Hmmm.
One dab of super glue later... dept.
It's amazing what they can do these days, isn't it? Five minutes, in and out (rather more than the appalling sex scene I've just caught from "Snobs" by Julian Fellowes) and the advice to refrain from chewing for ten minutes... Have a good Christmas, Mr Mounce. Right. What's next? Finish your breakfast.
Good grief! It's 15:10 and the hunter is newly home from the hills, not to mention a lunch cooked by the elves of Brambridge3 and a small but satisfactory little expotition into town, where I noted my chum Bob cycling across the bridge over the Southampton railway while I went with the flow t'other way. Heck, I've even cleaned the car windows before putting it away. I shall now wrap myself around a reviving cuppa before assessing the spoils.
Is this to be a new hobby?... dept.
I mentioned (here) my delight at finding a dusty old 1949 reprint of The complete short stories of 'Saki' not least because it included a new story only discovered three years earlier. Well, the Christmas issue of Book and Magazine Collector contains news of another such find. I think I'll email the editor. Funnily enough, the facing page also mentions an enormous "going rate" for the Tolkien paperback (cover illustration by the late Pauline Baynes) that I passed along to number #3 niece, but which she had nicked, although she and her Mum managed to replace it (unnecessarily, but I never say "No" to a free book!) as related here.
The slight glare from the cover of "Perfumes" is from the flash. Scanning it on the flatbed was hopeless because the words "The Guide" disappeared, so back to the digital SLR. There's generally more than one way to skin any given cat. Should you be thinking "Why 'Perfumes'?" then you missed the two reviews I noted this year. (Here and here.) Besides, the nice young lady in Borders reduced it to half-price, regardless of the £3 off sticker. Hard to argue with that.
The sound of success... dept.
Although putting XP's SP3 on both the Windows PCs appeared to restore their integrated sound card function, using either has been a fraught process. However, now that I've just re-plumbed the external USB "Creative" soundblaster box (that I originally used to overcome the shortcomings of my earlier Shuttle PC), I made my first successful digital recording from minidisc to mp3 (via an intermediate .wav file). I've now also added a LAME encoder to the system so I no longer need to use the intermediate .wav stage. Yet to be solved is the problem of getting analogue audio from the remaining set of cassettes into the same mp3 end result — I suppose it's not beyond the realm of possibility that the soundblaster encodes analogue to digital on the fly, but I have no immediate need to try this route.
Brain dead software. Now here's a funny thing. Since the system has become aware (as it were) of the presence of the USB soundblaster, something called the "IDT Audio Control Panel" has taken up residence on the System Tray. It offers me two choices on a dropdown under "Devices": IDT Audio 1, and "SB Audigy 2 NX". Of course, if I'm foolish enough to select the latter, I get the good old triple whammy and the little weasel promptly reloads itself.
What a dismal pyramid of ineptitude. Such good programmers these days.