2009 — 9 January: Friday
It's five months since we saw Peter's snowmen in the front garden. The temperature outside now makes tonight's picture an easy choice:
Christa and Peter in some rare snow, 1986 or 1987
G'night.
"I can see clearly now"... dept.
Possibly because the sun is up. It's 08:42 and I've been sun-like for (gosh!) over an hour. Having popped the next pill I saw no point in returning to Morpheus and his arms, so I made a cuppa, admired the amazing mains hum I now enjoy from the FM tuner downstairs (concluding yet again that it really is time to retire this oldest relic from 1981) and then noted the disappearance of the NPR satellite feed. Time for some basic maintenance on the downstairs system, methinks. Breakfast and some warm clothes first, though, as it looks distinctly freezing out there.
Mustn't forget the optician's appointment at noon. They actually rang yesterday, just as I was leaving the house, to confirm the meeting I'd only arranged the day before.
What's next, Mrs Landingham?
Well now, it's still minus 5C outside with ice visible on the road. So, at 10:28 (after a second cuppa) it seems I now have two little projects to investigate (apart from breakfast):
- Windows Home Server
Is starting to look like a viable solution (versus, possibly, an HP EX487) to rationalise and simplify the (frankly outrageous) jigsaw of PC external hard drives I currently use for backup. I have given up on the Slug for reasons of space and speed. Ideally I would like to install either WHS or (I suppose) a Linux-based solution on the spare server I recently got back from Junior, though I will first have to equip it with lots more hard drive space as he cannibalised it thoroughly before returning it... - Rejigging the downstairs A/V system
I fear it begins to look as if my venerable Echostar satellite receiver has finally gone to meet its maker. Theoretically, it should be possible to persuade the Humax Hi-Def satellite box to accept the second dish LNB input and thus restore digital NPR radio without loss of the BBC HD channel. While I'm at it, the usability of the current plumbing of the second minidisc recorder and the little Ubuntu HP MPC I currently use for MP3 playing downstairs could also be improved. It turned out to be relatively unsmart to use the MD machine as a switching hub between NPR and digital terrestrial UK radio (though it seemed a good idea at the time).
It all makes work for the (non)working man to do. Now, where did I put my glasses? Nearly time to go see a man about some specs (unless the eyes have remained up to spec.). I shall walk — the fresh air will help clear the cobwebs. Then a spot of lunch, and the afternoon world will be my little oyster.
That chap Murphy...
... will get you every time. I get back from Mr Eye to find one of those "we called but you were out so we're holding your parcels hostage" cards from Mr Postie. So that's my next walk. (It's still icy and slippery on the pavements though, I suppose, after the necessary two hours has elapsed I could venture out in the car.) Walking is good, of course, but when carried out on behalf of domestic tasks you have to admit it can be rather time-consuming.
Mr Eye's "Parthian shot", by the way, was to tell me he remembered Christa as a "nice lady". As I said to him, that's why I married her! And my vision prescription has altered too little to make it worth changing my present lenses. So, just a £35 fee, please. (It will be free at age 60.) My corrected vision remains "two lines better than what Americans call '20/20' vision" which is, apparently, near the theoretical resolution limit of the retina.1 Fluid pressure within my eyeballs remains low, too, and he said he could see all the corpuscles racing around. (So his eyesight's pretty good, too!)
Unthank you, Mr Postie...
For the pair of Rachel Unthank CDs and a couple of DVDs: one with John Cusack apparently revisiting his rôle from Grosse Pointe Blank a decade ago, and the other being the new one from the Coen brothers.
And thank you, Peter, for the cuppa. Time (18:25) for a bite to eat.
Right! It's 23:50 and the excellent Charlie Gillet is on BBC Radio 3 with some of his world music. Meanwhile, I've "simplified" the A/V stack (again!) and its corresponding diagram. AWOL for the time being are an NPR feed (both here in the study and downstairs) and the BBC HD channel. However, I've just been checking the NPR range of podcasts and have already downloaded a bunch of stuff I want to hear on to the iMac and thence to my iPod, including some material that doesn't actually make it as far as the NPR Worldwide satellite schedule but which looks interesting. So I suspect the loss of the Echostar satellite box (which was permanently tuned to NPR Worldwide in any case) will be bearable.
As for the BBC HD, I may yet venture back into the world of Freesat but restrict myself to standard definition. I'd get all the SD TV and radio, plus the EPG. The present Humax HD satellite receiver — which pre-dates the launch of Freesat by nearly two years — is generally tuned to the HD channel, which is after all precisely what I bought it for when the Beeb launched HD as a one-year experiment. But I actually find I watch it very little, so (again) the "loss" is bearable. Somehow, in the last year, I find music (an early, major, interest) has grown in importance again, and video has rather taken a back seat. I'm perfectly content with my library of DVDs, and the occasional "QI" or similar.
I haven't yet pinpointed the reason for the mains hum (which was the bane of my audio life back in the days of moving coil phono pre-amplification) but I've also simplified the interconnections to the second MD box and live in hope.