2009 — 21 January: Wednesday
Suddenly it seems to be 01:07 or so. What on earth have I been doing, apart from trading insults with my chum in NZ? And helping with an item or two of webmastery for another ex-colleague? And chatting to Mike about his possible plans to refurbish his CRT projection system? And chilling down the rest of the crockpot? And avoiding TV 'cos it all looked like total rubbish?
Oh well. Time for the final meds of the day, and tonight's picture of Christa:
Christa in Old Windsor, I'm guessing, in 1977
What a beautiful smile!
I remain cautiously optimistic, as I seem better able to bend the afflicted finger than 24 hours ago. Not that I want to! G'night.
It's a new day...
Indeed, the sun is shining brightly on the frosty roof. Since the meds have been down for 75 minutes I shall permit myself a spot of breakfast (it's now 09:45) and ponder my next activity. The finger is slightly less inflamed, and slightly less painful, which makes its use slightly easier. I still find it helpful to run cold water over it from time to time, and I still cannot use it when typing at the keyboard.
Back from a mini-adventure and organic produce shopping expotition that also took in a medieval church near Hythe, and a wager (I won) on the distance between the new "Ikea" store and what's left of the recently-razed "Ocean Village". Shovelled in a spot of lunch and must now leave a margin before the next meds. I must say, Life doesn't really break up conveniently into the six-hour intervals assumed and/or mandated by BigPharma — or not the way I live it. Still, it made a pleasant break in pleasant weather, another view of the Hythe railway pier to remember, very clear views across Solent water, and even sight of the vessel that lost all the timber it was carrying a couple of days ago. More listing than listless.
Speaking of listing, I have some acquisitions to mention. I also spent some time earlier this morning reading the Sony BDPS350 Blu-Ray player manual very carefully to see if there is any sign of wiggle room for a higher-definition component output and/or digital standard-definition hdmi output to feed to my video scaler in the continued absence of an hdcp-compliant screen here at Technology Towers. There really doesn't seem to be. But, are these devices now too complex for Joe Six-pack...?
Audio resolutions, minus six footnotes!
I defy anyone to state, with confidence, that this allows me to deduce that I would get a digital video signal via hdmi but without the execrable hdcp "protection" (or "crap" as I prefer to think of it), even after reading the footnote several times. hdcp was never intended to protect standard definition content — the venal and brain-dead morons rely on their content scrambling system (not the same "CSS" Geoff!) to do that. So far, however, the only device I've found that delivers standard and higher than standard definition digitally via hdmi without imposing hdcp is my Humax Hi-Def satellite receiver, so I shall be hanging on to that for a while yet.
In case you missed it, you can click on this table to see the even more horrendous saga of audio output signals...
The clench connection
More eye-watering stuff from the Guardian. I don't (I couldn't) make this stuff up — I just link to it. Definitely time for another cuppa. It's 17:06 and I've just had a lovely phone chat with one of dear Mama's helpful ex-neighbours. Thanks, Wendy!
My friend Mike's friend HAL...
Recall I was chatting to Mike about his tentative plans to refurbish his Sony G70 CRT projection TV system? He has opened up the box to see what he'll be contending with:
It's going to be an interesting adventure. By the way, I found an interesting piece about anamorphic lens systems for digital TV projectors1 here. (It isn't linked from anywhere else on the website, which is an unusually frank admission from a webmaster, methinks.)
Acquisitional mania update...
To exist is to seek entertainment and stimulation. I have been lax so far this year in noting incoming items, what with tooth-ache, finger-ache, A/V system-ache and website-ache (not that this last should be visible to my casual browser). So here, in compact form, is a (clickable) catch-up:
