2009 — 28 February: Saturday
Having seen off the last couple of episodes of Weeds, season #3, and then gone on to enjoy a nice little movie called Juno, (thanks, Gill!) I shall dish the dos, sink a final cuppa, and head for bed. It's already 00:46 somehow.
Tonight's picture of Christa shows her in the Old Windsor living room with a very young Peter:
Christa and Peter in the Old Windsor living room
G'night... at what turned out to be about 03:00 as I decided to remind myself of Ellen Page's equally amazing performance in Hard candy. Yawn!
So much for the sun, sunshine!
It's 08:47 and looking very grey so far this morning. But I now have about ten daffodils in flower (though, oddly, not the one I thought would be the first).
A Blu-ray of sunshine?
Being a blithe spirit (creature of impulse) I've just bought (and will pick up in a couple of hours) a Pioneer Blu-ray player whose standard definition DVD circuitry will by then have been hacked1 to be multiregion. I've also ordered the Humax HD Freesat PVR. And that, I suspect, will be that for a while. I shall now start getting used to the taste of bread and water. (Why the profligacy? Well, since you cannot take it with you, and nor do you know what the future holds, why not enjoy things while you can?)
Christa and I both derived a lot of pleasure over many years from our increasingly more-sophisticated home cinema systems. I last performed a major system "refresh" back in 1998 when my tiny holding of IBM shares had just about clawed its way back up to what I'd spent on them fifteen years earlier. Things that made me happy always tended to make Christa happy (and the reverse was absolutely true, too).
In later news...
The new box is in place, and performs perfectly on standard definition NTSC and PAL material. I've a sneaking suspicion I can tie it and the display screen quite tightly together for control purposes, but investigation will have to wait a while. I'm not very impressed with the speed of initialising when loading a new disc (thank you, Java!) but otherwise things are very smooth, sleek and quiet. There's even a touch-sensitive eject area rather than a button to push. The obligatory set of aircraft landing lights (I expect — I certainly hope — I'll be able to tame some of these). When did bright blue LEDs become de rigeur I wonder. Must have missed the memo.
So, all that remains is the Freesat HD PVR. I've updated the system diagram accordingly. I've daisy-chained the existing HD satellite box through the two PVRs so I can get an RGB video signal out of it, alongside perfectly satisfactory optical digital. For some reason (that Life is too short to explore) the digital audio delivered via its hdmi output sends the Onkyo box into repetitive "dunno what to do now, boss" mode, causing the sound to mute about once every two seconds for about a second. Hence the relegation to such a lowly position in the system. I shall simply use the box as a satellite radio source, and may even re-instate the NPR feed off the second dish.
Now it's just about time (16:26) I wasn't up here as it's jolly nearly time I was out over there instead. Don't know what the planned film is, but I have a sneaking suspicion it may be "Hancock".