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2009 — 2 April: Thursday

The merest placeholder. It's already quite late (00:51) and I need some sleep before a repeat of the walk around Selborne in a few hours. I very much enjoyed both the new Kevin Smith movie and all its associated extras. It's not going to suit maiden aunts (if that concept still exists) but then I don't have any, as far as I know. G'night.

By the way, happy birthday, Heidi!

Sun, where is thy glare?

Actually, at 08:35 it is brightening up a bit.

If my reader happens to know why a Humax 9200 should (after its re-tuning last week) now decide to make many of its recordings two to three hours long, I'd be pleased to hear the reason (and, preferably, the cure). Not my machine, I hasten to add. (That's languishing in the "retired" stack and hasn't been re-tuned or updated in over a year.) But I'd like to help out the owner of the errant box.

Old Windsor's "Straight Road" in 1980

Here they are, walking parallel to that rather too busy road — visible in the background:

Christa and Peter in Old Windsor, 1980

Meanwhile, 29 years later, it's time to fling together a packed lunch, put on my walking shoes, and hit my more local roads...

Wry smile... dept.

Back from a lovely 7.1 mile stroll/ramble (a couple of pics to follow) to be greeted by the latest IBM pension site newsletter, and a reassurance that:

As I remarked to a lady in the Tax Office shortly after Christa died, and I was sorting out my finances: "chance would be a fine thing."

Mullin(g) things over

I had to smile. Mr Postie dropped off the Chris Mullin diaries while I was gallivanting around Gilbert White territory. The cover designer chose exactly the same extract that broadened my smile when I heard it being read on BBC Radio 4:

Life on the lower ranks of the ministerial ladder is a vast cascade of all the things my
many superiors do not wish to do. Today an invitation was passed down from Nick Raynsford's
office. His Private Secretary's note was still attached. It read:

This is very low priority. I suggest we pass it to Chris Mullin.

I wrote "NO" on it and waited to see what would happen. Sure enough, within the hour, someone
was in my office, explaining that it was really of the highest importance...

Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn finally have a worthy rival, I suspect. About time too.

Giant puffball, or is it a golf ball?

Mike took this:

Sticky buds of April

I took this, with Mike's Nikon:

Bluebells, already?!

I spotted these, and Mike took the shot:

Digital audio is restored

Thank you, Brian... I now (once again) have digital audio from the Linux HP Media PC. Of course, I now have to re-arrange some of the signals going into the Onkyo. I also had a minor-league epiphany (aka brainwave) during the walk about a possible reason for, and thus a "proper" cure for, the digital audio dropouts via hdmi on the Oppo DVD player. I'm pretty sure I found, and set to "off", an hdcp flag somewhere in its setup. But, since I now finally have a fully-compliant hdcp system, I may well have caused this problem by that setting. Experimentation continues.

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