2009 — 5 April: Sunday
Tonight's picture? Taken (down in the New Forest) back in 1987 during the invasion of the NZ mob:
New Forest, New Zealand mob, 1987
I wonder if they remember that trip? It included their first experience of a traffic jam! G'night.
A nice, sunny start...
... with time in hand (it's 08:56) to prepare a packed lunch even if that be consumed back here at the ranch. There is a set of video tests to be performed, it seems, before Mike makes his own "Oppo purchase" decision, and that will be some of the afternoon infotainment after a trot around the New Forest.
I note that Annabel Jankel (co-creator of "Max Headroom") is now directing a film version of David Almond's novel Skellig. And Kelly Macdonald ("The girl in the café" inter alia) is in it. That will be one to watch out for. (Source.)
Some while back, I mentioned the "curious lacunae of astonishing ignorance" I'd been teased about (by a chap who's having difficulty with his Freeview device, but we'll let that pass as it seems many thousands are in the same boat on that one). Turns out I've just uncovered another gaping hole in my cultural coverage. I not only have no books by, but was completely unaware of, the world's "No. 1 bestseller". (Source.)
Hangs head in shame. I'm going out... I may be some time!
That successfully concludes...
... the exercise and video assessment part of the day, at 14:38 or so. We were joined, halfway round our route, by our erstwhile walking companion Bob who managed to catch us up on his new electric bicycle. Very quiet mover. And I rather think Mike will now be ordering his own "Oppo" 983H DVD player before the day is too much older. It proved to do a very creditable job on cleaning up interlacing artefacts on two of the three DVD obstacle courses he brought over — a better job, in fact, than my Pioneer Blu-ray player at 50% higher price. However, nothing in my A/V stack could tackle the dreadful artefacts on "Mr Holland's Opus". As he said: garbage in, garbage out.
I played him the "Diva" scene from Fifth Element to give him a taste of the quality of that HD transfer, too. I've seen mixed reviews online, but I can see and hear nothing amiss.
Hark!
Can you hear a thorough refreshing of the contents of the "Audio" section of my little web site? Time (18:51) for the next bites to eat, methinks. Rumble, rumble. It's still lovely and sunny, by the way. Pity those poor Antipodean rellies of mine, moving (from today, I believe) onto Winter Time — tee-hee. Or perhaps that's just the Australians?
Right! That's enough computery stuff for a (pardon the pun) bit. It's 21:07, and I shall retreat downstairs to tinker with a different set of pixels. It's a jolly good job I'm easily amused, I guess. Plus, I've got to do the dishes.
In my next Life...
... I think I shall insist on a Gigabit network for my in-house network. Ho-hum. It's 23:17, another Battlestar Galactica episode has been enjoyed, and the Linux PC is reloading its little RhythmBox database with the fruits of some of my recent MP3 labours. Sadly, I couldn't figure out how to (intelligently) append just the recently added MP3s, so I cleared out the library1 and let it loose on the whole lot (again). Hence my comment on the wish for a faster network.