2009 — 17 July: Friday
I published the original version of tonight's photo of Christa just a couple of weeks after her death... (Here it is.) It was another of my favourite 35mm slides that I later put through the LaserColor process. For this shot I specified I wanted a "fairly true" colour result — an effect that was novel at the time, but that nowadays takes only a couple of clicks with the mouse inside (for example) a Photoshop session:
Christa in Old Windsor, July/August 1974
I keep this particular variant in my line of sight just above one of the 24" screens up here in my study (and have done for many years). This was taken a month or so before we married.
That will again do for tonight — I'm still tired, and somehow it's already 00:51. G'night.
Flu-id responses — Sigh
NTFS is bad enough. Now we have NPFS to contend with. Will it (or we?) survive long enough to make it into the next edition of the OED? Still, there's a huge labour pool from which to staff the call centres.
On the topic of crap, I was amused yesterday to watch Mike take less than five minutes to decide to consign his free 1GB USB stick1 to the bin. Being a parsimoniously-inclined old curmudgeon, I haven't quite given up on mine, as I've yet to try blasting it in my Linux system. However, I note my iMac formatted, but somehow failed to erase, the automatically-installing Windows software that Cruzer have so kindly supplied on it. I get very antsy when stuff I don't know, or trust, not only seeks to install itself, but resists polite attempts to get rid of it. Some might call this malware, though I don't doubt others might prefer the term "inspired marketing".
Good god! Shades of Douglas Adams' rock star in "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" who spent a year dead "for tax purposes":
But, with rather less sensitivity, some among the late star's entourage seem at least to have thought aloud about the possibility of [Michael] Jackson fulfilling his cancelled O2 dates either as a hologram or through transmission of rehearsal footage. Billed as a tribute, this smacks more of necrophilia.
Good to see my old firm putting profit ahead of everything else (as usual). (Executive share trading. Or "insider transactions" as Yahoo kindly puts it.)
Too true... dept.
Who, or what, would you say is the main beneficiary of the American Health Care System? Not the insurance industry, surely? A plague on them!
You hafta smile... dept.
Last time I rode in a flimsy Fiat Panda, it was with Susan Bickley (who was giving me a lift hither or yon back in my IBM Millbrook days, probably in 1985). I've just got back from Lidl and Sainsbury's in Eastleigh, and smiled when I saw in the Lidl car park a military camouflage paint job on what described itself as a Fiat Panda 4x4. Certainly the dinkiest little 4x4 I've yet seen. And now Mr Postie's just dropped off yet another missive from the massive marketing arm of Toyota. Bet they want to sell me something. Bet they won't succeed. Well, not before a bite to eat — it's 13:21 and raining enough to put me off my next little trip for a while.
Said trip is complete, and the store cupboard is now slightly better equipped to withstand the buffeting of a hungry Big Bro. Whether he'll succeed in fooling me into making him a daily cooked breakfast this time (given my sister-in-law's shocked admission that he never eats one "at home") is an entirely different kettle of kippers. Meanwhile I'm in some doubt as to Junior's arrival plans. Time (16:18) will doubtless clarify the situation. Though an email or phone call wouldn't go amiss.
Dirty black(level) looks... dept.
I intend to re-instate the Oppo DVD player alongside its Blu-ray cousin until the firmware of the latter gives as good or better DVD playback than the former. After all, I've got a spare HDMI input, room on the shelf, and an abundance of leads. Unless I miss my guess (and I wouldn't bet on it) the Oppo engineers have been almost entirely focused on optimising the Blu-ray playback results — not that the DVD playback is poor, but t'ain't yet as good. Bleedin' edge again, that's me.
Perhaps I'll try out yesterday's windowsill delivery on it:
It's quite easy when you know how... reset the plasma screen to factory defaults. (I should have done this several months ago, it occurs to me.) Pop the Spears & Munsil Blu-ray test disc into the Blu-ray player (obviously). Put up the low-level PLUGE and use the Blu-ray player adjustment to optimise it. Now pop Joe Kane's Digital Video Essentials SD DVD into the Oppo DVD player (obviously). Put up the equivalent low-level PLUGE and use the DVD player adjustment to optimise it. That caters for well over 99% of my TV watching sources.
Now pop a Blu-ray film into the Blu-ray player and the SD DVD version of the same film into the DVD and grind your teeth in frustration as the five or six second enforced hdcp-handshaking pause makes it well-nigh impossible to synchronise the two discs for a decent A-B comparison. Like I said: easy. Since it's now 22:36 I reckon I've earned my next cuppa.