2009 — 21 August: Friday
Just out of interest, where were you on the 1st June 1974? I know where I was. Christa and I were on our first picnic together, on a day trip from High Wycombe to Oxford, which is where I took one of my very favouritest (that word needs to exist) pictures of her:
Christa in Oxford, 1st June 1974
I've suddenly realised it's a bit late — 01:35 or so — I've been absolutely absorbed in yesterday's DVD "Let the right one in". If I see a better film this year, I shall be both surprised and delighted. Quite stunning. I must ask my Swedish correspondent if she's seen it.
Young Brack's anguished enquiries about complex video home networks will have to wait, though I must say his most recent one caused me to hoot with laughter (in quite a good way). I've been tempting both him and Brian with some Popcorn — tee-hee, as Iris would say.
G'night.
As a non-working stiff...
... perhaps I forfeit a right to any opinion about the difficulty (or otherwise) of writing? But Mencken was — as so often — right, whether I'm "entitled" to agree or not:
Some writers like to make a show of their struggle, thereby demonstrating just how great their own grit is... [Flaubert] has earned his place as one of the founders of the Sturm und Drang school of literary production. The S & D school holds that there is no good writing without vast internal storm and stress.
Meanwhile, it's good to see that the Ukulele Band's Tuesday late-night Prom gets a write-up in The Times. It was great fun. Time (08:46) for my cuppa. It's been a sunny start and I'm missing the rescheduled walk, though for several valid reasons.
Boxes to unpack...
And it's only 09:25, too. Haven't even made breakfast yet.
Festina lente — Step 1: (unlikely though it sounds) read the manuals. Done. Step 2: eat the breakfast. Done. Step 3: rework the system diagram to clarify my attentions. Done. Step 4. Consider whether it's worth starting before Len arrives for lunch. Of course it is! It's only, gosh, 11:08 already. When did that happen?
Oops. I hadn't bargained on Step 5: remove the damned power amp cover, extract, and refix, the padding that had come detached from the inner surface of the "roof" and looked for all the world like the bottom of a grotesquely-misplaced circuit board, literally rattling around loose inside. Nightmare (potentially). I'm (again) grateful for having had the wit to grab myself a set of the "difficult undoing tools" before the hardware shop halfway along one of Eastleigh's two main shopping streets shut its doors for ever. British werkmannship, heh?
Now I owe both my lunch guest and my afternoon visitors a clean shirt, at least, so I shall have to put further tinkering on "hold" for a while. It's 11:58... Good (un)job I'm a retired hobbyist, heh?
Back...
... from an enjoyable lunch and natter at The Bridge with Len not quite in time to shut the skylight against the short, sharp, shower. Now drying off (at 14:17) and ruminating on the best way to avoid the bit of Hursley Road that's closed off en route to Roger and Eileen.
The only thing I know about "Baby" is she's the daughter of Joel Grey, the unforgettable MC from Cabaret. (Another good film.) Thanks, Mr. Postie:
It's 17:25. I got back a few minutes ago (just ahead of the next shower) from delivering my baby "Oppo" to its new home, seized the opportunity to tease my earnest young Islamic neighbour with the suggestions explored recently by John Harrison here, shot down his ineffectual responses in the flames of (feigned) righteous indignation,1 boiled the kettle, and can now resume work on rebuilding my shattered A/V system with a clear conscience.
Some three+ hours later...
... I've stopped playing (delightedly) with the new sound system for long enough to realise three things: 1) the Audiolab is badly let down by one of the poorest remote controls I've yet seen (minute buttons, equally minute uppercase labels, illogical layout), 2) the sound, out of my Castle Avons, is quite superb. I'm bridging the seven-channel power amplifier so I'm sending (potentially) 150W to each of the main stereo pair, and a mere 100W to everything else (centre, 2x surrounds). The subwoofer has its own amplifier and takes a line-level signal direct from the pre-amp.
3) I'm starving hungry! But have only just noticed. I've been rediscovering forgotten audio treasures among my tapes and minidiscs. It's also very pleasing to listen to the digital feed from Freeview terrestrial digital radio.
The hdmi output from the scaler feeds into the pre-amp, and its video content is handed on to the plasma screen without a trace of degradation, though I have had to set the colour space back to RGB for reasons that I cannot yet fathom. No biggie, though. For reasons I also don't understand, the Audiolab doesn't like getting an audio-only signal via hdmi. I'm pointing a tentative finger of suspicion at some aspect of the execrable hdcp protocol handshaking that goes on. Again, no biggie.
I'm a happy camper — but now I have to go and eat. It's 20:54 — this won't do at all.