2009 — 11 September: Friday
Having gained an hour or so by virtue of our truncated evening out, I've been spending the time catching up on some accumulated CD ripping. Of course, I now have to be extra careful about the tagging so as not to damage all Junior's good "clean up" work on that. But it's just gone midnight and the eyes are more than somewhat droopy. Time for tonight's picture of Christa, an utterly amazing 22 months since she died, and then for some of that sleep stuff:
Christa and Peter, mid-1980 in Old Windsor
G'night.
About bloody time too... dept.
Fifty five years too late, the Prime Minister has issued an official apology on behalf of our stinky guvmint to Alan Turing. Good! I idly wonder whether the guvmint — any guvmint, anywhere — would ever pass the Turing test. Somehow, I doubt it. Time (08:08) for a celebratory cuppa.
I note, somewhat acidly, that the BBC TV and radio schedule portals also behave in vastly unimproved ways since yesterday's browser upgrade or the BBC's unfortunate decision to change what was actually pretty sensible behaviour. "If it ain't broke, break it" seems to be the guiding principle. I don't want to be forced to the underlying site; I just want to be able to skim the summary of the schedule. And why select BBC (TV) 3 as the default? I'm not yet that brain-dead. (If I were, I wouldn't realise, I guess.) I see the behaviour is just as fractured under Opera, and also won't allow me to get rid of the (many) bits I don't want cluttering up the page. So I'm guessing the BBC web team are the ones who've had a collective rush of blood to the head.
Bah, humbug.
Equanimity is restored by this "trenchant" portrait of Bebe Neuwirth. Better get me some breakfast, I guess. Now (10:15) it's time to do something about restocking the ever barer food shelves. Need a new "Radio Times" too. And petrol. Must remember to try to avoid Southampton, however, for the duration of the unblessed Boat Show. It's still nice and sunny out there, but a little cooler.
Next, Mrs Landingham?
Well, I've corralled a few dust bunnies, made sure I've opened some windows, sorted out a clean cup or two (saucers? don't make me laugh), returned the on-loan speaker cable, confirmed that the new ones are in, dug out a spare S-Video1 cable, filled the tank, stocked the fridge, readied the next crockpot, eaten a healthy chicken salad lunch, cleaned the car's bits of glass. I guess I'm just about ready to host another audio demo. One lump or two, Eileen? How about you, Roger? (Actually they neither of them take sugar, which is just as well as Big Bro's recent visit left my sugar sack perilously near empty.)
The Joytech (4x RGB SCART + optical digital) switcher has found a new home. Excellent. I'll get him on to a big flat screen yet. It's 16:54, still bright, and the barometer is almost head-achingly high.
Next time I notice, which is basically as I digest the evening meal to the unstrains of a 5.1 surround mix of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon", somehow it's become 20:26 and it's time to nip round drawing curtains and what have you. I have also forgiven the subwoofer. But I find it harder to forgive this deeply stupid hdmi/hdcp handshaking protocol. Just because I switch off the plasma screen is really not sufficient reason to mute the sound playing from the SACD once every two seconds for nearly ten seconds. A pox on Hollywood studio execs and their uncute mixture of greed and paranoia.
The coolest thing...
... I've seen so far today:
And on a link from the Torygraph, too. Made me guffaw.