2009 — 29 September: Tuesday
Minor miracles, Christa. It's a few minutes past midnight and, finally, I am able to change the mp3 I'm listening to from up here in the study — wirelessly — on the natty little "Duet" controller which talks to the "receiver" downstairs, which... oops, it's all just gone horribly pear-shaped. Dropouts, re-buffering, loss of menu, apparently zero wireless signal strength. Hell's bells. An hour later, and that's now more than enough grappling with crappy software for one evening. I installed what's laughingly called the control software on the iMac. Next try will be to do the same thing on a Windows box. Then, no doubt, a Linux box. This is, after all, not the first time I've had fun with Logitech software.
What's the tag Junior has on his blog? Inspiration? Inspiration is the momentary cessation of stupidity. Well, it's 01:19 and I'm fresh out of inspiration. So to tonight's picture of Christa:
I deduce it shows her in Nebraska back in 1963 or 1964 during her High School exchange year. I also have a couple of pictures of her looking uneasy in what I assume was her Prom dress...
G'night.
Skinning cats
I don't think it was Confucius who asserted there was a multiplicity of ways of defurring felines, but it's occurred to me (overnight, as it were) that it may be both simpler, and a good idea, to relocate my wireless router a little more centrally.1 I can also relocate the Logitech "receiver" box to help them knock their heads together and, with luck, not leave a tangle of audio signal cabling to trip over (or forget the function of). That can all go on the back burner, however. The sun is shining, it's 09:11 already, and valuable fresh air walking time is about to start getting eaten up. (I also need to eat, and pack a lunch. And get dressed.)
Although it's now (14:58) clouding over somewhat we squeezed in a 6.6 mile ramble around Compton (both sides of the motorway) in the most glorious sunshine. Better that than the forecast for tomorrow, it seems. We bumped into Prue King and two of her dogs at one point. Oddly, none of us seemed to be missing the office. I'm off over to Winchester for a meal and a film this evening, but will now spend some of the afternoon contemplating the chaos that is my LAN. What jolly fun.
Shock revelation!
Mounce is an idiot. The iMac does indeed have digital audio I/O, dammit. The mini headphone jack on the back is actually a combined analogue and optical digital output port, as I could have discovered at any point in the last two and a half years by the simple process of reading the tiny user guide. And the neighbouring "microphone" input is similarly also an optical digital input port. Score several to Apple (mind you it took me a while to discover the location [on the keyboard] of their disc eject button, too). Some might say too clever by half.
So, I can enjoy my mp3s in their full glory, upstairs, by passing the digital signal from the iMac into the optical input of the NAD CD player, then to the Audiolab pre-amp, then to the MD recorder, then to its DAC, and then (via my little router) up to the study. I just have to remember not to change the sample rate from its native 44.1KHz as anything higher than 48KHz is beyond the reach of the MD recorder. Simple, really. Now all I need is one more mini-jack SP/DIF optical cable so I can bring the digital radio back online, having stolen its lead for this tiny experiment. Once more unto the frequently-tapped treasure chest of leads hiding under Junior's bed...