2010 — 16 May: Sunday
After midnight again. An evening with a couple of technical glitches. The audio dropout rate on my Freeview TV/radio PVR box1 irritated me to the point that I've now switched over to the Freesat box, tuned that to the radio, and routed that signal upstairs instead...
Then there was the mystery of the "Universal" Blu-ray pause behaviour on "Pride & Prej". After a minute or so, the Oppo screen saver kicked in (fair enough) but when I was next downstairs there was a socking great full screen "Universal" studios screen that was morphing around as a screen saver. Also fair enough, I suppose, though I should have been suspicious as it had somehow over-ridden the default Oppo player's screen saver. No matter; press "Play" to resume watching. Hang on, nothing's happening. Yep, the Oppo is now frozen, responding only to the "Stop" button. OK. Press "Stop". Press "Play" to resume at the point the disc was originally paused ('cos the Oppo's clever at doing that).
Pause. What's happening? It's repeating the Blu-ray startup process, soup to nuts, reloading the BD content into RAM, and starting up with no memory whatsoever of the point I'd reached in my film. Not so clever after all. That's the great thing about programmable user interfaces designed and programmed by idiots — they're idiotic. Still, Bob Harris is playing some great music, as usual, and I've only barked my shins a couple of times so far moving heavy cardboard boxes full of books around an already over-crowded living room.
What I need, Christa, is more lebensraum. Perhaps I should go and invade2 Poland :-)
Later, but still "yesterday"
Now (01:50) I learn that Peter's g/f is going to cook dinner for Peter and me — dammit, I suppose that means I'm going to have to clean the kitchen up a bit. Not to mention liberate some space on the dining room table (80% of which is currently invisible under a tottering set of piles of books). But who knows? I may even find the bunch of Allen keys I've stupidly misplaced.
Oh, and in downloading and installing Chrome on the iMac I've just discovered that it's no longer possible to reposition items on the Dock. Or if it is, it's certainly no longer a drag'n'drop process. A very unhandy improvement. Grrr. Yawn. G'night.
Rather grey...
... but still not raining, on this volcanic ashen morning. It's 09:32 and I expect the effect of the fresh cuppa to kick in any minute now. Otherwise, I shall have to tune to a talk radio channel. Or comment on this item by David Mitchell (the comments are as interesting as the original piece). Humour in these PC times is very tricky.
Asking v guessing
Also intriguing. The etiquette of saying "No", heh? A lesson I must have missed in school...
... just say no. That may have been a useless mantra in the war on drugs, but in the war on relatives who want to stay for a fortnight, or colleagues trying to get you to do their work, the manners guru Emily Post's formulation — "I'm afraid that won't be possible" — remains the gold standard. Excuses merely invite negotiation.
Now, as a grumpy old man... :-)
i(no)Pad
I think "expensive toy" is my verdict, here. Soldered memory chips rather than a replaceable SSD drive? Even Mr Schofield spots the downside of that design decision: This is a pity because having an SSD would make it feasible ... to rescue the user's valuable data and access it from a different computer. You think? (More — a lot more — here.)
Cerys-ly good musical taste
I'm delighted to hear this lady back on BBC 6Music. How dare BBC (mis)management even think, however
fleetingly, of closing the channel? Tw*ts!
(Complain here, remember.
One week left.)
The tum is...
... topped up, the rain that I've noticed from time to time seems to be clearing away, and it's time (14:13) to pack my next carton of books. I'm interweaving this task with some web page building, having embarked on a masochistic (pointless-to-anyone-else, probably) exercise encompassing all that laboriously-scanned DVD artwork. It's not going back outside the firewall (I learned that bandwidth-consuming lesson the hard way) but it is going to become a bit more sophisticated in presentation and structure. It's a hobby, after all, and chaps need hobbies.
Thirsty work. Still, we're off on a "hunt the hi-def video projector" adventure up in Newbury tomorrow. Should be fascinating. Now it's jolly nearly time for the excellent Jarvis... It must (therefore) also be jolly nearly time for a tea-break.
I was amused (it doesn't take much) by Jeremy Hardy's latest contribution to the BBC News Quiz this week. Having some years ago given us the memorable "Keeping your passion porridge in your love grenades!" this time he found a new use for a nice drink:
In the wake of a story about temporarily sterilising chaps by blasting their knackers with ultrasound (that seemed to be the gist of it) he opined that "other things that depress a man's sperm count include heat, caffeine, and alcohol... so you can always dip your todger in an Irish coffee before sex".
Just (16:50) been called to say my visitors are running about 30 minutes later than planned (which, of course, makes them earlier than expected). I should have a fine appetite by the time they arrive...
... which was dealt with by a Thai chicken meal in Soton, followed after the downpour by a flurry of cake baking back here at the ranch. The concept of a cooker old enough to have a pilot light that is constantly on was sufficiently alien that a dangerous number of items had been left on the top of the beast, but disaster was politely averted. (Actually, that cooker is older than either of them, and needs to be treated with respect!) Christa and I had been vaguely intending to "do something" about it, but you know how these things are. There's nearly always something more enticing to do than replace a cooker that works.
At least they remembered to take the sewing machine with them this time, and Peter's ski stuff is now back up in the loft rather than cluttering up his room. Meanwhile, I have the first car load of book-filled cartons ready to transport to the storage place. But before that, we've the video expedition. I'm exhausted!