2010 — 28 October: Thursday
Back again1 just before 01:00 and ready for sleep. We watched "The Time Traveler's Wife" and "Crossing Over". Both are excellent films of their respective genres, and nicely twisty.
G'night.
"Here..."
... as the earwig remarked as he fell off the cliff "we go again". It's 08:33, not actually raining, not actually freezing, and the sun has just begun to show above a thick bank of dark clouds. Must be a new day. Having been described, long ago, as a nation of shopkeepers is it any surprise we have more per-capita spending than any other country? Apparently "Mom and Pop" are busily stomping their global footprint all over the long tail. (Source.)
No doubt I shall be doing my bit to help. I recall that this attractive young lady...
... from one of Alan Moore's tales of Hooplife2 spent an adventurous day shopping. And some people still wonder why I like graphic novels and comics that are "just for kids"! (Mind you, I still wonder why JPEG compression is so poor at rendering blocks of pure red without mosquito noise. Recall my earlier misadventures with the cover of "Mister X".)
Today's lunch date — unless he forgets! — is with my unwageless decreased leisure citizen chum Len. Meanwhile, on with the show. It's 10:18 and clouding over ominously. I ought to swing by the care home at some point, too. Dear Mama will be running low on choccies by now. She's a woman of expensive tastes :-)
Coming unstuck
My last attempt to get hold of a DVD of the nice little thriller "The Stickup" ganged aft agley (as it were) back in December 2008. Today, Mr Postie dropped off a PAL release (albeit in the horrid 4:3 aspect ratio). Amusingly, it proudly describes itself thus...
... which is a bit of a smack in the teeth for our North American cousins. It was accompanied by "An American Affair" — yet another take on the Kennedy assassination. I still think the best humour ever to come out of that sad event was the 1992 "Seinfeld" episode, The Boyfriend. (More here.)
Getting peckish... it's 12:05 and I'm sure I can hear a distant rumbling. He's just arrived.
Later that day
Lunch lunched, Len sent on his way with "Planet 51" to watch, a copy of "Starman" ordered on Blu-ray (along with last night's "Time Traveler's Wife"), dear Mama visited for happy hour (more like happy minute, sixty times repeated), and last week's "HIGNFY" caught up with via the new USB memory stick and the Oppo Blu-ray's capabilities (and, of course, Mike's propensity to record such stuff).
Now (at 18:13 or so) I shall think about an evening meal/snack, and then search out that expensive pair of phono interconnects to get ready for hooking up the tiny new Chinese Class D digital mini-amp Brian is bringing over for me to try. I want to see if it will drive3 my venerable PW Belt electrostatic headphones. If so, there's my PC sound solved. I'm always amazed at just how good these headphones sound.
[Pause] Wow!
My first "real" amp was a mere 11 watts Sony TA-88. This one is physically much smaller, and of about the same output power, but the sound quality driving the headphones (they need an amplified — that is, loudspeaker level — input signal from which to derive the high voltage needed to operate them) is staggeringly good. It's seriously cute, too. Thanks, Brian!
Time for tea and a film, methinks.