2011 — 19 August: Friday
Me again.1 The sun is shining, all the bills are paid, the (again forgotten) glass recycling chaps have been tinkling around, there's a tad of condensation on part of the living room window (behind my cheapskate homemade, and now-ancient, double glazing), and with any luck the Strauss tone poem Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche now thundering away will be over soon. Cuppa at hand, breakfast on the short-term horizon, an invitation to afternoon tea and biccies already sorted. Yep, there's only one fly2 in the current ointment, and I'm still deciding when to pop over and see her.
The Brahms Piano Concerto #1 (not a piece I know) sounds enticing, and is tonight's Prom.
I gave up...
... buying The Guardian when it gave up being a proper newspaper. This "science" piece is a near-perfect example. But I did like one of the comments it provoked:
It's quite sad that intellectuals of the times can come up with scenarios about solving global hunger and poverty by imagining some aliens coming to Earth and helping us, but they can't stretch that
imagination to considering the wild and insane notion of re-organising global economics from a profit-driven market economy to a dun-dun-duhhh - gift economy. We could start by not having a minority of
people controlling a majority of the worlds wealth?
I hope if these aliens do come to Earth and we ask "Great aliens, how do we solve global hunger and poverty" they retort by saying "Share a bit more."
I see the Silly Season is in full spate elsewhere, too.
Mrs Hubbard's...
... cupboard is slightly less bare. One of my nice ladies at the Waitrose deli counter actually had her last two roasted chicken legs waiting for me in her fridge rather than out on display, and offered them before I could ask. How cool is that? And the sun is still shining. It's just entered afternoon territory. What's next, Mrs Landingham?
Well, there's Christa's snail mail — the Autumn programme of goodies at "The Point". And mine — the new film by Catherine Hardwicke.
I shall see how I get on after I've transferred its "digital copy" across to my Tablet PC, just because I can. After all, I've already paid for it. (Though in general the idea of watching a film on a 10" screen at [or around] standard video definition when I can watch the same film on a 60" screen at full high-definition has about all the appeal of, well, none at all, actually.)
After a game of several halves, and a not-particularly-welcome and certainly unspecified "upgrade" to the Windows Media Player that skulks somewhere (very neglected) in the caverns around BlackBeast's innermost depths, here's Stage #1 of the process. The default size of this "digital copy" as it appears on my 24" Dell screen rendered by the Windows Media Player:
I don't think there's going to be a Stage #2. The quality of the image was pretty ropey. Not surprising when you examine the file properties...
There's nothing in the small print that gives me even a faint hope3 that the 1,074,396,421 bytes of the WMV file will both transfer to, and then be capable of playing on, my Android 3.2 Tablet PC. But (speaking of bytes) before I get stuck into them, I think it's time to wolf down some lunch. I'm starving hungry for some reason.
Later
Dear mama has been visited, and then I swung by Roger & Eileen on my way home. Avoiding what looked like a chockablock motorway, too. It's 18:37 and still sunny.
Later still
I fear I find much to agree with in this review of Red Riding Hood. Source and snippet:
It's not quite because "Red Riding Hood" is a monumental disaster, although I'm sure some reviews will make it sound that way. It's more that it's strange and stupid and half-compelling and
sometimes beautiful, with its big, bad talking wolf and Amanda Seyfried's big, blue, startled eyes and a Christmas-card medieval village inhabited by escapees from a mid-'90s prime-time soap...
But as easy as it may be to mock "Red Riding Hood" for its Renaissance Faire 90210 flavor and its yonder-is-the-castle-of-my-father dialogue — and, believe me, it's easy, and fun too!
— the movie has a certain campy integrity that gradually grew on me.
Good music, though.
Red Riding Hood may not be the stuff of nightmares, but Lucy Walker's documentary "Countdown to Zero" certainly is. I've just been watching and listening to Bruce Blair — that former Minuteman missile crewman who's been banging on about flaws in the various command and control systems since the mid-1980s. I first met him here and unless I stop watching right now I won't sleep tonight!