2011 — 14 September: Wednesday
As I reached for the bedside light this morning1 I was reminded (by the silent pair of alarm clocks) of that old schoolboy gag: "If Mum doesn't come in and wake me soon, I'm going to be late for school." The radio alarm clicked on just as the visual purple was being photobleached.
Breakfast, a cuppa, a packed lunch, and a car service, in roughly that order, are the order of the coming day. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got things to do and places to be...
To my horror...
... I learned that somebody has nicked the two 'baby' gorillas, leaving only the monster one (we also donated) to watch the kids' TV in the Toyota waiting area. Not that I waited there.
Instead, I strolled gently into Shirley, and right up and down the High Street looking (in vain) for a bookshop. Enough time having elapsed, I then called on my chum Bob to blag a coffee and a biccy while he finished his ablutions, and we then chatted while I showed him how to clone a DVD he'd just cut from files on his camcorder. Mr Toyota then rang me, after almost exactly four hours to the minute, and I walked back to pay, and discuss Round #2, which is the (quite costly) new waterpump that will be fitted next Tuesday — though not at 07:00 this time.
It was a gloriously sunny, fresh autumn morning though the clouds are now gathering with damp intentions, it seems. I'm in need of my packed lunch and a cuppa!
Each of my DVDs...
... and Blu-rays (and, now, a goodly subset of my CDs [but that's another story]) has been painstakingly assigned an alphanumeric code.2 The 'alpha' identifies which CaseLogic folder the disc is in; the 'numeric' identifies the pigeonhole within that folder. All perfectly simple, but necessary if I ever want to be able to find a specific title in less elapsed time than it takes to watch or listen to the damned things.
My chum Brian's Parthian shot earlier this afternoon, before departing temporarily in his mobile home, consisted of two ASCII files that are a pretty good demo of his Python scripting skills. File #1 lists the 2,940 (out of 3,448) fuzzy matches between my master file of videos and the XML data output by DVD Profiler of my videos. Currently, the latter is deficient; it lacks these alphanumeric codes. And if I'm ever to be able to use it as the new master file for generating my 'molehole' lists — that being my cunning plan — this minor deficiency has to be fixed. Preferably in a way that avoids me having to key in 3,448 four-character codes, one by bl***y one.
Providing I can (as he so delicately puts it) "wade through" and amend, where needed, these 2,940 items, and add to File #2 the 500 or so alphanumeric codes that his 50 lines of Python failed to find a match for, he can then take back the amended files and automagically (with a piece of code he's not yet written [shades of Deep Thought]) produce a final master XML file, with location data added. I will then be able to re-import the XML back into the Profiler. Job done.
You may think, gentle reader, that this is a complete sad waste of time. But only consider Big Bro's 70,000 slides of aircraft and gawd-knows-how-many postage stamps before you scoff.