2011 — 25 October: Tuesday
I spent the last part of yesterday evening1 watching the 3rd Jane Mercer memorial lecture. It was given by the positively polymathic Andy Finney...
... who in earlier times introduced me to a great deal of fine rock music during his early 1970s BBC Radio programme "Fresh Garbage". The topic was the "Rise, fall and restoration of an interactive masterwork" or, in other words, the BBC Domesday Project. That project was delivered (of course) via LaserDisc. (More info here.)
G'night.
Remember those files...
... I picked up from Len on my way back from the care-home yesterday? They are 720p videos and play back perfectly on the 60" plasma via the hdmi output of my dinky little Asus Transformer Tablet PC. Not only with the built-in video player app but also even with the QuickPic app I use for displaying all my DVD cover artwork. I admit 720 pixels isn't quite as high a resolution as the 1080 pixels that I'm used to, and that I use for the artwork JPEG files, but it still looks mighty fine. Very cool indeed.
It would, of course, be even cooler were the image on the 60" screen not clipped2 slightly — top and bottom — by the time it's crawled all the way up that hdmi lead...
... and there are probably some churls around who would argue that using a portable Android PC on a 60" screen doesn't do much for my street cred in having a portable device in the first place. But that's what toys are for, surely?
It's 09:48 and, if it continues to brighten up3 at this rate I may yet head down into Soton for a gentle mooch around. I seem to have run out of things to read or watch or listen to. Odd, that.
I suppose I could always fire up BBC1 (I hope, in hi-def) for a cool look at ice tomorrow evening. And before that, who could resist this? Though, as ever, dear Mama happily disposed of my collection.
Went the day well?
All I can say at this point is the day has more or less got away from me. It's 18:53 and the ADSL modem has just rebooted as I typed. I trotted down to Soton in between showers and got a fresh supply of dear Mama's chocs plus a couple of books and DVDs. I didn't actually get soaked until crossing back from the bungalow with a cuppa in my tum and a dead hard drive clutched under my little jacket to see if I can do anything with it. Clearing the cat hair will be the first task. Now I'm prepping an evening meal and have also laid a precautionary towel along Peter's windowsill as I don't want further incoming rain wicking up his nice curtains.
By the way, Christa, how come he has the nicest curtains in the house? He doesn't even live here any more :-)
I do sometimes get...
... there in the end. Back when I was a mere 52-year-old I wrote to Carol, in part:
The week off (which was delightful) left me with the clear impression that retirement can barely come soon enough to suit us both, life being far more usefully employed to some purpose other than employment. Yes, we got to the Tate Modern (though it was largely bereft of anything worth seeing, beyond one large Epstein piece, as they were upheaving most of their galleries) and yes, we managed to rendezvous with Belleville, though we did rather wonder on the way home why, at times, we'd been the only members of the audience laughing out loud at several points. We even endured a noisy vampires versus werewolves romp for the sake of the younger generation.
The latter film, of course, was "Underworld" with Kate Beckinsale. Whereas "Belleville" was a reference to Sylvain Chomet's earlier film.
I was vaguely keeping an eye out for the new one since (among other things) my chum Tom recommended it highly. And as part of the "2 for £10" deal in HMV, it was not a difficult decision. I'd not heard of "Bella" but the premise looked interesting.
As for the books, when I spotted "Pride and Prejudice" as a graphic novel (from the same publishing team that did "The Master and Margarita") I admit my first thought was "You've got to be kidding" but then, I thought, "Well, why not?" It's delightful. And I've long been keen on the work, very varied, of Alan Moore. A recent purchase being the not entirely uncontroversial "Lost Girls" co-written with the lady he married a year later.