2011 — 23 November: Wednesday
A cool start1 but a hot cuppa will counteract that soon enough. Then I shall shoot out to Mr Postie's lair, to give him a chance to miss me again while I retrieve yesterday's package. Good system.
[Pause]
Did I say "cool"? I mistyped. It's all of +3C on my front porch thermal measurement device. But the Netgear media player is safely gathered in. Next task: breakfast, plus some fresh supplies. The sun is now (09:45) shining quite promisingly.
There's some delightful...
... language buried in the final published report of the High Pay Commission. Source and snippet:
The growth in top pay has not taken place in isolation. It demonstrates the dominance of a particular form of capitalism in the UK and an elevation of the concept of the rational self-interested man to
unprecedented heights.
In this environment human nature, aspiration and endeavour are seen through a prism of self interest, or as some would put it "greed" as ever larger rewards are required to generate performance from individuals at
the top of companies whose predecessors but a generation ago did the job for a tenth of the pay.
Who would ever have thought greed would have a part to play, heh? [Pause — including a tasty lunch] Speaking of greed, this nasty little voucher...
... was tucked into my WH Smith plastic bag yesterday. Just look at that "representative" annual rate of interest. Eye-watering. And completely disgusting.
Speaking of "disgusting", it...
... seems the only certain way of getting a full 1080p digital video signal out of the new Netgear toy and (unmolested) into the 60" plasma screen is to couple the two devices directly by a single hdmi cable. Any and all my attempts so far (during quite a large chunk of the afternoon) to route the hdmi signal via my scaler, my passive hdmi switchbox, or my AudioLab pre-amp, have only delivered a cute, but featureless, bright green screen. Mr Netgear is therefore going to end up2 living directly under the screen — not that that's the end of the world — and I will route its digital audio output separately across to the pre-amp. So much for the tangle-reducing ("single cable") properties of hdmi...
It also occurred to me that (given the uses I intend for it) I don't actually have to have the thing on my network. I can simply hook up a spare pair of my large, quiet, hard drives "around the back" of the screen. Having direct USB connections from them to the media player avoids any networking issues, and since these drives would otherwise simply carry on gathering dust I see no reason not to use them.
Of course, if I'd paid the full price (about £280) for the Netgear box instead of the £26 it actually cost me, I might be a little bit cross at this point. I shall just have to see how it beds in. Brian's alternative PS3 and separate server route is always still an option, particularly as I have a spare Linux box tucked away upstairs ready to step in, as it were.
Time for tea, Mrs Landingham? It is 17:15, after all.
Longish pause
Guess how you solve every single problem in one swell foop? Just jiggle and re-seat every single hdmi cable. It's a great shame they didn't think to include little locking tags like they do with a PC's DVI socketry. But all is now sweetness and light; I'm browsing all the NAS folders I want and serving up audio files, video files, and photos like a good 'un. Just how it should be, in fact. Now all I have to do is put the entertainment end of the living room back into some semblance of order. Grab a bite (or two) to eat. And sit back to enjoy the show — assuming I can find something to watch or listen to...