2012 — 28 April: Saturday
The evidence so far1 is looking distinctly unencouraging for today's planned fresh air'n'exercise expotition, despite the lure of a mid-way midday pint. The drizzle is congealing into sizeable drops.
It's been a while, but I see that the late Stephen Jay Gould's "Stinky Journalism" web site has been redesigned and renamed.
Last night's video entertainment...
... (if such it be) largely consisted of me tinkering with Handbrake's audio settings to persuade a Dolby 5.1 soundtrack on some video files to metamorphose into a stereo track so that my Netgear media player would pass it along to the Audiolab pre-amp so as to give me other than splendid silence to accompany the more than satisfactory 720p video — which upscales very nicely on to the Full HD Kuro plasma.
Eventual success, but with an apparent need to re-transcode each file (10 minutes or so per 40 minute playing time) despite merely 'changing' an MP4 to an MP4. Software, heh?
Having heard the...
... suggestion that April's rain has so far made good 7% of the UK's water deficit, it's not much of a surprise that we've decided to declare today's planned walk a non-event. I shall console myself, later this afternoon, over at the Roger & Eileen Free Tea Shoppe. Meanwhile, there's plenty of time to dry out after this morning's little dash out to the foody place. To hell with it: I'm dusting off my crockpottery skills for at least one more round of nutritious hot goodness.
I like to see...
... my toys on their toes:
I feel sure it keeps them out of mischief.
It's just gone noon and I'm finishing the last two video file transcodes and have just popped a fresh crockpot lump of goodness on to its low, slow setting for my evening meal. Meanwhile, I note that the Internet connection has fled yet again. I shall reboot the router more in hope than high expectation. I suspect I can manage without being propped up by the Web, though it does make emailing a bit tricky.
[Pause]My, that crockpot smells pretty good! It's 17:42 and rather cold, grey, and dreary out there. I'm just back from 'shooting the breeze', as it were. Brrr.
I've been listening to a range of stuff by Marianne Faithfull — her voice has been on an amazing journey over the last 40 years or so. Just amazing. It accords perfectly with my mood right now. But I now steadfastly refuse to believe how long it is since I first heard "Broken English". It's plainly impossible.
Before I forget...
... this little lump of zanyness arrived yesterday:
Tina Fey is a goddess. But play.com's ordering process leaves something to be desired. They gave me a voucher code for a discount but nowhere in which to enter it before I'd clicked on "Buy" — probably my fault for running my browser with "NoScript" but still annoying.