2012 — 14 May: Monday
Returning in the wee small hours from last night's boys' night out1 I was delighted to find that my boots were now dry. I'd left them in the gentle zephyr of the same fan heater last used to dry out the puddle beneath my hallway floorboards (and, before that, to help us cope in the aftermath of waterbed disaster #2). It wasn't even set to 'heat' but merely to blow. Good as new.
But it's now definitely time for a bit more of that sleep stuff.
Given the array...
... of stars visible a few hours ago, and the bright sunshine this morning, could our late spring / early summer be back on track, I wonder? I shall give the matter further thought when my cuppa has finished waking me up. I'm still a bit sluggish after yesterday's marathon in the mud.
Still, I have enough energy to try the two-screen setup. Watch this space.
Every time I ...
... think Google Mail's anti-spam is getting seriously good a new noisome wave of the stuff comes flooding in. Meanwhile, this update is coming from the only PC currently online in these disrupted parts. Entropy is temporarily at an annoyingly high level here in Technology Towers. Time (10:59) for a coffee, methinks.
Last time I...
... looked, I could have sworn it was sunny out there. Now it's drizzling, if not actually raining. And I could do with some lunch. However I was pleasantly surprised to discover that adding a second screen consisted, basically, of just plugging it in — though I did have to use an 'extension' hdmi dongle as the hdmi output socket on my Radeon graphics card is physically too close to the DVI-D socket to allow me to plug in my hdmi-to-DVI-D dongle directly alongside it.2
There was zero software configuration, before the mouse pointer was happily dancing between both screens. I notice that...
... the one on the right (my original, and quite venerable, Dell) can now use its full 1200 pixel depth as the Win7 bar along the bottom seems quite happy only to clutter the one on the left. Unless I make a "Castle" episode play in full screen, of course.
Entropy has been...
... pushed out of sight under a carpet and a form of normal service has now been resumed:
And my classical CDs are also a lot easier to access. [Pause] My throat is quite sore from all the dust-induced sneezing I've been doing, but it's all in a good cause. The sky out there has remained resolutely cloudy and grey, with wet stuff a-plenty dripping from a dead dog's eye (or something like that).
Mysteriously, it's already 16:03 and ERNIE #2 (of a promised 3 this month) has now shown up. As has news of yet a further reduction in my overdraft limit with the bank that Christa used. By keeping quiet for the last four years, I've allowed it to be whittled down to all of £250 (not that I have the slightest intention of ever using it, of course). But I note, with some distaste, that the interest rate — should I ever avail myself of this unwanted benison — is 18.9%, which strikes me as more than somewhat obscene.
There's no going back...
... indeed, I think this is a better system than a hulking great big 30" screen. A lot cheaper, too. Now, the only puzzle remaining is just when did it manage to become 21:30? I must have been looking the other way.
Is it really...
... so much to ask for me simply to be able to play a CD? Specifically, one of my more recent acquisitions? After all, we all have our "Pärt" to play:
Can't play it in the NAD CD player. Why not? It skips.
Can't play it in the Oppo Blu-ray player. Why not? It skips.
That's £1,100-worth of recalcitrant kit right there.
Can play it in the Panasonic Blu-ray player. It doesn't skip. But I can only hear the bloody thing if I keep the plasma screen switched on which (of course) gives the essentially static high-contrast CD track display plenty of opportunity to burn itself on to the screen. I suppose I could always once again first find and then fit the optical-to-coax digital audio converter I have knocking around, plus a couple of signal leads, and its power brick 'cos I have a spare coax digital input on my pre-amp, but the Panasonic Blu-ray player has only an optical digital output. Too much hassle.
OK. Rip the damn' thing to MP3 and play that. Done. Trouble is, I'm no longer in the mood for it!