2012 — 20 June: Wednesday
My apologies to anyone stubbing their web browsing toes up against a dysfunctional 'molehole' for about ten hours yesterday. "Circumstances beyond my control" (over in Texas) just about covers it. Well that, and Junior pointing the Cloudfare system to the correct DNS server after the dust had settled.
Yesterday's expunging...
... of iTunes for the nth time, I fear,1 was not the only item on my little agenda. "It has come to my attention" over the last several years that the only common element (besides silicon) in my ongoing attempts to attain audio/visual nirvana is actually my 60" Kuro plasma screen right at the end of the display chain. It's perfectly capable of producing a superb picture with vibrant colour and contrast, splendid detail, and (crucially) proper black level. That's not the problem.
But whether or not a given signal source will play nicely with it, however, seems governed more by the 'rules' of chance2 than I would like. I've been forced to conclude that the display can be a little too "picky" about its upstream neighbours.
When I'd finished adding in yesterday's FreeviewHD box (delivered exactly 30 seconds after the time DPD had promised) I noticed a slight video "tearing" on all four video sources hooked up via my DVDO Edge scaler. This eventually led me to remove it — yet again — from the loop. I know, from previous experiments (conducted, at times, almost ad nauseum) that when the scaler's internally-generated test patterns are directly fed to the screen, all is well. It's the incoming hdmi signals from the rest of my kit that get slightly mangled either on arrival, or in transit. I've also been able to prove that the interposition of the Audiolab pre-amp is not the culprit.
Ex-couch potato
So, late last night, I dusted off my trusty passive 4-way hdmi switchbox...
... and resigned myself to a life of slightly less leisure (and slightly more exercise3) as it has manual push buttons rather than a remote control. The newest toy (the FreeviewHD box) settled in nicely after a forced factory reset taught it how to tell the time (and thus sort out its EPG). Since it's currently likely to stay in digital radio mode that's not a real issue.
The green arrow? That's my tribute to the idiocy of HDCP. When the screen is off, the Panasonic Blu-ray kills its hdmi output (including audio) and I'm forced to use its optical digital output if I wish to play a CD without burning the plasma screen.
What clock? Aah, such clock!
Nearly time for lunch already. The great music filename and meta-tag clean-up exercise continues. I've discovered the latest version of MediaMonkey has a useful report generation facility but — as eny fule kno — garbage in invariably leads to garbage out.
There's no point to tedious tasks if they can't be interrupted by Mr Postie, is there? Bearing "gifts", too. To be precise, two missives from unwicked Uncle ERNIE, and this set of moving pixels:
Next tedious task: whizz over to the care-home to see if they've dug up dear Mama yet. They were certainly happy enough to send me the next invoice for this monthly 'hotel'. [Pause] Yep, she's still there. Almost reacted to the news of Big Bro's pending visit, too, but I could be imagining it. I find I can imagine lots of things these days. Swung by Mike on the way back, and blagged a cuppa. Is there no end to my cheek?
It's a fine thing...
... when the mere act of browsing the latest teaser trailer for the final chunk of Twiglit crashes one's Adobe Flash browser plug-in. Still, I've safely snaffled an MP4 file of it. Looks like fun.
With great wealth...
... comes great responsibility, to misquote Spiderman. There's an excellent essay up on the 'Chronicle' web site (probably only for a short while). Source and snippet:
The banking crisis has shown yet again that the present system relies on motives of greed and acquisitiveness, which are morally repugnant. It also divides societies into rich and poor, latterly very rich and very poor, justified by some version of the "trickle down" idea. The coexistence of great wealth and great poverty, especially in societies in which there is enough for everyone, offends our sense of justice.
It reminded me powerfully of Ursula K LeGuin's excellent 1974 SF novel "The Dispossessed". Time to read that again, perhaps.
I tucked a February 1976 clipping from the Grauniad into my copy. It's actually a review of her later collection of stories "The Wind's Twelve Quarters", but I kept it for the delightful anecdote buried in it here:
Len's just booked seats for us to see "Prometheus" in 3D at the Soton IMAX. He got me a 'senior' discount (just as I did for "Avatar" in Eastleigh). I knew there were advantages to getting old.
I also knew they seemed to be packing an awful lot into the series #3 finale of "The Mentalist". But it kept me so gripped I didn't realise until the end that it was a double-length episode. And I recognised "Josh" from the "West Wing" even though he went completely uncredited. Nice twist.
Walk tomorrow. Sleep now. G'night.