2013 — 7 May: Tuesday

Hello, pension! My word, you're a welcome sight.

Before much else...

... happens today I need, once again, to fill some of the gaps in Mother Hubbard's cupboard. Now I can afford to. Then today's lunch is going to be in the building that, on the one previous time I was1 ever in it during the last 32 years, was "The Leigh Inn". It is now an Indian restaurant.

As for the idea that a sado-monetarist2 and one-time loyal Thatcherite ex-Chancellor who has since lost weight, been ennobled, and become a global warming sceptic now somehow merits a full front page piece on the loathsome ex-Australian's "top" non-tabloid rag to tell us how he would vote in a still-hypothetical referendum in four years from now on continued membership of the EU... Well, just don't get me started.

Though my personal advice before taking voting advice from splendid chaps such as he and his noble chums, would always be "follow the money". It generally works.

<Sigh>

Another excellent time-soaker-upper. Just what I need. I'm fairly sure I have all the currently-available collaborations between Pete Atkin and Clive James. (Link.)

Later that day

If for "Indian restaurant" in Leigh Road we substitute "The Queen's Head" in Fisher's Pond you'd have a more accurate idea of our lunchtime venue. Glorious weather again, by the way. And this Friday's planned walk will be in bluebell territory unless there's a blizzard by then.

Although it never really occurred to me in earlier years, I wonder if — strictly speaking — it's actually necessary to have 37 CDs by Van Morrison? Quite possibly not. Mind you, Christa had a double vinyl of "Them" when we met, which was more than I did at the time. But then she was (slightly) older than Big Bro :-)

As happens...

... from time to time, typically after a conversation with Len, I find myself checking the relative merits of high variable bit-rate MP3 versus lossless FLAC versus the original WAV 'file' extracted from the physical CD. Factors are, of course, the relative file size, the rate (usually between 15x and 30x real time) at which the audio data can be encoded, the ease (simplicity itself) with which it can be played back on my PC, the extent to which it can be meta-tagged (apparently impossible with the uncompressed WAV file format)...


Test track         MP3       FLAC      WAV

Rehab (3m 34s)     6.34 MB   24.2 MB   36.1 MB

... and the extent to which just the very thought3 of re-ripping my CD library (yet again) fills me with either (or both) a powerful death wish and the need for some serious rehabilitation therapy.

We also chatted about PC cooling, which led to me scouting around the web a bit looking for opinions on safe temperatures for hard drives in PCs. A study by Google themselves turned up the unexpected result that excessive cooling can be worse than running warm, with temperature-related failure rates only rising above 45C. "Don't overcool" was the message. Section 3.4 has the details. (Link.)

  

Footnotes

1  I was walking back from Eastleigh station, with Christa, after a hot day book-shopping and sight-seeing in London, and we both fancied something to keep us going.
2  William Keegan's coinage, not mine. See my snippet here.
3  This last is probably the Prime Consideration.