2013 — 19 September: Thursday

Well, that's a bit odd. I just used get_iplayer1 to snaffle last night's BBC Radio "Late Junction" and "Gideon Coe" shows but, this morning, the three-hour Gideon Coe programme has come down at 48 kbps AAC whereas up until now it's always been 128 kbps. The Late Junction remains at 320 kbps. I used "--mode=best" as usual, too. Perhaps the Beeb is running low on disk space?

I have an early...

... session with a toothbrush-wielding Dr Fang to look forward to, in just a few minutes in fact, but my post-dental treat today (now that Jonathan's "Arcade Bookshop" has closed with his well-earned retirement) is going to be lunch somewhere where I don't have to cook. Assuming "cook" is the right verb for a process that rarely troubles my lovely microwave for more than five minutes, and my gas oven almost never.

Although I have used the grill for the occasional sausage treat (and the top oven too) I've yet to give the main oven much exercise. [Pause] And I received an email reminding me that 7zip (which works fine on Win8) would have been a more convenient way of unpacking the .RAR archives. The fact that I've installed 7zip had somehow escaped my notice. Typical. [Pause] My changed Copernic desktop search indexing strategy has had a most salutary effect on my desktop's morning liveliness, too. If the phrase...

Idle (Nothing to index)

...means what I assume it does. And it's already indexed my latest ¬blog updates on the fly without prompting. Cool.

I firmly resisted...

... any temptation to swing by Asda and scour the new Blu-ray and DVD shelves on the way back from Dr Fang. Aren't I good? [Pause] I also decided to return Brian's DVD of "Life of Pi" to him unwatched.2 [Pause] If I don't have some breakfast soon it will be time for lunch, dagnabbit.

Everything...

... comes to he who waits. Including a higher bitrate Gideon Coe download. Lunch was tastily lunched. An afternoon chocolate eclair filled the remaining space, and I've just upgraded (regraded, technically) my broadband fibre to give myself 50GB/month and voice for a combined price of rather less than I was previously paying to a combination of Zen and BT. Dr Fang expressed herself happy with the state of the gnashers, and we politely agreed to continue to hold differing opinions on the question of the design versus evolution of the human dentition system. Since I've only seen her twice in three years or so she will probably have forgotten when I next visit.

Six years...

... ago, to the day, I published one of my favourite photos of Christa, down at Lands End in 1975. I had it false-colour processed (by the "LaserColor" digital process available in the early 1980s) into a print that I then block-mounted and kept on the wall of my study for many years. I must dig out my scan of that to contrast with the original.

  

Footnotes

1  As usual.
2  The last time I ignored his recommendation I missed out on "Lives of Others" for far longer than necessary, so I decided it was probably simply more efficient to order a Blu-ray of "Pi" for myself.