2013 — 22 October: Tuesday
I have woken, once again, with a potential solution to my miniature1 "how can I drive all three screens at the same time?" conundrum. If I didn't already have a supplementary graphics card with that basic capability, of course, I'd be deep in doo-doo at the moment since the onboard graphics has been toasted by Win8.1 Pro to the point where it cannot even detect the Kuro, let alone direct any meaningful stream of pixels in its direction.
I merely need to confirm that the documented behaviour of the Display Settings is accurate. Putting aside the fact that my trusty "Windows 7 Inside Out" tome boasts an index entry for "Displays" that points to a non-existent entry for "See desktops; screens" there is an entry for "monitors, dual" (which is two-thirds of the way there). Reading that, and being reminded of this:
It was the work of a few seconds to move the Kuro's HDMI lead from the toasted onboard graphics output and into the currently-unused third output on the ATI Radeon graphics card, at which point everything went blank on my two Dell screens (of course) while the brain-dead invidious HDCP protocol whizzed up through the signal chain to the Audiolab, on to the Kuro, and all the way back to BlackBeast, sadly reporting "Nothing to see here, squire, move along".
Of course, switching on the Kuro helped, though initially setting the Audiolab pre-amp to HDMI #2 merely showed a screen full of noise (thank you again, HDCP). Setting it back to HDMI #1, selecting the Humax on my little switchbox, and allowing the Kuro screen to find and lock happily on to that broadcast satellite signal before again switching the Audiolab to point to BlackBeast via HDMI #2 finally brought all three screens into life. So I have a "sort of" working solution whenever I wish to play videos from BlackBeast. Again.
Quite why my web browser session jumped across from Dell #2 (that is #3 on the graphic above) to the Kuro (#2 on the graphic above) will forever remain a mystery. Equally, why all the cached thumbnails of my various running applications all get toasted simultaneously is another mystery.
Big Bro having...
... woken up, and sought directions to the biscuit tin, I suppose I'd better turn my attention to matters more domestical for a while. [Pause] And he's happily watching "The Plane that saved Britain" in its correct aspect ratio playing from BlackBeast while I contemplate a bit of breakfast for the pair of us.
I'm pleased...
... to see many of my prejudices about the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders neatly confirmed. Source and snippet:
The author (or authors) writes under the ungainly nom de plume of The American Psychiatric Association — although a list of enjoyably silly pseudonyms is provided inside
(including Maritza Rubio-Stipec, Dan Blazer, and the superbly alliterative Susan Swedo). The thing itself is on the cumbersome side. Over two inches thick and with a thousand pages, it's
unlikely to find its way to many beaches. Not that this should deter anyone; within is a brilliantly realized satire, at turns luridly absurd, chillingly perceptive, and profoundly
disturbing...
Perhaps as an attempt to ward off the uncommitted reader, the novel begins with a lengthy account of the system of classifications used — one with an obvious debt to the Borgesian
Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge, in which animals are exhaustively classified according to such sets as "those belonging to the Emperor," "those that, at a distance,
resemble flies," and "those that are included in this classification."
"Book of Lamentations", indeed. [Pause] Meanwhile, Big Bro is now in thrall to a silly re-creation of the Bouncing Bomb. And it continues to drizzle out there in the slightly more real world.
Mathematical sense of humour? Some of the questions2 tickled me. (Link.)
I could have saved...
... myself the cost of my copy of Acronis True Image (bought when preparing the Crucial SSD to become BlackBeast's rather speedier system disk). While reading in El Reg of the woes of Surface RT users faced with "bricked" Tablets in the wake of their version of the Win8.1 "upgrade" (here) I followed the hint buried in the article and thus found myself here:
And, having clicked the obscure little link in the bottom left hand corner, it took very little time to tuck away 75.4GB (give or take) that should, with any luck, give me a fighting chance of restoring the current state of my Win8.1 Pro system if or when the need arises. Well hidden, Microsoft. What's the thinking there, I wonder?
Back from Soton...
... no wiser, but a bit poorer. Having accompanied the old sibling to M&S I treated myself to a new belt (£25 for a strip of dead cow integument strikes me as excessive) and a trio of books...
... of which the new one by Simon Garfield includes a letter from the author, stuck inside the front cover.
Back from the care-home...
... no wiser, but no poorer. This is in some danger of becoming an annual tradition when John comes over.
Following Sunday's little...
... moisture incursion, some further water made it as far as the same part of the floor of the Books Warehouse when tonight's rain was at its heaviest. But we were able to see where it was coming in (more or less) so I shall be clearing that area of books completely and consulting an artisan. I also managed to blow a fuse in one of my extension leads while running the trusty fan heater... irritating. Or perhaps it was taken out by the same spike that reset the A/V pre-amp while we were watching "Untouchable"? (Which he enjoyed, as he did "RED".)
There was an impressive set of lightning bolts and a nearby rumble at about that time. It also switched on the minidisc recorder upstairs, indicating that there'd been a brief power interruption, bringing it out of standby.
Portents of things to come, no doubt. KBO