2013 — 4 November: Monday
Last time I watched yesterday evening's entertainment I played it from a LaserDisc. I chose the relatively recently-acquired DVD of "Joe versus the volcano", and by the end (which seemed to take a very long time to arrive) I admit I was left wondering "Why?" A vague wish to complete my set of Tom Hanks / Meg Ryan films, I suppose. It's certainly an oddity.
It seems1 the kiddiewinks are now back in their Halls of Learning. Meanwhile, I've been moving another, smaller, batch of books around upstairs. But it will soon be time for a breakfast break. I shall improve the shining hour until then with something a bit less strenuous. Sadly, since one of my usual companions in walking crime is (I hope, temporarily) under the weather we shall only be a duo today. But the weather is promising.
Here...
... for my own benefit after yesterday's minor-league perturbances, is the latest A/V setup in tabular form:
| Source | HDMI box | Audiolab setting | (Audio only) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Panasonic Blu-ray | #1 | hdmi #1 | — | |||
| Humax Freesat | #2 | hdmi #1 | — | |||
| WD media player | #3 | hdmi #1 | — | |||
| Oppo Blu-ray | #4 | hdmi #1 | — | |||
| PC media player | #5 | hdmi #1 | dtv | |||
| Freeview 'DAB' | — | dab | — | |||
| US NPR | — | vcr | — | |||
| CD | — | cd | — | |||
| Minidisc | — | md | — | |||
| Cassette | — | tape | — |
The brain behind the discerning eye — having noted the one entry in the "(Audio only)" column — will quickly deduce that I have so far miserably failed in all my attempts to obtain audio from BlackBeast's hdmi output; hence the "extra" audio-only connection from the optical SP/DIF output on the sound card. It's a jolly good job the Audiolab pre-amp continues to pass through an established video signal undisturbed when a "different" audio source is selected...
Politicians
"You lied to me, Leo!"
"I'm a politician, Ainsley. It's what I do."
Which naturally reminds me, there's a very scary 1977 radio play by JCW Brook called "The Doppelgänger". David Wade (the chap who turned Alan Garner's first two novels into such fine BBC adaptations) described it in The Times (still pre-Murdoch back then) as a spine-chilling production. I'll drink to that.
Following a...
... nice, local six-mile ramble — rather cool, but bright sunshine — and a lateish lunch, I'm now (mid-afternoon) doing some laundry and catching up on Series #4 of the "Museum of Curiosity". I would have preferred to buy and download the MP3s from here as I did last year when getting hold of Series #3, but their checkout system is currently not working.
Thus, I had to resort to "Audible" (now owned by Amazon). I confess, I'd forgotten (or repressed) just how appalling these audio downloads are. They are wrapped up in some form of DRM, and only play back through some bastard offspring of Windows Media Player (which I loathe) that I also had to install,2 so I'm playing them back and dumping them on to a couple of minidiscs for my greater future convenience.
Since I'm recording them digitally, too, that does rather seem to blast a hole in the DRM "protection".
I first spotted...
... these delightful maps of stereotypical prejudice by Yanko Tsvetkov a while ago. But when I recently bought a book of them...
... I held off from admitting that fact here, because I'd bought a second copy as a birthday gift for my birthday twin, and I didn't wish to spoil his surprise. Excellent stuff.
200 Motels
Now here's something I haven't thought of in a very long time, to be Frank :-)