2014 — 15 July: Tuesday
Apparently1 the boy Dave has been "ruthlessly" wielding his long knives — the sole prerogative of the Prime Minstrel of the choir — amongst his "team". Could there, by any chance, be an election looming? What hope is there? With so many guvmint posts to be filled by self-serving sociopaths and tainted chums from such a limited, clapped-out, pool of "talent" that has floated to the surface... <Sigh>
Meanwhile...
... I currently await news of today's (or, quite possibly, tomorrow's) walkies rendezvous and timing.
Now, which...
... website is being described here? Let me think.
The M*** *****e is by some measures the world's most popular online newspaper. It is also shameless — a grotesque compendiumof sensational tabloid stories, unverified viral memes, anonymously sourced gossip, thinly veiled sexism, prurient clickbait, and hypocritical moralizing.
Clue: it's not one of Murdoch's. Though it is well-written. You can find the story on Slate.
Not that the Grauniad is necessarily much better:
Pity McCurry can't differentiate between vulva and vagina...
The leaked screenshot...
... of yet another desperate attempt in the "Start" area to back away from recent Windows 8 UI changes is the most depressing I've seen so far. (Link.)
That was...
... a 7.45 mile hike up and down nearly 1,000 feet of Hampshire's finest close-packed contour lines in warm, humid, air. Beginning in the car park of, and finishing in the bar of, the Pub with No Name (aka The White Horse). I suspect I would have no difficulty defending the proposition that I'm not quite as young as I used to be. Though do you mind waiting until I've caught my breath and put my feet up with a cuppa?
Having been shown...
... a brief demo of video streaming on demand2 (using Netflix accessed via a Sony Playstation) I have to say the results were perfectly watchable, the choice was quite wide — though how much of it I'd ever want to watch is another matter — and the monthly fee quite reasonable. Of course, I'd also need to pay the same again for an uncapped broadband service. It occurred to me that it wasn't all that different to the model back in the mid-1980s of strolling down to a video rental 'shop' and paying to take away a VHS cassette (of far lower quality) for a couple of days. It's just that somehow, as video formats improved, through LaserDisc, SVHS, DVD, and Blu-ray, so 'owning' my own copy of a film seemed more desirable. Yet the storage and tracking of anything but a small collection can be a bit of a pain. Last time I checked, I had a collection of over 4,100 titles on DVD and Blu-ray. Including more than a few either not yet watched or, worse, not even yet attempted.
How many times has an enticing trailer turned into a dismal disappointment of a film? A rhetorical question.
I've been promised...
... a further demo of something from Google called Chromecast. This is a £30 wireless dongle that plugs into an hdmi socket (assuming I can find a spare one) and accepts a USB device at the other end (as it were) for its power. But I remain sceptical about the case for "casting" my smartphone videos (which I don't have, use, or want) on to my 60" Kuro plasma screen. I admit I 'handbraked' some of my DVDs into mp4 format for playing on my Android Tablet when away from home. But I'm not often away from home, and rarely wanting to watch TV when I am.
I did (once) download one of these associated "digital copy" versions of the Blu-ray I'd bought of Catherine Hardwicke's "Red Riding Hood", purely as an experiment described here. It was not (at 720x306 pixels vertical resolution) a serious contender for my attention.
[Pause] Well, it turns out that Netflix is one of the services my Oppo Blu-ray player already knows about... unless its main menu is telling porkies.