2014 — 25 November: Tuesday
I've now been using, and enjoying, the network audio and video file streaming facilities of my Oppo Blu-ray player for much of this year. It has obviously given my subconscious an idea.1 It's (only very) belatedly occurred to me that by slotting in a networked A/V box and hooking up one of my spare 24" Dell full-HD screens I will be able to enjoy upstairs (albeit in miniature) precisely the same access to audio (and, should I wish it, video) files from my NAS as I already do downstairs.
So I've been hard at "work" this morning for a couple of pre-breakfast hours "researching" a suitable (translation: affordable) toy with which to augment my reading room's little music-only2 system. I have found, and ordered, a neat little Marantz box — an NR1504 networked home cinema receiver — with just the feature set I need to make a more colourful start...
... to my next grimly-Novemberish day. Only a month to go before we start to lighten up a little!
The incoming Marantz box — which will displace the venerable Denon CD/Tuner/amp I dusted off just two days ago — is now on its way, at a suitable price, from the "Superfi" folk who five years ago supplied the Audiolab kit with which I refreshed my main A/V system downstairs. My very first piece of digital audio kit was a Marantz CD63 player back in 1983. Crikey, I'm getting old, Christa! :-)
There's even a hole drilled in the wall already — between what was Christa's study and what was Peter's bedroom — for the all-important Ethernet cable. My network router (for historical reasons) lives in Peter's room. As did my home-brew PC support technician, come to think of it.
Next up: that delayed breakfast. I'm starving.
Hard to disagree...
... with the message of this interesting 'Baffler' piece. Source and snippet:
This combination of treating humans like machines and recasting work as something different — something casual, informal, and frivolously fun — is a perennial selling point for the digital world's army of crowdsourcing consultants. At the same time, it's an all-too-obvious horror show for anyone still clinging to any critical detachment from the booster-mad tech scene. "Distributed labor networks are using the Internet to exploit the spare processing power of millions of human brains," Howe explained, as if people are just waiting for corporations to call up and ask if they have any extra neurons available. The corollary is that people shouldn't expect much for donating these spare cycles, but corporations can profit tremendously.
Yesterday's arrivals...
... before I get distracted and forget all about them:
I find it...
... a little rich when the Pope starts banging on about European institutions that have become aloof from people. Hang on. Is that a mote I can dimly perceive? [Pause] Meanwhile — having knackered myself shifting stuff around in Peter's room to get at, and push a network cable through, the previously-mentioned hole in the wall (and then put everything back tidily) — I've just been forced to treat myself to an unusually sumptuous lunch to make good the resulting calorific deficit. I'm predicting a salad tonight...
I shall enter "feet up" mode for a while, methinks. Crikey, I'm getting old, Christa! :-)
Today's arrival...
... before I get distracted and forget all about it:
I note, with mild alarm, the discrepancy between the classifications assigned to the two versions of Carrie — I've seen neither film yet. Meanwhile, in about 29 minutes from now, I should be able to start asking UKMail how it's getting on with carrying my new toy down here from Nottingham. Exciting.
Alan Plater
Look what's coming around again; this magical pair of linked plays:
Only a Matter of Time
Time Added On for Injuries
Meanwhile, I'm almost equally delighted to learn that my little toy is now somewhere between "Collected" and (I quote carefully) "At Sortation Facility". Glad that's sortated out.
Carrie (1976) or Carrie (2013)?
In truth, neither is really quite my cuppa tea any more than the horror genre in general is. But I've liked several films by De Palma, and I thought "Boys don't cry" by Peirce was superb, so I thought this would be an interesting experiment. I gather it was Stephen King's first published novel, too, though I've not read it. Anyway, I found the earlier film to be more interesting. The newer one is glossier. And considerably dumber. And — given the existence of the earlier version — completely pointless. I didn't even bother to finish watching it, despite my almost boundless admiration for Julianne Moore.