2016 — 31 July: Sunday
Since I can usually go years1 without giving what was, at the time, Hatfield Polytechnic so much as a single thought... I can only assume that my subconscious chose to mull over some of the segments in the fascinating programme ("Grace Dent's Guide to Growing Up a Girl") I was listening to yesterday evening. Rather an outlier in terms of my usual choice, but highly recommended for once. Hilarious, sad, annoying, and insightful.
I shall be off in search...
... of the next well-fired loaf or two later this (sunny) morning. Always good fun. Perhaps I will first have time to find the (one) error its author has so far identified in yesterday's arrival?
Although I'd originally bought it for Big Bro it looked so interesting that I've decided to keep this copy and buy him another. Adrian Balch (who uses — and highly recommends — a Canon 7D Mk II) is one of the global network of photo-swapping chums that Big Bro cultivates. You may recall this earlier tome that Bro himself assembled? It was my birthday present in 2010 from NZ (the picture here [taken for the book's jacket] was a foretaste):
That remastered Brian Eno CD that arrived on the same day was the only possible accompaniment to my browsing. He managed to sneak a few of his own photos into it, too. But why wasn't it in my books DB? Tut, tut.
Good gracious me!
Is there an atom of truth in this?
At the risk of repeating myself!
When I consider the state of the world, the country, the economy, the political in-fighting, the pointless point-scoring, the bigotry, the endless and depressing stupidity and greed almost constantly on display, the random cruelty... you know what? I'm almost glad that Christa, at least, no longer has any worries on any of these scores. She was never one for burying her head in the sand having been, I gather, a bit of a political firebrand during her2 student years.
My current (insane)...
... self-imposed task is combing carefully through the Kodi XML stub files for all my movies and TV shows — removing from my corresponding ASCII 'master' file list the titles that have been successfully absorbed into Kodi. It requires concentration, so I am not racing to complete the task. But what remains in my file list when I've finished will need, by definition, custom handling. The Kodi wiki page on "Custom video entries" will at this point come into its own.
I estimate having to deal with some 208 titles in this "lost sheep" category. (Well, not "lost", exactly, more "never quite made it into any of the DBs that Kodi generally scrapes".)
Sideswiped by hearing...
... the song "Hello young lovers" from "The King and I" sung by the late, great, Marni Nixon. I had no idea I knew the lyrics. I have no idea why I know the lyrics, for that matter.
The late Alastair Reid...
... directed some mighty fine stuff. Including the rather lurid "Baby Love" in 1968, the wonderfully scabrous TV version of the Colin Douglas novel "The Houseman's Tale" in 1987 (sandbagged by the tabloids) — it was my attempt to pin down any useful Kodi material for this that alerted me to Reid's death, sadly — the superb "Traffik" (which every politician should be force-fed), and the highly entertaining "Tales of the City" which paved the way for so much further good stuff on both sides of the Pond.
Reid cut his teeth, as it were, on "Emergency Ward 10" which went out "live" and which I still recall dear Mama lapping up. This anecdote from an obituary notice tickled me:
By his last year on the Ward, Alastair had become extremely bored and chose to direct a whole episode entirely from the point of view of the characters' feet. Unfortunately, [Lew] Grade happened to be watching at the time. He rang the studio gallery during the commercial break and demanded that the cameras return to their standard positions for the second half of the show.
Having processed...
... about 1,985 titles today, I'm heading for bed.