2016 — 30 October: Sunday
Having reassured Iris yesterday — about how Firefox offering to (continue to) block Adobe Flash was a Good Thing — she, in turn, cautioned me not to forget about the "clocks going back". Well, it's now 08:31 in new, "devalued" time and I've yet to adjust any of the things. The more intelligent ones do it themselves, of course, and I tend not to bother with a watch these days. However, my chauffeur is due here at about 10 for another trip to the Land of the Well-Fired Loaf (if he, too, makes the necessary Temporal leap). I don't know why we continue to shift the country along this axis twice a year.
I may have succeeded...
... in getting i5NUC output on my 60" Kuro plasma screen. More to the point, however, I've also just seen how damn' fiddly that makes the morning's "switch on" routine.1 So, having proved it's possible, I don't think I'll be making a habit of it. It would come in handy, however, when playing any material that uses codecs unknown to the Oppo (were it not for the fact that VLC running on the i5NUC continues to blank Skylark's view of the NUC Remote Desktop and swallow some control key combinations plus the mouse pointer [as does Kodi, annoyingly]).
That reduces my NUC playback choice to Xplayer, which I suspect is less aware of video codecs than VLC or Kodi, but at least has the merit of not blanking screens and/or swallowing keys. I may yet give in and simply buy an Amazon Fire streaming box — Len's had relatively little problem with that approach to small form-factor PC video playback and the thing even goes up to 4K.
Good job it's not the "Year of Linux on the Desktop" until next year, I guess. I confess, when I first started toying idly with Linux (which is now some 18 years ago) I had no idea I would become an OAP before it was (still) not quite ready for Josephine Public.
As I approach...
... the end of the TV version of "Preacher", Season #1, I have to say I've been enjoying it immensely, though it does help to have re-read the comic books graphic novels first. I can also both see why it took a decade to emerge from "development hell" and why some regarded it as unfilmable.
Big Bro...
... is offering me a "possum/merino beanie" and possibly some form of sweater for Xmas. How could I refuse? [Pause] It's a cheerier prospect that making any comments on the rampant insanity on both sides of the Pond.
How tedious...
... it must be, having not to tread on peoples' right to privacy if you're a hard-working cop. Source and snippet:
What AT&T has required the police to do, through the provision of the contract that you just read, is what the police call "parallel construction" and what the EFF calls "evidence laundering." And what this means is, after the police find evidence against someone in the Hemisphere database, they "wall it off," quote-unquote from their training manual, and then they use a traditional subpoena to recreate the exact same evidence trail. And when it comes time to put the person on trial, they present the second set of cleaner evidence, and no one is the wiser that they were using this massive, disturbing digital database to spy on all Americans, including the criminal suspect.
"Preacher" ended well, and left me wanting more. I always prefer it when TV shows do that. [Pause] I'm less keen on the fireworks that have been going off all weekend, so far. They irritate me.