Week of 12th November, 2001

Last Week

Monday, 12th November

It's still quiet at work - material is coming in slowly, generally at the end of a day, so if the shelves were cleared by the overnight man, you have nothing to do until the Programme Logistics people get in and create some paperwork. This was the case this morning

Even after that, things were still quiet. I'm not sure which I like better, very little work or bedlam - bedlam gets discouraging, very little can be boring.

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Tuesday, 13th November

More of the same, plus my annual assessment - net result of that last is that I must try to avoid diving too deep into the timesink that is the Internet while at work. Not that anything but passive browsing is possible there.


In other news, I have been reading Jenny's copies of the "Harry Potter" books, in preparation for the release of the film "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" (or "Sorcerer's Stone" in America) on Friday. Early reports suggest an adaptation that is very close to the book, using an English cast - and a good thing too, Macaulay Culkin (or whoever is the current favourite boy actor in Hollywood) would not have done well in the role of Harry. The cast reads like a Who's Who of British Acting - Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid, Maggie Smith as Professor McGonagall, Alan Rickman as Professor Snape, and Richard Harris as Headmaster Professor Albus Dumbledore.

The books are excellent, with lots of detail to capture young minds, and wickedly unexpected plot twists - not to mention some excellent puns to keep the adults hooked. In each book, the planted villain turns out to be a White Hat, while some apparently helpful figure has a hidden agenda (or indeed sometimes several) and turns out to be a Black Hat in disguise.

The concept, of magicians living hidden among, but not of, the ordinary populace (or "Muggles") is brilliantly developed, and the ancillary detail, such as "Diagon Alley" the wizard's shopping street, or the game of Quidditch, is convincing.

J.K. Rowling has planned a seven book series, one for each year of Harry's time at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and from what I have seen, after 4 books, she is just getting better. If the films (sequels are planned) are as successful, George Lucas will have a run for his money in the 'best-grossing film series' stakes.

The only fly in the ointment is the Bible Belt Christian sects in Middle America, which have come out against the entire ficton (to borrow a concept from Robert Heinlein's "The Number of the Beast"), based on a misconception that children may interpret the wizardry as associated with Satanism. General public opinion suggests a screw (or maybe more than one) loose here.

I've also made a start on building up my DVD collection, starting with "Stargate SG-1". In this country, MGM have, in my not-so-humble opinion, made a mistake. They have released Season 1 only as a "Best of..." disc, containing the feature-length pilot, and the 3 episode cliffhanger arc that closes the season. Strangely enough, in America (region 1) the entire season is available as a 5-disc set, which I have ordered from Amazon. Even with post and packing, the cost is less than the complete set would be here in UK, unless HM Customs hit me with duty and VAT. Even then, it won't be too bad, since individual discs of the series cost UKP14.99 to UKP17.99 depending on which disc, and how recent it is. The UK release schedule is about halfway through season 4, $ky are running Season 5 as I type (a couple of months behind the US)

$ky have just announced a price rise, starting in New Year. My package (Multi-channels and Movies) goes up to UKP32. Still, there's been no rise for about 18 months, but 16%, when inflation is about 2.5%? Smacks of milking the punter for everything possible, and may be counter-productive, since the churn rate may well increase. I've heard rumours that a lot of subscriptions lapse after the first year - no hard, published data, so I can't back that up. Even so, subscriber numbers are still rising.

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Wednesday, 14th November

Katy is playing hockey for her school in the County Championships this afternoon, and due to a problem with scheduling the hired minibus, I'll have to collect some of the team from the venue in Chiswick. Not a problem, I'll take Hopalong, and bring back up to 7.

Later: Boy, was it cold! I made the mistake of trying to watch the play while wearing my work fleece jacket (almost a uniform style, complete with breast logo). I should have worn something heavier, longer and thicker - brrrh! Mind you, the teams were wearing sports kit - bare legs, gym skirts and thin tops. They must have been even colder.

And the school lost 1 - 0. This was the final, apparently, a competition that they have won several times in previous years.

Meanwhile, Jane took Mum down to the hospital for her check-up after the operation. And it begins to look as though they let her out too soon. She gets very tired after walking a couple of hundred yards, and the operation wound still needs draining. Jane had to go to do her school pickups, and practically ordered Dad to get a taxi - not to use a 'bus, which we are almost sure he would have, if not told not to. He seems not to appreciate that Mum is still not anywhere near recovered.

And they've got their trip to Stratford in 10 days. It looks as though we will have to be in attendance for as much of that week as possible. Luckily I've taken some leave. How they will appreciate being accompanied, and lectured at, I don't know. We shall have to see.

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Thursday, 15th November

The Building Society appointed solicitor is making me jump through hoops - his list of required papers reads like a history of my life. Comes now a letter which states that he is still waiting for proof of my ID - his original document packet asked for either passport/forces ID card or two items such as recent utility bills, the latter of which I have provided - and he says he's still awaiting proof? What more does he want - my birth certificate?


Katy's school course work for Geography is getting worse by the day - either she doesn't understand, or the teacher is moving the goalposts. Now she wants me to draw a bar-chart of pebble sizes on the foreshore - get that, hand draw - computer charts from Excel are not acceptable. And why not?

I gather that it has been decided (and I wish they'd told me) that Katy will not use her computer for school work and exams, mainly because the teachers have unreasonably high expectations of the quality of computer-prepared work. Katy is dyslexic, so she not infrequently uses the wrong word - sounds right, but means wrong - so, even if the spellcheck is right, the sense is wrong. There is no spell checker on Earth that will catch this - even grammar checkers are unlikely to help. And, of course, the rules for computer use in exams specifically forbid spelling and grammar checkers.

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Friday, 16th November

The workload is fairly thin, again - nothing to do until the office people came in, other than edit up the overnight feed of "David Letterman"

Later, a few line feeds came in, two of which needed some extra work, which I did. And later the feed recordings of the second of those offers came back up to be prepared for air. I took great pleasure in signing off on them, without doing anything else. That was another job done, just for the cost of signing the paperwork.

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Saturday, 17th November

Even less work on the shelf today. When I checked with the tape librarians this evening, there are only six jobs to last us until Monday, so I get a late start tomorrow morning.

I suppose I'd better do Katy's bar-charts - she gets rather abusive when I suggest that a little more typing, and a bit less TV might be a good idea.

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Sunday, 18th November

Not only a late start, but an early finish as well - I'd done my share of what little work is available, so I got the glad word, "Bye, Bye. See you Wednesday". To find, when I got home, that the house was in a frenzy of school course-work. I was obliged to pitch in, which I did, but Katy gets very shirty if I store her work on her machine, via network from Celery - she's terrified of running out of disc space. Armadillo has a 3.2GB hard disc, and it's taken me several years to get anywhere near that much data and programmes on Fujisan, except for ISO images of install CDs, which don't count.

Apparently, the ban on computer-produced charts of data is to make the student prove that she can draw a graph/chart from acquired data. Of course, transcribing a computer-produced chart isn't quite the same, but who cares? We'll get this thing out of the door yet.

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