Week of 25th July, 2005

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Monday, 25th July

Our 24th Wedding Anniversary

 

And Jane's birthday. At least I remembered her cards - and the girls bought her birthday present for me. But, of course, Jane having foud the cards on Friday, during the big change-around, she moved them - and now I don't know where they are, so I can't write them. So, of course, I got lambasted for not giving her a card or two.

Work was back to normal - lots of tape copying, after the battle with the music videos the night before And, of course, I made a couple of typos - well, it's practically impossible not to, at 2 a.m. But the ingest man caught them, I repaired the errors first thing last night, and they are now ingested.

Then I hacked away at the piles of re-licenced programmes. New masters provided, and since the old TX copies are worn, it is good practice to replace them. Besides which, the old ones are on Beta SP, and we now prefer DigiBeta. So that was the night. Same old, same old...


Further investigation of the problem with "Revelations" leads me to suspect the downloaded .iso is corrupt. Power DVD won't play it, even from HD, although it will open it. And extracting the genuine .iso from the file (using Isobuster) didn't produce a working image either. The Acer just plain doesn't like that file. Not that it matters much - the file we are discussing is the bonus disc - Making of..." documentary, and other things of minor interest. The main movie is in the other file, which works.

As part of the .torrent, you get artwork files for the inlay cards for CD and DVD jewel cases. I may yet make up the inlays, but not yet.

An interesting experience.

Talking of DVDs - Play are listing the abortive pilot movie for another "Babylon 5" themed series. This is "Legend of the Rangers", which was not picked up for production. Still, the pilot is there, and Play are claiming a release date of October this year. This is the movie I collected onto DVD+R/W, while at freelance. I still have that disc, but I probably won't do anything further with it.

Later: I discovered (GIYF) that Micro$oft do a virtual CD driver, which will mount a .iso image file on a directory (or actually a drive letter) within your computer's file system. It's supposedly only for Win XP, but there are rumours it also works on Win2000. Get it here, which is a direct link to the self-extracting .exe file. The download contains a .sys driver, and a front-end that allows you to set it up. This works - it mounted the .iso as drive Z: and allowed me to explore it.

Power DVD will also open a .iso file anywhere on your filesystem. And when I pointed it at the Revolutions bonus disc, I could view all the content. So the file is all right, but checking file sizes suggests that it is about 100MB too big to fit a single-layer DVD, which would account for my problems - but why doesn't NTI CD Maker complain that a .iso is too big? It just dies silently.  

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Tuesday, 26th July

 

This morning comes the 'phone call from the furniture shop - "We've accidentally destroyed your cheque. May we have your card details?" This while I'm still in bed - I like to lie in if possible in between night shifts, it gives me a chance to catch up on sleep. So I get my card and read the numbers. Then they want to deliver the sofa today - not Thursday as planned. Their delivery people aren't available Thursday. But we haven't finished the decorating...

I don't have a manual for the copy of NTI CD/DVD Maker 6.7 that came bundled with the Acer. So today, I thought I'd try to download the manual. The website is here, and they have a support section, with downloadables. But the only manual is for the current version - 7.0.x. Well, things should't have changed too much, I'll grab it.

Or I'll try... The download button opens Acrobat in the same window (not even a new window) looking at the download location, and just sits there and sneers at me. A "View Source" shows that the download page is Javascripted to within half an inch of it's life, and the download button is a script event - you cannot right-click and select "Save target as..."  This is extremely rude - why break compatibility with older browsers, or people who are paranoid like me, just because you can't be bothered to test it. Oh yes, and all the links change colour when you mouse over them - there is no other evidence of clickable content. The whole site is over-styled, over-scripted, and an accessibility nightmare. 

Later: Well, the furniture delivery men came, and saw where the sofa would have to go, realised that this was a total nonsense, and betook themselves and the sofa away. They will return Thursday, as originally planned, when we will be able to put the thing where it is supposed to go.

In the evening, we recovered the rug from it's hideyhole, and laid it. And it's filthy - we've hoovered it twice (with a Dyson, yet!) and dust is still coming out of it. It's been laid at a friend's house for years and they evidently didn't hoover it often, if at all. Still, it looks very well in place. We also moved the wing chairs into the room, although they aren't finally in place yet - Jane still hasn't decided where she wants things. And she wants to spend big money on units to fill the alcoves - actually not that big, she's thinking IKEA.

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Wednesday, 27th July

 

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Thursday, 28th July

 

Two nights of slog, hacking at pre-dubbed material for Country X. And it's a battle - quality is not of the highest, and the master tapes are old (1998-dated) Beta SPs, which are shedding oxide and are prone to head-clogs and endemic dropout - unrepeatable, of course. We've had this problem before, with earlier episodes of this series, and I know from that time that they will air regardless, despite the unacceptable quality. So, if what we are getting is deemed acceptable in Country X, what is the rest of their TV like? On evidence to date - poor.

Still, there's progress on the decorating and furnishing front. The sofa delivery, originally scheduled for today, has been postponed to tomorrow. I've managed to get the TV set up, with $ky+ box, VHS and DVD complete. And it all works. I had hoped to be able to discontinue the use of the Periswitch, to double up a TV SCART, but couldn't get away with it - the second SCART, where I wanted to put the DVD, is composite only. I may yet put the VHS on that, to avoid an RF link, although why I bother I don't know - the rest of the family are quite happy to watch widescreen programmes in pillarbox format (that's tall, thin people) In fact, Sarah actively dislikes widescreen.

When I bought that widescreen TV, I made two mistakes. First, it's too big - a 28 inch diagonal is too much for the room, I should have got a 24 inch. And second, I economised too much - this TV doesn't do automatic widescreen switching. It's a Goodmans, and it was (relatively) cheap. The picture is good, but the lack of auto widescreen is annoying.

Jane dislikes it, as well - it's obtrusively big, and it's silver. So I may very well replace it - sell this one as second-hand, and buy a new 24 inch flat screen LCD. I have issues with plasma displays - artifacts of the display process, size (32 inch seems to be the smallest) and cost. Whichever I get, it will have 2 RGB SCARTs.

Interim pictures of the room later.

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Friday, 29th July

 

We need to move the piano, a Boyd of London overstrung upright of Edwardian age, out of the dining room, to allow the decorator to do his thing. It'll have to go in the hall, temporarily, and then be moved back after the painting is done. So yesterday, I called up a local piano tuner, who also does moves and repairs. He turned up about 11:30 today, and we soon had the piano moved to it's temporary location. He will return after the dining room is completed, to move the instrument back to it's normal place, fix the castors (mismatched and broken) and tune it.

The sofa was, finally, delivered this morning, while I was asleep, and now resides in the front room. Jane still hasn't decided where she wants it put - a decision that is liable to change at any time.

Next task is to collect Jenny, and the rest of her DoE group, from King's Cross Station. And there's a major swoop on alleged terrorists in the Notting Hill area, which is just south of the Western Avenue, the road we will use to get to King's Cross. Add to that ongoing road works at Gypsy Corner, and a gas leak near the station, and we're going to have fun getting to the pickup point by 4 p.m., given that we can't leave until Jane's last minded child is collected at 3.

Later: Well, we got to the pickup point in good time, but Hopalong was suffering his overheating and elevated idle problems, again. On the return journey, I diverted off the Western Avenue to avoid the usual traffic jam at Gypsy Corner, westbound. Big mistake... The minor roads were even more congested, due to multiple police raids in search of the failed bombers of 21/7, and Hopalong was really suffering. So all my passengers bailed out to walk to a pre-arranged rendezvous with one of the other fathers - note, that prearrangement was a little difficult, considering there were only 2 charged mobile 'phones among 7 of us.

Then I called the AA. Of course, the problem had cleared by the time the patrol arrived. So he fiddled with a couple of things, and I signed off on the visit, since all seemed to work.

Wrong... Within 10 minutes the problem was back, and worse. By dint of only starting the engine when absolutely necessary, I managed to get to a nearby superstore car park, from where I called the AA again. While waiting, I patronised the store's cafe, to salve my conscience about parking without paying. In due course, the second AA patrol arrived. He seemed to be rather more clueful about Hopalong, but confirmed that there is probably a problem with the head gasket, so I'll need to get that checked a.s.a.p. Then we drove home. I say we, because the AA man tailed me, to make sure all was well. And it was - much lighter traffic, so I could keep moving, in a cooler ambient temperature, so the cooling system could work better.

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Saturday, 30th July

 

At freelance today, there was a major problem, which I don't yet want to talk about...

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Sunday, 31st July

 

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