Rick's Notes
March 2005

 

2005/03/01 (night)

While I was asleep, the VCR recorded the lunchtime edition of Neighbours without a hitch. Now, at 20:45 CET? No signal. Well, that's for BBC 1 South.
BBC 1 London works.
The EPG listings, mostly, didn't work.
Thankfully everything appears to be happy after a reboot of the machine. I really really wish it was possible to do this via a menu option as it doesn't 'like' having the power pulled for the requisite thirty seconds.

Therefore, I will offer - if Pace are willing - to learn how the system works and create an upgraded version of the firmware that goes towards answering some of my concerns and quibbles. I'll also - as should be obvious - be willing to sign any NDAs necessary. I wonder if my 64Mb 466MHz W98SE computer is up to this? :-)
Here's hoping that somebody is listening...

 

2005/03/07

Don't you like the "Hello from sunny France!" picture? I think the kitten (meet 'Ed') makes it all the better... This picture was not processed to have this horribly cold blue hue; it was taken just after sunrise the other day, and it was actually horribly cold. The blue is exactly as the video camera saw it, and that's even after trying to get a white balance outside. It was cold. It isn't much better right now, to be honest!

As the intro picture changes, I have reproduced it here...

A boring bit of wall... boring bit of wall... The top of the dish... Trees in the background... Trees in the background...
A boring bit of wall... It's an air vent for the old oil furnace... That's Nounou in the background, he climbs stuff... The pond, in the background... The pond, in the background...
A boring bit of wall and an equally boring bit of tarmac... Can you spot the Woody Allen ant? The wall bracket isn't terribly useful when mounted like this! Dish, lower left... When aliens attack, they will land right here...
Meet "Big Ed"... he wants to know when he'll get to see his first daffodil... The dish is also held in place, at the sides, using the grooves in standard ridge tiles... If you look carefully, you'll see a little rock tucked under the LNB arm to help prevent up/down movement... The purpose of the big rock is to press against the LNB arm thus stopping the dish from sideways movement (in REASONABLE winds!)... ...or maybe here? Nobody is entirely certain where they'll land.
Big Ed woz 'ere! Big Ed is 'ere... Oh look! It's a piece of wire to chew on! Ensure there's slack, so when idiots (such as myself) trip over the wire, it doesn't do too much damage! This is remarkable because it is so utterly unremarkable. Aliens won't bother landing here... Or will they? <cue spooky music!>
(if you have MSIE, try letting your mouse 'linger' over parts of this picture)

I have added a selection of pictures to my favourite movies on the Horror Channel reviews page, and also updated several of the reviews to be more detailled. Additionally, I have given each movie a 'score' out of ten. It is pretty obvious how that works - a 9/10 film (i.e. Asylum Night) is something that you should go out of your way to watch. A 1/10 film (i.e. Revenge of the Psychotronic Man) is something you should go out of your way to having 'better things to do than watching that rubbish'. In the specific case of Psychotronic Man, painting a wall and watching it dry would be much more fulfilling...

 

2005/03/08

All through yesterday the box was signal-less. It locked in enough that I could trawl the news and watch all but a five-minute chunk of Cat People. It lost signal again, but came back - glitchy - for Turkey Shoot's second showing.
So I added Turkey Shoot to my THC reviews page, and got to work on coding the 'tracing' subsystem of my 6502 system emulation ... that's probably gibberish to a lot of you. Never mind... :-)

 

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