Fuzzy England

/

Some things you just get sucked into. Like watching your national football team play not very well against a country you've never heard of. Trinidad and Tobago? Sounds like a circus double act to me.  Or a follow up to "Lilo and Stitch". Anyhoo, I only watched the last ten minutes (which in this game was probably the best thing to do).  The thing that struck me,  after I'd got over the rather lacklustre display of the our sporting heroes, was the poor quality of the video signal.

Now I know the signal is coming all the way from Germany,  but I've seen much better quality than this.  It looked like it had been seriously compressed. When the players started running their legs turned into a blocky blurr and when the camera panned quickly the screen really looked rough. I'm pretty sure it is not my telly though, 'cos I've seen some lovely looking pictures in the past.

The cynic in me is wondering if "they" are trying to push us all towards High Definition TV by making the standard offering look bad. Surely not....

EX Marks the Spot

/

Went to see "Xmen, The Last Stand" tonight. When number one daughter got back from it she told us "I don't think they'll make another one". Having viewed the film, I can see what she means.

The thing that struck me first was how many of the cast become "ex-men" so early in the show. Barely have the credits finished than staple members of the team are being sent off to various untimely ends. Things get so bad that we have to call up the reserves in the form of a nervous looking lass who can run through walls and a chap whose special mutant power seems to be the ability to wrap himself and others in tin foil. Useful on a Sunday when preparing the chicken, but not much beyond that I would have thought. When they finally resorted to getting Frasier and covering him in blue fur I'm afraid the movie lost just about all its credibility as far as I was concerned.

On the baddie side we had the newly arrived Vinnie Jones as Juggernaut, who had the power to act like Ant and Dec in the credits for their Saturday show. Actually, power to act is probably putting it a bit strong. As far as I'm concerned, the next time they let him get involved in a film he should just be permitted to stay behind the camera and make the tea very quietly.

Anyhoo,  pretty soon there was lots of mayhem and tear jerking in just about equal parts. Lessons about life were learned. And life for lots of extras was dramatically shortened. Things happened for no particular reason and then it went quiet again. And then the film ended, with a fairly stupid hint that there will be more to come. As if. 

Slightly less mindless than the Fantastic Four. Not in the same country (let alone street) as Spiderman. But on balance, worth a visit I reckon.

Slingboxing Clever

/

I bought another gadget last week. I'm selling a few bits and bobs on Ebay as part of the process of gadget turnover and so I reckoned I could afford a different toy. This one is called a Slingbox.  These things are all the rage in the 'states at the moment and were launched recently in the UK.

The name is a kind of clue to what it does.  It takes your TV and slings the picture round the world And it is a box. A rather ugly (to my eyes), silver box with writing on the top. However, how it looks is not a problem, since you never need to see it. I've got mine hidden underneath the TV at home.

When you buy a Slingbox you get quite a few wires as well. There is one to link your Skybox to your TV aerial (it has a Freeview Digital TV tuner inside so it can receive terrestrial TV), another to link to your Satellite or cable box (I've got mine plugged into my Sky+ box), a third wire to some remote control emitters so the Slingbox can control the Sky+ box, a power lead and finally a cable to go into your home network. 

What the Slingbox does is take your home video and make it visible on a network. You run the Slingplayer program in a PC and if it can connect to the Slingbox it can view a video signal that the box sends. So you can take your notebook PC into the garden and watch the Paul O'Grady Show via WIFI.

Things get even more interesting if you have a broadband connection.  By careful tweaking of the settings in your network router you can make your Slingbox visible on the internet (the instructions tell you how to do this and there is also an automatic method which might work for you).  Then you can watch your telly from anywhere in the world with a network connection. Including (possibly) at work.  Lots of people have bought Slingboxes with a view to doing this. Be warned though, that it doesn't always work. If your employer has any kind of firewall in place then you might find that packets don't make it from your front room to your cubicle. There are some sneaky configuration options that you can try which might allow the data to tunnel in to the corporate network, but this is a bit of a grey area. As is watching the telly in company time I suppose.

I really got the box so that I can watch stuff anywhere in the house, and also when I go away (public networks and hotel networks should not be restricted in this way). I also discovered that they will be releasing a player for mobile phones and pocket PCs which would be sooo cool that I just can't resist it.  Being able to watch TV on my Imate Jasjar sounds like a lot of fun.

For what it does, I reckon the Slingbox is good value.  There are other ways that you can get a similar effect, but these involve much a larger investment in computers, TV tuner cards and the like. I don't think that my Slingbox will be apearing on Ebay any time soon...

Happy Snaps

/

I had to get some more photos of me taken today. It is for my free trip to India in August, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Anyhoo, I sat scrunched down in the seat so that my face fitted the oval and was imortalised on film wearing an appropriately grim look.

As I was waiting for the pictures to come out of the slot I got chatting to a little old lady who was sat by the machine, and had watched me go into the booth. "You know", she said, "You can get them done a pound cheaper just over the road". Thanks for that.

Heated Discussion

/

I've come to the conclusion I don't like the summer. I know that we all wait anxiously for it, and moan when it doesn't turn up (like this year) but when it comes I don't like it.

As David was saying as we wandered out to get an ice cream, if it is cold you can always add another layer. But if it is too hot there is nothing you can do about it once you have taken off all your clothes. The mental image that this conjured up almost put me off my lolly.

Buggy Bug

/

I excitedly told Peter about my bug purchase at coffee today. "Whatever you do" he said "Don't put the latest version of the software on it". Guess what I had spent last night doing. I suppose I can always remove it, although it seems to work OK at the moment.

I mentioned that sometimes the signal drops and Peter said "Oh, just tie a bit of wire on the end of the aerial". Now if anybody else had said that I would have told them not to be silly and gone into a long discussion about wavelengths and radio waves and stuff and how this could never work, all based on the Physics that I did before I found out about computers.

But Peter is properly qualified and knows about wires and things and so, this lunchtime, I found a bit of spare cable and tied it on the end. And it works. Who says that qualifications are useless?

Cracking Up

/

If I have my time again I know what I want to be. I want to make car windscreens.  I want a job where the consequences of failure are minimal and customers pay for your mistakes. Today I went out to my shiny new car (not quite as shiny as it used to be - really must wash it) and found an enormous crack in the glass. This has appeared from nowhere, without me doing anything. I'm completely at a loss to explain it. The only thing of which I am absolutely certain is that I did not cause the crack, i.e. it is not my fault. I rang the garage and asked if such things were covered by warranty, since it was obviously faulty.

The chap on the other end snorted and said something along the lines of "Well, it is a windscreen. What do you expect?".  When I mentioned that I did not expect it to break of its own accord he then asked if there had been any rioting or other activity outside my house which might result in such damage. I said that I was pretty confident that nothing of that nature had happened,  I'm sure I would have noticed rampaging street gangs. As far as he was concerned it was not a matter for the manufacturer (i.e. the person who made the car and windows) but the owner (i.e. the person who bought a new car specifically to avoid having to pay for things that drop off it).

So you can make windscreens as duff as you like and if they break it is not your fault. Never. In fact it gets better, since when the screen breaks the poor sucker with the car has  to buy a new one. So you can generate new business simply by turning out screens which self destruct like mine has. 

The only good news is that it is covered by insurance, but it still means I have to mess around getting it fixed and stump up an excess. No fair.

Got me a bug

/

I have always envied Peter his bug. He got it a while back and he reckons it is very nice.  Yesterday in Tesco (is there a day when I don't go shopping?) they had one at a very nice price. So I now have my own bug.

It is a digital radio which can also record to memory card. I want to use it in the kitchen.  At the moment the kitchen radio only works properly if the dishwasher is open - no, I've no idea why this is - and I was looking to improve matters.  I was expecting to have to add a special aerial and stuff like that because we are in a kind of "Bermuda Triangle" where things like radios are concerned. However, it just works.  Very impressed. It pulls in a good signal and now I can listen to all the childrens programs on BBC Radio 7.  Great stuff.

Durham Discussions

/

01durhamrowing
Jolly boating weather

Drove up to Durham to see number one son today.  After we had got together and sat down for a coffee we had a discussion about who said what last time we met up.....

With the way that portable memory is getting cheaper and cheaper I can forsee a time when we all wear a thing which records everything we say and do (I think HP and Microsoft have played with these in the past). Then there will be none of the "But I distinctly remember that you said...." moments. Instead we will all just rewind to the precise point in time when the words were uttered and then argue about what they meant at the time.... Not sure if this is progress or not though....

Russian Reactor Dreams

/

I blame Sky One. I had a dream last night that I had been made in charge of a Russian nuclear reactor. They had given me a bright yellow survival suit outfit (like they wear in the movies). I was sitting at home in this thing (trying it out for comfort) and reading through some reports which were all written in Russian on bright yellow paper. They seemed to have the Russian for "Urgent" and "Danger of explosion" written all over them, although I'm not completely sure as I can't read the language.

I was just inspecting a datestamp on one of the more impressive looking warnings, and trying to find out if it was in the future or the past (not sure how Russians order their dates) when number one wife looked over my shoulder at the page.

"You ought to get one of those" she said, pointing at a picture of a complicated thing that looked like a reactor seal or something. "It only costs 25". I looked at the number and was about to explain that 25 could mean feet high, million Roubles (or kopecks or whatever) or years old when I heard an alarm in the distance....

Fortunately, at this point I woke up.

Uncontrolled Laughter

/
01ComputerUncontrolled

Not sure how to interpret this message.

Did a talk today for our ACE event, where we invite local students from local schools to take a look  at our university. It went very well, and the audience were great.  The Middleton Hall, where I gave the talk, has this really posh presenter control thing which I got to play with. And I used my new laser pointer. To point at things! Wow! (perhaps I am too easily impressed - even at my age). Anyhoo, we had a good time, and I'm doing it all over again next week.  Just hope that the dog behaves better next time.

02TheMan

Before the talk, the shadow of "the man".

03Digby

The audience being wowed by Digby, again. Digby has his own group on my Flickr site if you want to see more pictues of him in inaction.

Spoiler Spoiler

/

01bongo friendee
Sans Spoiler...

Do you want a spoiler for your Bongo Friendee? Dave next door  does, but then there are other people out on the internet who do as well. With one minute left the item was priced at 51 quid. I was under instructions to go as far as 70 so, in the last minute of bidding with only seconds to go, I fired off my one and only bid.

And somebody else got the spoiler for 93.50.   Wah.