Draft!

[desperance]

I did at least find something I could do, hurrah! I took hard copy of the short story I've now been working on for a month (aaargh!) down to the Lit & Phil, read it through and scribbled on it. Just a very little. Either it's pretty much okay, or else it's so hopeless there is no point fiddling with it. I shall type in these few, these very few corrections and send it off tonight, both to my editor (mmm, long tall Geoffrey...) and to my pet scientist, for them to mock it muchly.

Then I committed virtual retail therapy (nearly bought a new DVD player, on the grounds that mine is ancient and modern ones are cheap and sexy; but then I got all stalled on the alternatives - a combination DVD/video player? a DVD recorder? a HDD/DVD recorder? - and did nothing at all) and so came home and hungry.

Whereupon I found something else I could do: I cooked, hurrah! A mushroom omelette, with fried ham. On toast. I have been living on sandwiches that I could hold one-handed, and filled pastas that I could eat with a fork; today I used a knife, for the first time in weeks. It was a little awkward, but hey. We got there. I am probably fit for human society again, or at least for dinner parties; the ability to use cutlery in public is my abiding standard.

Tired now. And ouchie.

Comments

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

We used to have a DVD player, and a video recorder.

Then we bought a DVD recorder (sans hard drive), and transferred all our videos onto DVD. So the video recorder went in an attic, and we had the DVD recorder and the DVD player (the latter is multi-region).

Then we bought the HDTV, and needed HDTV signals. So we got the Virgin V+ box (giving HD + hard drive recording + multi-channel recording), thus making the DVD recorder pretty much obsolete, unless we want to actually hand someone a copy of a program.

Then we bought a PS3, in order to be able to play Bluray discs (and maybe play a game, but probably not) (oh, we have *how* many PS3 games now?). And that plays DVDs pretty well, too.

So we're down to the V+ box and the PS3, with a DVD recorder and video recorder and DVD player in the attics.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Yup, that's kind of the process I was anticipating. I'm so laggardly in my late adoption of viewing technology, there's a theory abroad that it might be worth vaulting over the intermediate stages and going directly for the final set-up - but narrative logic does kind of demand that step-by-step approach, so I do foresee my own succession of boxes.

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

I used to sell high-end A/V equipment. Recommendation: Do NOT buy combo DVD/VCRs.

You have heard the phrase "Jack-of-all-trades, master of none"? It applies infinitely to these things. The manufacturers are trying to crap 2 separate devices into something roughly the size that 1 of them usually fits in. They cut corners to make things fit. There is not enough shielding. They overheat like a mother. I sold A/V gear for 1 1/2 years and in that time DVD/VCR combos were the #2 item returned due to crappy functionality or breaking (only wireless RF speakers were worse).

Sorry for the rant. I just hate those damned things. By the end of my time on that job I was telling potential customers that I'd rather sell them nothing than sell them a DVD/VCR combo, since it amounted to the same thing but with a lot less paperwork.

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

Of course, that line should read "manufacturers are trying to CRAM 2 separate devices..."

Sorry, little Freudian slip...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Actually, I liked crap...

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

"crap" does work there, and it's pretty accurate...

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks for this; it's really useful. I didn't know, and now I do.

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

NP. I just hate to see people buy them, knowing that inevitably they're going to regret it. I can't walk through the DVD-player section of an electronics store without twitching because every store has ONE of them.

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

I used to do a broadcasting technology policy job, and I am totally with you on that. I also twitch when I see shops selling brown coax cable, label bellwire as speaker cable, and sell gold scarts that cost £50 and aren't any better than ones that you can get for under a tenner.

Mind you, I feel the same way in department stores when they have one proper espresso machine and a row of those ghastly pod machines.

[metafrantic.livejournal.com]

At one store I worked at, we had a demonstration to show the difference between speaker wire: two identical systems side-by-side, same speakers, both hooked through the same receiver, etc. The only difference was, one had the really high-end speaker cables ($200/pair)and the other had the crappy generic stuff ($6/pair). And you really could tell a difference, there was a distinct upgrade in quality to with the high-end cables.

One day when it was slow, I took out the crappy cables and put in some low-end-but-slightly-better ones ($15/pair). Sounded exactly the same as the $200 ones.