It is definitely wet outside as I write this, but I can't say I've seen any heavy rain, and yet that is what even the revised forecast says should be happening right now. It makes me have doubts about the possibility of some sunny spells this afternoon. The revised version of the forecast, revised about 3 hours after the version shown in the screenshot above, paints exactly the same picture. So hopefully it will be brighter, with a few sunny spells this afternoon, and that it really will manage 16° C for a while today. 10° C is feeling very cool at the moment ! Tomorrow may feature some sunny spells, but they may only happen in the morning. Before and after that there is a persistent threat of rain, and some could be heavy. It may be a degree cooler tomorrow - no higher than 15° C.  
   
    Yesterday was a mostly dull day, and I am not just talking about the weather. I wasn't really inspired to do much at all. I don't think I could even be bothered to have a shower. However, I could be bothered to wash 3 t-shirts and some other stuff. I dried it in the dining room on the clothes horse. It was a good excuse to put some heating on down there. That made it comfortable to do a tiny bit of work down there.

  That tiny bit of work was part of a project to see if I could do anything with three recordable disks (2 DVD-R and one CDR disks) that my friend Michael has lent me to see if I can do anything with them. One was actually just a DVD of a movie - maybe burnt from a downloaded file. That would probably have been done by Michael's son who is rather more technically savvy than Michael.

  The other two disks were of the band Michael's son was in (I think they disbanded 10 or more years ago). One is an audio CD containing 5 tracks recorded at one of their frequent (by the sound of it) gig at The Railway (as was) opposite Bromley North station. The other was a video DVD of their Final, final gig at The Railway. It appeared to have a menu for individual songs, but it is actually one long (53 minutes) with chapter markers for each item on the menu.

  Before I could anything to these recording I had to rip the disks to my PC. This was not as easy as it should have been. My best guess is that when I took my PC apart to clean it, and replace the burnt out graphics card I must have knocked out the connection to the optical drive. It still has power to it, but the PC refuses to acknowledge it's existence. However, I did not realise this at first, and thought that the CD and DVD disks were in poor condition, and just not playable.

  One option I had was to find an old CD drive and connect it via a USB connection, and see if that could read the CD disk. My reasoning was that a purely CD drive may work better than one with three lasers to read CD, DVD and Bluray disks. With the CD happily ripping using the external drive I took the DVD disks down to my laptop. That showed one was just a movie, but the other was the band, and I started that ripping. My old laptop is very slow for this sort of thing, and I knew it would take all day, but I was in no rush.

  Once the CD had ripped I started to work on the first track to see what I could do to make it sound better. I quickly realised that there was very little I could do to improve it. If there had been I would have probably rebooted my PC into Windows XP, and used Cool Edit Pro. All I have for audio processing when booted into Linux Mint is Audacious (available for Linux, Windows, and Mac - and it is perfectly free and legal). It can do anything Cool Edit Pro will do, but it doesn't make it very easy to do for a variety of reasons.

  Fortunately the only thing I could think of doing to the first track of the CD was to reduce some of the low frequencies a bit to help the "boominess" of the pub, and a little bit of boost of the mid-high frequencies to make it sound a little more crisp. Neither did much to improve the sound, but both helped a little. The main thing that needed doing would have been to increase the singers mic volume compared to the instruments. That is impossible on what is essentially one mono channel (plus a little stereo ambience as the sound echos around the pub). To do stuff like that it would have to have  been recorded on a multitrack recorder, with the mic on a separate channel.

  After doing the first track, and realising how little difference I could make, I sort of gave up. I will get back to the other tracks in due course, but maybe not on a day where the cold grey light filtering through the windows is sapping my enthusiasm for anything but eating. Also on another day I think I can possibly do more good to the video. The sound is very similar to the CD recording, and I might fiddle with it a bit, but more importantly I think I can improve the video. It is a bit grey with weak colours. It all depends on how much noise and grain there is, but I think I can make it a little brighter, and a little more vibrant. It will really be a job for my new PC - if my 2TB hard disk I ordered ever arrives !

  I was very aware that I kept feeling hungry because of a mix of boredom and the blues. I think I probably thought I could control it better if I allowed myself to partly give in - carefully ! At lunchtime I decided that soup was the order of the day. Some hot soup would warm me up as well as fill a void in my stomach. I took a big chance on a rather old and dusty can of smoked haddock chowder. I am most wary about fish, but when I open the can it smelled fine. I did think that maybe there might have been a hint of a slight metallic taste, but that disappeared after I added some hot pepper sauce.

  I think the reason why I had kept the can so long was because I was not sure whether soup based on smoked haddock was a good idea. It probably wasn't. I can't say I really enjoyed it, and my feelings were probably neutral - neither good nor bad. I had a second can of soup, and that was just chicken soup, and rather nicer. Soups coming up sooner or later include chicken with asparagus. It was another soup bought out of curiosity that I have a feeling I may not enjoy, but you never know.

  Dinner is always the major meal of the day, and in an ideal world the only meal of the day. Last night it was baked beans with a Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie. I tried a now cooking method yesterday and it almost worked. I used just the lower heater in my mini oven and grill, and set the time for almost an hour - far longer than the suggested cooking time. Just using the lower heater stopped the piecrust burning, and the long cooking time did allow it to rise. If I had then put on the top heater for a bit longer it might have even crisped up the piecrust. but I didn't, and the crust was still a bit grey. It is probably the best I have done using the little oven/grill.