Yesterday afternoon was probably sunny
enough to go for a pleasant walk in the sun. The
day actually started a bit dull, and the afternoon
only featured sunny spells, or intervals, but with
the afternoon temperature reaching 15° C it seemed
a nice enough day.
I can actually see a
very attenuated, and hazy sun right now, and I
guess it is possible it might brighten up
enough to cast a shadow for a few minutes, it
seems that today is going to be nearly all
grey. There is very little chance of rain
until almost midnight, and the temperature
should reach about 13° C this afternoon.
Tomorrow may feature some rain, some of it
heavy, in the very early hours of the morning,
but it should have dried up an hour or two
before sunrise. Tomorrow could be a sunny day
- full sunshine for the morning followed by
sunny spells until sunset. It will probably
reach 13° C, but only for a short time.
The big thing yesterday was waiting for
two lots of booze to be delivered. First to
arrive, rather earlier than expected, sometime
not long after 1pm, was my whiskey. I had
noticed that Jameson, Stout Edition was on
special offer via Amazon. It was just under
£19, and that seemed cheap (by comparison). I
decided to invest in two bottles.
I have to admit that when I opened one
bottle, for a quick taste, it wasn't quite as
good as I hoped for. That's not to say it
wasn't good - it was ! It was sometime last
year when I first tasted what I thought was
Stout Edition, and maybe it was because I had
drunk several pints of Guinness beforehand
that I thought it was rather wonderful. The
only thing is that I seem to remember the
stuff I had last year came from a bottle with
a green label. I assume it must have been
something else. Oh well, this Stout edition is
very smooth, and very nice. It just lacks that
something that made the other stuff even
better.
My second booze delivery came much
later. It was just about dark, and so probably
just before pm. It was two cases of mixed
beers. One case was of Belgium beers, and the
other "World" beers. In practice several of
the world beers also came from Belgium. There
were 15 beers in each case. Some of those
beers will be drunk tomorrow, and more of them
the Thursday after (unless there is an
intermediate drinking session)
While the booze was the big thing in
one sense, much of my day was actually spent
transferring Hi8 Camcorder footage to my
laptop. I installed the software and drivers
onto the Windows XP porttion of my old HP
laptop, and it worked a treat. If I have one
complaint is that it tends to forget that I
want it set to the UK TV standard. It tends to
start up onto the American NTSC standard.
Provided I remember to check the config
settings before use it is no problem.
Once I got started I transferred quite
a lot of stuff. Much of it is boring outright,
and a lot will be boring without some heavy
editing. The software does include a video
editor. It is probably fairly rudimentary, but
maybe it could be used creatively. I should
try it some time, but I think I will probably
stick to the editor I know best...or used to.
It has been many years since I last used it!
This
is one bit of video I transferred
yesterday. It was shot on 28th March
1994, and shows the old Island
Gardens station on the Docklands
Light Railway.
This original DLR
station was closed, and demolished a few
years later when the Lewisham extension
was built. The new station is built below
ground, and leads straight into the tunnel
under the River Thames heading towards
Greenwich, and ultimately Lewisham. Also
seen in the video, although not that well,
is the old viaduct between Island Garden
Stations, and Mudchute station - also
seen, but also not that well. The viaduct
was originally built for the North
Greenwich railway, and would have carried
full sized steam engines to the terminus
there.
I had a novelty dinner last night.
It was roast meatballs with roast
mushrooms (big ones) and sprouts. The
mushrooms seemed very tough, and the
meatballs were underwhelming. The sprouts
were OK, but would have been better with
bacon or something. I don't know if
something in that dinner made a condition
that had started earlier seem worse.
Sometime before dinner I seemed to have
very mild cold symptoms - a stuff nose,
and occasional slightly wet cough. After
dinner it got worse.
Fortunately it seemed to be
receding by the time I went to bed.
I got to sleep OK, but maybe I had a fever
early in the night because I woke up
around midnight with a damp pillow, and
the edge of the duvet felt damp where it
was probably tucked under my chin. By then
all the symptoms seemed to have evaporated
away, but I did seem to have some trouble
with my legs aching in some positions
through the night.
It seemed like a single dream, but
I feel sure it was lots of small dream
that were more like inventing a script
rather than actual action. The seed of the
dream was from what I had been reading
before falling asleep. The SciFi story
broke all traditions when the hero of the
story went back in time twice. The second
time was to remind himself of something he
nearly forgot the first time he went back
in time. It is considered bad manners to
meet yourself from two different time
periods because of possible paradoxes...or
something.
That was the seed for me dream
where I was, in effect, the writer of the
adventure instead of being part of it. I
wasn't actually writing it, but I was
somehow aware of making it up as I went
along. I added an extra twist where as
well as time travel, our hero had also
travelled to an alternative reality where
he met himself, but in this alternate
reality he was a woman. It is odd how I
can remember the story outline, but none
of the actual story.
I felt sort of funny when I woke up
this morning. I basically felt OK -
nothing ached or grumbled than hadn't
ached and grumbled most morning - but
there was a strange edge to how I felt. It
was possibly some sort of premonition of
coming annoyances ! Anyway, I went through
my normal routine. My temperature was very
low, as usual, my blood pressure seemed to
be a bit high on the first attempt, but
was fine on the second attempt. My blood
glucose was up a bit, but nothing too bad.
It was after all that routine that
my troubles started. I noticed there were
updates for my computer. Part of the
update involved a new Linux kernel, and I
had worries about that. It needed a reboot
after installation - something unusual in
the Linux world. After the reboot my
computer would not start up. I tried a few
things, and some tests seemed to point to
a faulty hard disk. I booted up to a live
DVD and did a disk check from there. It
reported there were errors on my /home
disk.
That disk is the 2TB laptop sized
hard disk that I bought specially from
Amazon for my new PC. I think it was
described as refurbished or something.
That worried me, but I went ahead anyway.
Maybe I should have paid more for a brand
new disk. The first file system repair
ended with a fail message, and so I did it
again, and it finished very quickly, and
reported success. After that my computer
booted normally. I am going to have to be
very careful with that hard disk, and make
frequent backups until I can replace it.
My time was not wasted while the
hard disk was being checked/repaired. I
washed my hair, and had a nice shower.
Before I started washing my hair I made
use of the toilet, and that is when my
second trouble started. My 10 to 15 year
old temporary repair to the cistern flush
mechanism broke. Repairing that was
quicker and easier than repairing the hard
disk - in particular because the reason
for the broken flush was easy to
see. One day I will get a new cistern
tank, and my toilet will be flushable by
conventional means. In the meantime just
yank the wire loop up, but not too hard,
hold it for a tenth of a second, and let
go again - a perfect flush every
time most times.
I probably ought to force myself
out for a walk in the dull gloom of this
cloudy day, but I will probably stay in
getting fat again. I am sort of keen to
start trying to make something from all
the video I have transferred from
camcorder to laptop. If I really put my
mind to it I could probably produce (aka
slap together) 3 or 4 short videos. While
I am using the laptop I could make a
backup of my home partition of my main PC.
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