It is obvious there has already been some light rain or drizzle this morning, possibly around 7am, and the sky looks like it has more to offer. The latest revision to the forecast says light rain at 2pm, and drizzle at 3pm. I suspect there could be more than that today. Today's highest temperature could be just 12° C. Tomorrow could be cooler, just 10° C, but it might stay dry despite thick dark grey clouds all day.

    There was nothing particularly bad about yesterday, but it was another day with only limited action, and so often almost, but not fully boring. I did do one bit of physical work, and I did some useful research on my TV. I discovered a few things I didn't previously know.

  The one physical thing I did was to wash a few t-shirts and underpants. I had more underpants than I thought needed washing. I sort of noticed that my pile of ready to wear underpants was getting small, but not how small - there were still enough for clean underpants for as much as a fortnight, but last week would not include my favourites.

  One thing I can't remember is why I took a break halfway through doing that laundry. It was possible that my arms and wrists were complaining, or maybe it was my stomach and chest, or maybe it was because I wanted to get back to my PC where I was doing something that needed attention now and then. Actually, it was probably all those reasons, and maybe another I can't even guess at. Anyway, it was a delight to get all the washing hanging on the big clothes horse to dry.

  One much less physical job I did was to prepare my dinner quite early in the afternoon. The first bit was cutting up some sliced chicken breasts to make smaller, bite sized pieces, and then putting them in the mini oven/grill to cook. I then prepared a salad to add the cooked and cooled chicken to. It was very similar to the one I pictured yesterday, but I omitted the boiled baby potatoes, and the olives. The thing that spoiled what been a very nice dinner was that the timer on the mini oven stuck, and my chicken ended up dried out and tough, though fortunately not burned.

  The research I mention a few paragraphs above was to do with my wide screen TV in the front/living room. It has a USB socket that I once had a portable hard disk plugged into. I mainly used that to play videos and music through the TV, although not very often. One trouble is that the TV is very fussy about the format of a video file you try and play. I had hoped that I would find the optimum specification for a video file if I searched hard enough, but I never did.

  Eventually I had a better use for the portable hard disk, and used it elsewhere. meanwhile I was actually using the TV less and less as I preferred to watch TV on my PC. One thing I hard hardly ever done was to record TV programmes on that hard disk. Yesterday I decided to see if it was happy to use a 256GB USB thumb drive - it was ! There were two more questions I wanted answered.

  One question was whether I could play the recorded TV video on my PC. I found I could, and it seemed to be a good copy. The other question was one that I thought I already knew, but wanted to double check. It would be very handy if it was possible to record from other sources than just TV - for instance from a VHS video tape player. I think for copyright reasons that option does not work, although there is no technical reason why it shouldn't work.

  My original thought was that it would be a very convenient way to digitise some of my few remaining VHS tapes. maybe there is another clue in that sentence as to why it can't record from the analogue inputs - no digitiser capable of converting video to a video file format. It must do a partial digitisation to display the video on it's LCD screen.

  One test I may do today, if I can find a coax to coax cable, is to tune the TV into the analogue TV output of the VHS machine, and see if I can record VHS tapes that way. I have a feeling it will work, which would suggest the TV has a proper digitiser in it. Doing an "RF" copy was never that satisfactory in the past, and I would not expect a prefect copy, but it may be not too bad, and useful for some tapes.

  One other unintended experiment was to find the effect of sitting down for semi long periods in the rather cool, unheated, (15ﾟ C) living room. I started to watch some of a 1959, dubbed Japanese SciFi film "Attack From Space" (which is actually freely downloadable from the internet archive). It is entirely possible that back in the 1950s it was considered wonderful, but these days it is the sort of thing a comedy sketch might be based on.

  I watched maybe 20 minutes of it while I was actually recording it. I also set up the record timer for an episode of Fireball XL5, and I think it was 5 episodes of The Avengers being shown back to back. I would later watch those same episodes in the warmth of my bedroom, on my PC. On top of that I also have good copies of almost all The Avengers episodes as mp4 files on hard disk. I didn't need to record them, but I wanted to make sure they would load into my video editor so I can chop out all the adverts and stuff (a job I may do today).

  I guess I was sitting in the cold living room, wearing only a t-shirt (and trousers) for about half an hour. I felt fine when I went down there, and I was almost comfortable while sitting down there. It was a different story when I stood up to go back into the warm. My legs felt really stiff, and it was uncomfortable going up the stairs.  That chilling spawned more than stiff legs. All sorts of things, including my chest started to ache, and it lasted for hours after I was warm again.

  While The Avengers was recording on the TV downstairs, I was watching it upstairs, in the warm, and eating my dinner. As an idea for a chicken salad it worked well, but was spoiled by the well overcooked chicken. It was not exactly tough, but it was very hard, and difficult to stick a fork into it. Nevertheless, it worked as an experiment, and maybe when real salad weather returns I'll be using my variable recipe (no two dished ever the same !) now and again with properly cooked diced chicken.

  I watched all 5 episodes of The Avengers, and that took me up to 9pm. I thin went down to the big TV in the living room, turned it off, and retrieved the USB thumb drive. I tired it on my PC, and although the start of a few episodes had been clipped (but only through the opening sequence) I had some good clean copies of The Avengers. I shall try them in my video editor, maybe today, and possibly cut and copy the opening sequence from another episode to make a complete episode without advert breaks. It's all good practise even if that episode is not wanted.

  I was in bed at about 9.30pm, and I read until about 10pm. It seemed to take ages, maybe almost an hour before sleep overtook me. Once asleep, I slept rather well, and I didn't wake until almost 1am (or maybe 2am). It was obvious at that point that because it was a mild night I was too hot, and although the heater was on low, it was enough to waste electricity. I turned off the heater, and felt very comfortable until I woke up a couple of hours later feeling very cold because I had been sleeping nearly completely uncovered. On went the heater again !

  I feel sure I had some enjoyable dreams, but none seem to have stuck in my memory. So time to skip to checking my blood glucose. It is quite possible that the modestly big bag of Chilli and Guinness flavour crisps that formed most of my lunch, had a negative impact on me. My blood glucose readings were generally OK, but I would have liked to have done better. The Contour meter read 8.2mmol/l, and to my surprise the Sino Care meter read exactly the same.  I guess I should really describe that as very good, but not as good as the GlucoRX meter. That read an excellent 7.3mmol/l. Maybe my readings were actually pretty good, rather than not as good as hoped for.

  My blood pressure is pretty good too - just 110/50. All this means I am pretty healthy. It's just a shame about all the bits that hurts, or are stiff, and the fact that I seem to be constipated again so far this morning (but maybe only "so far").  None of the affects my plans for today, or at least not too much. Once I have shampooed and showered I want to go to the little supermarket on Catford Bridge, and stock up on loads of packs of Polish, Vietnamese, and other special instant noodles - plus other stuff !

  This afternoon should be another beer tasting session with Jodie. Unless she brings some awful beer with her, I think most of what is left in the beer fridges should be mostly nice stuff. Maybe, although of course it is pure fantasy, if I have some nice beer that I can savour, rather than quickly tip it down my throat to get rid of it, I could not over do my beer intake today, and end up with a hangover tomorrow ! Of course it would also help if Jodie was in a talkative mood, but I just know she will be stuck on her phone most of the time.