While out on some daily exercise yesterday I took some photographs. It’s a nice reminder that once we are gone other life will go on.
Uplifting In These Times
Day Eight
I am currently starting day eight of my fourteen day self-isolation. My first day in this position, the very day after BJ announced these conditions, was my birthday. I had a new TV delivered. It didn’t seem so bad, I had time to sort out the entertainment room while also keeping in touch with my duties at work. The new TV was precisely the fault of me “popping” into Richer Sounds and seeing an advert for a Philips Ambilight television on one of their brochures. The price seemed good and I do have a Philips lighting system at home. Along with 4K [I’m skeptical] and HDR it didn’t take much for me to decide to get it delivered.
The TV was placed up and the 4K system tested. Now, it turns out the AV Amp and HDMI switch doesn’t pass through the 4K and HDR signal. This is a touch annoying. I devise a work around where HDMI cables go straight to the TV and then sound is returned to the Amp via ARC. That didn’t work, I couldn’t get the ARC signal to send. Not sure why but it was probably one of those tiny settings somewhere deep within the menu system. I must have looked through the TV menus over twenty times. It’s a terrible menu system by the way. So, next option was to use an optical cable to output 5.1 sound from the TV to the amp. I didn’t have a cable long enough so had to wait. For one evening I had to watch TV and have the sound come from the TV’s own speakers [horror].
Next day an optical cable was delivered and the sound signal was tested. Now I would have 5.1 sound output by the TV to the Amp. This seemed livable with. Except it wasn’t. My Amp is 7.2, the PS4 outputs 7.1 and two of my speakers would now be redundant. I tried. I honestly tried. The convincing factor that I wouldn’t cope with this was the sound delay needed adjusting for all inputs. This meant changing the AV-Sync settings whenever I switched TV source. There were too many little bits in between the sight and sound signals. What a disaster.
I went searching through all the instruction manuals [in PDF format on my computer] and sought a solution. I couldn’t find one. What I needed [ha, “needed”, what an interesting word] was an amplifier that would throughput 4K and HDR along with separating out the sound signals keeping my home system as it is. It didn’t take long to find what I wanted. So, I ordered the Sony STR-DN1080.
When it arrived I reckon it took two hours to unplug the entire old system and then wire up the new amplifier. I left the auto-calibration for another day when it wouldn’t be so un-neighbourly and just set up the basics. I checked the inputs worked, check the TV signal, checked the 4K throughput and HDR rendering. It worked and there was no sound delay, or if there was it was consistent between all modules to make the settings consistent.
Gran Turismo looks bloody gorgeous in HDR, can’t believe I’ve been missing this.
I Parish
The lounge is now fully equipped although no longer 3D compliant. The system works well and I have been really impressed with all aspects of it. The ambilight system is very impressive. I can even link the TV light system to existing coloured lights in the house and I did this with a LED strip I had. The strip is on the ceiling in the lounge and looks really nice. But, when connected to the ambilight on the TV it floods the whole room with changing light that is, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, too much. I disconnected that system. Maybe if my lounge was bigger than its current form it would be less overpowering. Can you believe I actually turned a TV feature off!
![Entertainment Corner [asymmetric]](http://fooyah.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/20200324_065658191_iOS-scaled-e1585033501534.jpg)
Above is nearly all of entertainment corner. There is a Sonos unit just hidden to the top right, it uses an optical cable to send signals to the amplifier, you can just see two wires top right, one is white [power] another is grey [optical]. So, here we have from the top; a BluRay player, PS4, Shield TV, Amplifier, PSVR unit. Yes, the cabling is a mess. No, I am not going to sort it out – I’m lucky enough that this all fits in this space. If I had rear access I might get in there and fiddle around. Yes, the USB Gran Turismo back up memory stick looks terrible. Yes, the USB hub needs sorting out, I have a plan. Yes, it is asymmetric, but I really like that so I don’t care. Yes, they are Lego bricks separating each unit for heat flow purposes and no, I won’t change that.
This is not a blank wall anymore. I’ve got quite a nice TV along with a decent sound system and games console. All I have to do now is avoid buying the PS Turbo or whatever it’s called. I think I can probably manage to do that.
I did have the issue of what to do with the old TV. I’m not really a TV in the bedroom kinda guy. Bedrooms are for few purposes and watching television is not one of those. I used to find it frustrating with an ex when she watched Tv in bed and all I wanted to do was sleep. The TV programmes were very poor too. I think that’s the first time I became aware of Gillian McKeith, she was presenting a TV show called “You Are What You Eat” which is true but not in the way she meant it. I remember her talking about eating raw seeds and how the whole plant’s energy entered you. It was a seed. Just a seed. Fucking dangerous bullshit.
So, the older television is now on the wall in the dining room. I’ve connected a Roku device to it so I can stream the audio-visual medium to the screen. I have plans to buy a Raspberry Pi and use that as a information screen type thing or possible to have live plane details on the screen. I’m not sure yet what to do with it. Putting this TV up did require some drilling etc but it was fun. When looking at the TV there is an issue where it doesn’t look horizontal but it is, the problem is the ceiling coving which isn’t level. If I had the uber-PS I could place the current PS4 with the dining room screen but I won’t be doing that.
My current project is to build a display onto the DR screen. My Shield TV already has Dakboard running as its screen saver and I quite like that but I don’t really want to pay for the full version so I am looking into using a Raspberry Pi and either a browser running on that in full screen with a self refresh timer or some software that will run a display board. I guess there are plenty out there. So, wait for the news on that.
Keeping The Sanity
I’m not sure if this will help or not but if you need it then there’s plenty of internet radio to help you out. This is one of my favourites:
Pow!
I was a little shocked yesterday after I wrote a tweet that kinda blew up. Normally there’re not many who view my words and thoughts and I understand that. Who would be interested in what I have to say? I am not a regular tweeter who has a particular theme. I’m not in a position of power. So, I just say stuff that comes to mind. Below is my tweet as of 0650 GMT Mar 23 2020.
Thinking about what I wrote there is one main reason it went viral and that is Whitstable was trending at the time and probably also Skegness. This means this tweet would appear in those selective areas of twitter when people browsed. I didn’t do this deliberately but if you wanted a tweet to “hit it big” then I guess including trending hashtags and words is the best way. You have to deliberately write a tweet with all the right ingredients to make it go viral [or just be a cunt like Piers Morgan].
My phone kept pinging with all the notifications that I turned off those notifications for Twitter. It was actually annoying. I also scanned a few of the comments that people wrote in reply but didn’t really take them in. Much like I don’t allow comments on my YouTube videos or these communications I’m not interested in your opinions, you won’t change my mind unless I know you and I don’t need the emotional mess that some comments can create.
If Whitstable and Skegness were [in reality] busy yesterday then I am once again amazed at how stupid people are. Mind you, the country keeps voting Tory so I should already know.
— Ian Parish (@iparish) March 22, 2020
I think what I want to do is explain what the tweet means. I had some people comment that Skegness doesn’t have tory voters and that it’s not just tories out in Whitstable. I’d like to point out that I didn’t say that. I hedged my bets on whether the news was reliable first using the [in reality] bit. This allows the trending tweets to be not true and allows me to still say what I want to say. If the reports were true then I explained that I am amazed at how stupid people are. I am amazed at that. It freaks me out just how much people don’t listen or do the best for themselves. I know about it a bit because I’m a human too [believe it or not] and we all do stupid things at times but I have to say, gathering in large groups at the moment is really fucking stupid.
After explaining the stupidity I placed a full-stop. This means that sentence has now stopped. I start a new one explaining that I already know people are stupid because they keep voting tory. I even capitalised the word tory and I often don’t capitalise words that I don’t respect, thank god. I’m not calling tory voters stupid, I’m sure they have their reasons [mostly selfish] and I wasn’t calling anyone at Whitstable or Skegness tory although I was calling them stupid. I am consistently amazed that this country keeps voting the tories into power. I was chatting recently and that person said “you don’t have to be stupid to vote tory just greedy”.
I am glad that as I get older I get more and more left wing. I think we should be helping each other more. I think we should have certain things in state ownership. I’m not a communist or anything like that and I even think businesses should be able to run themselves within a strongly regulated framework. I think we should all act and behave in ways that benefit society and treat people humanely. I don’t think we do that at the moment. Anyway, it was interesting seeing a tweet blow up [a little]. I am amused it has 499 likes. Not quite the 500, but that’s just an integer which is half of a power of our number base system. 245 would have been nice.
It’ll Still Be Here
I do like living in the country away from things. Well, I’m not really that far away from things; there are two motorways within five minutes, all the supermarkets you could want and I live under the flight path for a small airport, which essentially means this is an almost perfect place to live. It’s generally quiet, even though I can hear the M20 and also the Eurostar as it blasts its way through a tunnel in the North Downs, there are aircraft [at the moment] flying overhead on their way to the money centres of the world and small planes circle around doing their thing at Rochester. So, it’s not quiet but it’s my kind of noise.
My recent angst at all things human society have been calmed by the idea that even if we fuck it all up this planet of life will continue and something will stay here, alive and well. It could take a long time but maybe this planet will once again be an amazing world of life and beauty [beauty being a human property because of the way our brains work]. So, here are some photographs of this wonderful place. It might turn out that everything becomes forested again at some point. Wouldn’t that be great.
The vineyard below won’t exist but something will be there.
I Had A Moment
I wasn’t feeling great on Thursday and ws mostly convinced that “preppers” had got the right idea. I’ve been more chilled out since but I did order a battery operated radio just in case it all goes to shit. I can’t decide if it was paranoia or just plain silly but I did. This is a really strange time and I just don’t know what is going to happen.
I ordered this thing from Amazon. It’s a perfectly functional battery operated radio.
I keep going from wanting to not write anything about all this to wanting to write a lot about this whole thing. I feel it should be documented somehow for me to look back over one day.
It’s Almost As If
Our society wasn’t set up to cope with a massive short term change to the way it operates. By short term I mean in the order of months. We aren’t even months in and it feels as though the world is ending. There’s panic in the supermarkets and many many businesses are going to go bust. People won’t get paid and it’s not going to be pleasant.
If only our society hadn’t been chronically underfunded over the last ten years. If only the “gig-economy” wasn’t a thing. If only companies weren’t driven by responsibilities to shareholders but rather to a social responsibility that means they would look after their employees and make sure everyone had a decent standard of living.
We SHOULD be paying for goods and expecting everyone involved in those process to make them to be paid a FAIR wage. It is utterly immoral that they don’t.
This was meant to be the start of something big but I think I’ll have to leave it for a while. I might keep my ramblings short while we go through this.
Ride The Lightning – Metallica
Writing this in the middle of a spell of self-isolation is strange. I’m not sure if I’m going to write a communication covering what I think of the current Covid-19 nightmare we seem to be in. I’ve started writing something, not sure it’ll be coherent at all. Anyway, back to what I think about Ride The Lightning.
This album is a MONSTER. It’s raw and powerful.
- Fight Fire With Fire – amazing opening track Lovely.
- Ride The Lightning – possibly about being electrocuted in the chair. I don’t know, I don’t listen to lyrics.
- For Whom The Bell Tolls – look, it has a bass guitar melody. What more do you need. Brilliant song.
- Fade To Black – what all the latter Metallica songs are based on and they can fuck off. This is an amazing song.
- Trapped Under Ice – freezing. Dying. Horror.
- Escape – Possibly the least interesting song on here. But it’s still good.
- Creeping Death – Jesus, this is an amazing song. One of the times I saw Metallica they opened with this and it is a stunning song. Die, Die, Die, Die, Die.
- The Call Of Ktulu – an instrumental. Still great. SR was playing this once on the balcony of her holiday apartment in the Canary’s and it got strange looks. I don’t know why it’s genius.
This is an amazing album and it has that power to keep being great all this time later. I won’t pass on any of these songs when they crop up.