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7 December 2019 (saturday) - Technology


After working for six days continuously I was looking forward to a lie-in. It was such a shame that Treacle had to tread on my goolies quite so early this morning. I didn’t really sleep much after that.
I got up and had a shave. And then took the dogs out for their ablutions. Such a shame they wanted to go one at a time. Still, it is better than their usual charging into the garden all together just to run round shouting. I’ve been trying to stop that, but not with much success.

I made toast, and had a look at Facebook to see what had happened overnight. There was mild consternation on the dog-related Facebook pages at Peter Purves having been dropped from Channel Four’s annual coverage of Crufts. I don’t watch it myself; I must admit I thought that Peter Purves died year ago.
Another friend was banging on about “the true meaning of Christmas”. This is something which has been banged on about for years. What is “the true meaning of Christmas”? Muslim friends of mine have been telling me about their preparations for Christmas. For them (as for millions in the UK) Christmas isn’t a religious thing. It really is one big party for all.

I then programmed “Hannah” for a little mission to hunt some film pots. The GSAK software I use was particularly problematical today. I finally got it to work on the fifth attempt.
Despite the dogs shouting and whining the whole way we drove out to the back of beyond where there is a series of geocaches (would you believe it?). We originally walked them four years ago but in the meantime ten of them have been replaced. Personally I would have replaced the lot rather than just replacing ten, but that’s just me.
We had a good walk… well… it was rather pretty, but the dogs were “difficult”. There were pheasants absolutely everywhere. Fudge was pulling like a train trying to get them, and Pogo and Treacle played up for "er indoors TM" and dragged her about. She got to see what I have to contend with. And it was rather muddy too. I took a few photos as we walked, and once home the dogs all had a bath.

With baths done I took Sid (who is staying with us for a little holiday) to get his claws clipped. You’d think they were trying to murder him judging by the noises he was making. Whilst the nice ladies in the pet salon fought with him I slipped next door to Curry’s to get an HDMI cable.
I wish I hadn’t.
Between the ChromeCast, the Amazon Firestick, the Sky box and the DVD player we’ve got one more HDMI device than the telly has HDMI slots. "er indoors TM" had obtained a second-hand gadget that we could plug the devices into, then plug the gadget into the telly. What a simple and straightforward idea…
Our house is so hopelessly cluttered that I demolished the entire mantlepiece just trying to get to the back of the telly.
I wired it all up, and absolutely nothing worked. The second-hand gadget wasn’t working. But then when I plugged it all back together as it was originally, I had something of a disaster. The ChromeCast and the Amazon Firestick worked, but the SkyPlus box simply said “this display does not support HDCP”.
Oh, how I laughed…
After about three hours of fighting with the thing I have established that (somehow or other) the HDMI output form the SkyPlus box has been poggered. I’ve bodged it all so that we can watch Sky via the scart cable, and over the next few days I shall have to decide if we are happy with this, or do we go SkyQ.

"er indoors TM" boiled up a rather good bit of scran which we devoured whilst watching (via scart) the final of “Junior Bake Off”. A rather good show – if you’ve not seen it, it might be on the catch-up thingy…

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