Thursday, January 01, 2009

The day

We did not have any special celebrations last night, and it was very nice to be able to go to sleep without having to worry about the idiots down the road starting a fire with fireworks this year. They are banned in this county, you see, and I guess most people didn't want to take the trouble to drive to a "legal" county for fireworks this year. The ban is due to the bad drought. Normally I would be against such nannyism, but there are too many people around here who are not responsible with their fireworks fun. So it looks like the added inconvenience worked this time.

We had some in-laws over for lunch today, plenty of black-eyed peas, of course (fresh! not canned!), and I spent a lot of the day working with Avidemux again. I thought I had it all figured out, but there is a problem that is causing my computer to crash and shut itself off when the software gets about halfway through saving the new file. So I'm still working on it. My first job was to edit the Blackadder Christmas special that I had DVD'd last week. I cut all the commercials out, which reduced it from 60 minutes to 42 minutes. But due to the computer crash problem I still haven't been able to render it into a format which will be suitable for playing into the DVD recorder and re-recording. I'm going to try a different format tonight and have it start when I go to bed, because it's going to take a few hours to run the job, if it doesn't crash again.

I watched Fort Apache today. Or most of it. I went to sleep during part of it. I'm not going to try and write up a post on this old western, because it's too well known. I just wonder: what was the point? That Colonel Thursday was a nutcase with a suicide wish? In any case, I just have to say: when Shirley Temple was 20 years old, she was a total babe.

5 comments:

  1. It is interesting that you watched Fort Apache because we just watched it the other day, too. First time I saw it. I had the same exact reaction as to the point. It was undeniably well acted and directed but the end where they acted like Fonda had somehow been heroic for stupidly sending all his men to certain death was a bit of a puzzler. I guess they were just grateful that he had the decency to get himself killed to boot!

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  2. Those Black Adder CDs you have.
    They'd make a good B-day present for the wife, is there any way I could give you a handfull of CDs to make copies?

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  3. The only episode I have is the Christmas special they just aired recently. I don't have any other episodes, not even on old VHS tapes.

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  4. They had a new one?
    I don't remember that.
    Any way I could get you a CD to copy it?
    It would be better than nothing.

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  5. It's not a new one. It's the old "Blackadder's Christmas Carol" from the 80s. Blackadder starts out nice but after being visited by a spirit he turns evil. If you want it, email me.

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