Alden Bates' Weblog

My old DVD player had been giving me a bit of grief for a while now. An aging Philips 711, it had started refusing to play some DVDs and had trouble with others. It was a reasonably good DVD player otherwise, apart from a bizarre design flaw where it was impossible to turn off the on-screen multi-angle icon (it seems to be common with anime DVDs to provide a second angle which contains storyboards).

So on Monday I bought a Panasonic DMR-ES30V VCR/DVD-R combo to replace the Philips and my similarly aging (but still trustworthy) Mitsubishi VCR. So far I'm pretty impressed with it. Though I haven't tried recording to DVD-R yet, taping to VHS works fine, and it didn't have any trouble at all playing the DVDs which my Philips would simply spit out...

The only drawback I've found so far is that it doesn't send video output through the RF out, only via the RCA video out, but that's only a problem for me because of my stereo (it has no remote so I have to lunge across the room to mute the adverts). I may post a more detailed review later.

The time display on the front panel acts as a pretty good night light too. :)

Sometimes events can conspire to give your web site a sudden spike in traffic:

Back in TSV 26, an article called The Comic Connections was published. Amongst other things, this article made mention of the comic book V for Vendetta. The article, including a comic frame from aforementioned comic book, is currently archived on the NZDWFC site.

Released this month is the movie version of V for Vendetta. I haven't seen it yet, but it looks pretty good from the previews. Unsurprisingly, a lot of people are doing web searches for it, and the comic frame from The Comic Connections happens to lie on the second page of Google image search results.

Last month, the archived version of the article got a total of around 260 hits. So far this month, the total hits is around about 2800.

Of course, there's a price to fame: lots of people (mostly on forums) have remote-linked to the comic book frame or, as I've now redirected it to, tubgirl.jpg. Is there no end to the amusement I can get from that jpg?

... will not be gracing my music collection, despite the fact I spotted a copy in the store the other day. Not only does it contain Copy Corruption technology (or "Copy Control" as it's more commonly known) but it also contains the evil Sony rootkit malware.

Amazon UK have it, but it's listed as an import and I'm not game enough to order it without knowing where they're getting it from and whether it has Copy Corruption/Rootkit crap on it.

It's a shame because I really enjoyed Melody A.M..

While reading my Yahoo! Mail, I got this error:

There was a problem accessing your account.

We recommend clicking the "Refresh" or "Reload" button on your browser's toolbar. If this doesn't correct the problem, re-login to your account. If the problem persists, click here to send us a report.

We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience.

So I clicked on "click here" (great link text there, Yahoo!) and got "Sorry, the page you requested was not found."

Brilliant!

Today I attempted to buy a can of V from Pak 'n Save. Since I only had
two items I went to the express lane.

* Checkoutgirl1 waves can over barcode reader a couple of times
Checkoutgirl1: Oh, it hasn't got a barcode
* Checkoutgirl1 waves can at fellow checkoutgirl2
Checkoutgirl1: What's the price on this? It hasn't got a barcode
* Checkoutgirl2 goes to look at shelf
* Checkoutgirl1 waves can at Alden
Checkoutgirl1: It'll just be a minute
* Checkoutgirl2 returns with price
* Alden pays and takes can gingerly in case it explodes

Seriously, WTF? Do Not Shake The Carbonated Beverage.

Actual query string used to find my weblog:
"use a 1.5gb image for myspace background"

I could cry, I really could. Anyone who thinks that's a good idea should be banned from the internet.

Another recent query to result in someone finding my weblog was "Princess Alden" *boggle*.

The River Road runs parallel to the Hutt River and bypasses Upper Hutt; I use it to drive to work every day. About 1/3 of the way up the River Road it crosses the river which requires a bridge (oddly enough). On either side of the bridge there are two fairly sharp bends which require traffic to slow to about 75kph and, as you might expect, there's been more than one accident there.

A couple of months back the city councilTransit NZ resealed one of the corners, and put a couple of "slippery when wet" signs up. So the resealing has acutally made the road surface more dangerous than it was before? WTF? Shouldn't they be trying to improve the road? Where is the logic?!

So last night I got TSV 35 online - you may note the new format for the index page (you can view either a segregated mode or a straight print listing). Please let me know if you have any problems with it.

As usual, there's some pretty cool stuff: a feature on the Titan Script Books, a piece by Kate Orman on the writing of The Left-Handed Hummingbird, the welcome return of Tardis Tales after a couple of issues absence, and the launch of a new regular column titled Beyond the Book, which delved into the background of some of the New Adventures. In TSV 35, Beyond the Book examines Lucifer Rising and White Darkness.

There's also yet another opinion piece suggesting Doctor Who should rest in peace as a series. He he he :)

So, now I have issue 35 online, I can look at going back and turning the earlier issues into XML and cleaning them up some so they all look spiffy! That should keep me out of mischief. :)

Just randomly, here's a bottle of sarsaparilla I bought yesterday. I post a picture of this mainly because of the instruction at the top of the label:

"Invert bottle before opening". Now there's a plan. A very messy plan. Someone fetch a mop!

I had a voucher for the DVD of the Wallace and Grommit movie The Curse of the Were-Rabbit at Whitcoulls, so I ambled in this lunchtime to pick it up. Which I was grabbing it off the shelf, I noticed they had the complete animated series of Peter Chung's Aeon Flux, so I grabbed that too. Then when I got to the counter, I was told that there was a current special: buy Curse of the Were-Rabbit and get Chicken Run for $5. I have no resistence to that sort of thing. :)

But I did fill up my Whitcoulls DVD loyalty card, so my next DVD is free. But after that, I'm not allowed in Whitcoulls for the rest of the month. :)