h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I haven't seen it- I'll add it to my list of films to check out. I saw the book in a used bookstore once and the synopsis sounded interesting.

You know, I I think I know exactly what you mean about the show perhaps getting too 90210- that would definitely make a show less appealing. I won't assume the worst, though! As long as there aren't any dumb romantic twists. I like my Doctors a little more removed from human relationships than all that.

oh yes, all that mooning over Rose got on my

The packet with the DVD arrived yesterday. We watched both Dr Who and Wallace & Gromit after dinner.

Thank you!

I enjoyed the Christmas special. The big Cyberking was a little silly, but overall it was a pretty good episode. The Rosita character was funny- a little of Donna, Martha and Rose all wrapped in one. It would've been kind of cool if The Other Doctor could've been explained by something other than "fugue state", maybe a more inventive reason for becoming/believing he was the Doctor, but one can only fit so much backstory into an hour program.

Wallace and Gromit was great! A number of things had us laughing out loud, and when Wallace and Piella were molding the bread in the kiln like that scene from that godawful movie Ghost, I almost peed in my pants.

Thank you SO very much!! You've made K and me very happy, and it's much appreciated.

glad you liked it - I thought it was a bit overdone, but the Gruesomes loved it.

Oh, I've enjoyed plenty of things that were overdone. Even bad Dr Who is better than a great deal of what's on TV most of the time.

Too bad the David Morrissey guy can't tag along as a future companion.

I loved the older episodes of the show when I was the Gruesomes' age- lots of those were silly and melodramatic, too.

Wallace & Gromit, though... that the forklift was wearing oven mitts reduced me to a giggling heap.

With W&G it's always the details that make me go into spasms of laughter.

Btw, with the Who specials - you want them right away or shall send them after they have all aired?

let me guess...

Well, of course there's a part of me that would love to watch them all as soon as possible after they've aired, but neither do I want to be greedy and place demands on your time (or your blank DVDs)! Unless, of course, there's something else I can do to make it up to you. So if you'd prefer to record them all and send them at once, I won't complain. (Much. )

There are just SO many little details in W&G to do that. I had to make K rewind a couple of times to see something again. When Wallace was with Piella and then all of the loaves of bread puffed up, I nearly drowned in my cup of .

And now we've created a monster.

We watched the DVD you sent on Monday.

Tuesday, after grocery shopping and while waiting for dinner to arrive, K asks if we can watch it again.

Last evening, we watched the three W&G shorts *and* Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

Care to guess what we'll watch tonight?

hehe
i was only teasing you - I'll get them in the post asap after recording them: you should have seen me since the last series of Who ended, just waiting for Christmas!

Btw, did you finish watching Blake's 7? What did you think of that?

Oh, phew! I would have been positively crawling the walls waiting!

We finished watching Blake's 7 over last weekend. I really like it! Gosh, so much to like. The character development was fantastic! I also thought the plot development was too, overall. And while the costumes- especially Servelan's- were a bit much at times, I thought the sets and effects were just as good as many other programs at the time. It's now among my favorites. (And I'm trying to figure out a way to get the episodes uploaded for Bel, so if you know of any good free or reasonably priced upload/download programs, please let me know!) Do you like the show?

I know absolutely nothing about uploading/downloading which is why I'm Stargate Atlantis and BSG free

I loved Blakes7 as a kid - but I've never seen it since it's first run on TV. Maybe when I retire!!

There are a lot of episodes. Phew! If you ever decided you wanted to watch it again I would be glad to hook you up.

Every time I think I've figured out how to do something technical, whatever I'm using becomes obsolete. But I'll get the uploading sorted eventually. Now if only I could get motivated to push on with my current project(s) of backing up CDs, vinyl and VHS to CD/DVD. I started on both and never got back around to it. Too busy, and too lazy when not busy. Sigh.

Meanwhile, if I inherit one more pain in the arse project at the office I think my brain is going to short circuit. Though I suppose I should be glad that my boss thinks I'm the best person for the responsibility (because I'm least likely to forget, most likely).

Don't fall into the trap I get in at work: you're the best person to do something, totally indespensible. Until they want to do something you don't like...

I'm being very firm with myself and my lot this year about that.

I finally got an external hard-drive to put my CDs onto. Now I need a USB record deck so we can start on the Vinyl. It's going to be a long job.

I have a USB thing for recording vinyl, but I was too cheap to buy the actual recorder and I just bought a device that plugs into the audio jacks on the turntable (or cassette deck) and then to a converter, then a USB port. I've got one for video, too, but have had trouble getting the audio and video to sync up properly, and never get around to seriously looking into it. I'm such a porcrastinator.

You're right about the work thing. Aside from being the best person (or most trustworthy, in this case) meaning you inherit an awful lot of work, there's also the bit about being indispensible meaning you never get promoted. We're such a small office and I never want to leave my department, but I'd love to move into another position in my department which involves much less involvement with certain other people.

Glad to hear you're being more firm about letting yourself be taken for granted at work. I always feel like a real jerk when I moan about how someone else is giving me a pain in the arse, when you have to deal with that chick who apparently slept her way to her position.

Don't worry about it. We all need to vent about work, just because my situation is horrible, it doesn't mean that I think anyone else is whiny. I can recognise a bad position when i see it


Promotion time again soon - I'll watch another load of them go above me, and my boss will (hopefully) remember the discussion we had about my christmas vacation

I hope so. Your boss sounds a bit clueless to me. At least mine's nice. It's a certain other person who gets on my . Well, two of them, actually. But since I post so much from work I'm leery about discussing it somewhere where other colleagues might stumble across it. So I'll shut up now.

But I really do wish that your situation weren't so horrible. I've been in a couple of really bad ones over the years and know how demoralizing it can be. Plus some employers make it so difficult to maintain a reasonable work-life balance, though they certainly seem to maintain one for themselves.

away from w**k it's the weekend

I have a question about your USB connection to your record player (I never thought of that - I have a record player so maybe I could save some

What software do you use? My mum has a USB record player, and it uses Audacity (which I have) - but how to convert to mp3 would be a problem for me.

The device I bought came with its own software- it's called Inport Deluxe and came with something called LP Ripper which converts to a WAV file; another program that came with it IIRC does the mp3 conversion. There's a little converter box; you connect the RCA cables to its "audio in" and your USB to its "audio out", then connect the other ends to the hi-fi and the computer accordingly.

However I have several other conversion programs, I'll see if any of them can convert (if you were to use your mum's player) and if so I'll let you know which one(s). I have a couple which convert various video files to DVD files so I am sure I have something which works with audio as well.

Incidentally, if this helps, you should be able to connect your turntable directly to your PC via the sound card, instead of a USB port. The sound card should have audio inputs to it somewhere, I'm just not positive where they are. As long as you have a pre-amp connected to your turntable (you don't want crappy sound quality, nor do you want to blow your sound card) you should be able to record that way. Here's a link to some instructions I found:

http://www.wikihow.com/Change-Your-Records-Into-CDs

I also found some info about doing this using Audacity:

http://lwn.net/Articles/304967/

I have Audacity but don't use it for this purpose.

And Easy CD Ripper will convert WAV to mp3: http://www.8to32.com/org/

oh thanks for all the info - I have no idea what any of it means, though! I'm hopelessly untechnical. I'll show and see what he thinks.

But it certainly sounds like the less expensive option - the USB turntables start at about €80 but I'm not sure how good they are.