And the Flat Screen TV c/w HD cable TV hookup and integration into the WiFi has Mrs Stevie smiling and heaping me with compliments and thank-yous in between bouts of binge Netflix-ing.

Next up: re-introducing surround-sound via the miracle of the wireless soundbar and removing to another place of the DVD player that opens only to close before you can load or unload a disc.

[Dan Re: Pre-made knockouts in the floor] Where's the fun in that? More to the point, where's the clear opportunity to deploy The Rule? Admittedly, this time all I got out of it was a couple of new spiral saw bits "needed" to saw out the hole in the sheetrock (actually, I should pull the 66s and 99s on account of me not being able to come up with an alternative method of cutting such a close-fitting hole without serious danger of cutting the cable too. (A lie, I have a small circular saw made out of an angle grinder that would have done almost as good a job while at the same time posing perhaps the greatest hazard to the user I have ever personally seen in a commercially available tool, and that includes the gas-powered chain-saw mounted on a ten foot pole and that never-to-be-sufficiently-damned McCulloch weed-wacker))

If your new TV supports HDMI-CEC it should work well with your Raspberry Pi. I paid more than the price of a Pi just for a CEC dongle for my XBMC box, but boy is it nice, you can use the TV remote for everything and let all the others moulder in a drawer. (You can sort of achieve the same result with a smartphone or tablet, but then you have to use separate apps for the TV and XBMC, the Viera app is pants, and it's really unhandy to slide between screens to get to the various controls.) It helps if your soundbar is also CEC compatible and connected to the ARC port. It means I can turn off the TV and just listen to music streams on the sound bar. (For that I do need to use the tablet or phone.)

Now if only my supposedly fanless HTPC actually ran stably without a fan. Fear to click: my USB fan hack. (The two sticky-up things to the right are external antennas I bodged onto it because the factory wifi was rubbish and if I'm going to have a Linux box next to a window I'll make it an access point so I can listen to streaming radio while snipping things in the garden.)

eh?

Sorry, should have prefaced that with "[Stevie]".

[Dan] I was lost at "dowel" ;-)

Well, I need something. The Vizio soundbar has it's own remote (intended to be used to configure it before the Vizio TV remote takes control and of greatest use to turn down the stupid levels of "awesome" factory configured into the sub-woofer) is pathetic and doesn't match the aesthetics of the black-with-colored-buttons of the Sony kit (TV and Disc Player) or the Cablevision (A silver ST:TNG phaser-like affair needed to change the cable channels). I finally got the Sony TV remote to control the soundbar, then realized I needed the cable remote to do that, but in making it recognize the telly (so the on/off button would work) ended up not being able to mute the television sound so it doesn't f*ck-up the surround sound panorama.

It is all very trying and a big argument in favor of buying all one manufacturer's kit (the disc player instantly integrated remote-wise with the telly).

The best picture seems to be with Blu-Ray discs, which look staggeringly good, followed by Netflix and other HD netty content, then HD cable and other signals a distant last place. The picture from all the non-disc sources seems (to me) to have the actors standing like cutouts in front of the backdrop. This is probably a matter of dialing down some factory preset. All the preset "modes" I found were eye-hurtingly bad; too bright (refelcting surfaces flared like Novae), too red, cartoonish sharpness etc. Once I killed the red by about 50%, made the sharpness a tad higher and knocked the shine off it all looked very nice indeed.

Everyone else in the extended family (who are all HD ents veterans) will probably feel the picture isn't colorful enough, but as I said to Mrs Stevie, I can't watch a face that has livid blotches all over it so I'd be grateful if she'd move out of my eye-line so I could see the screen to adjust it.

I was also mizled over the wireless bit of the soundbar, which was only between the sub-woofer and the bar, not to each of the satellite speakers as I had been led to believe.

I imagine watching me trying to buy all this stuff was very like watching the sketch from Not the 9 O'Clock News where Mel Smith tries to buy a gramophone and Rowan Atkinson tries not to sell him one.

Our telly has a "store display mode" which I think just means an obnoxiously bright picture. The thing about this is that, in principle, it is activated by drilling down about eight levels of menus. However there appears to be an undocumented shortcut that is trivial for a three-year old to activate. I wish I knew what it was, and whether this shortcut also deactivates it, because the menus that take you there are all obscurely named and give you the impression you're going to get it to self-destruct.

I'm thinking of getting a new TV to replace my ancient CRT, maybe in the post-pre-Christmas sales. However, my needs are rather specialised. I have no aerial, satellite, cable, or indeed a TV licence, and don't need any of these, as I only use it for watching DVDs. I'd like to also be able to watch video streamed from any of my computers or coming from the internet. What's the simplest way of enabling that, given that the desktop machine is upstairs and the TV is downstairs? Ideally I'd be able to sit downstairs and tap on my iPad or MacBook Pro to make TV stuff happen. Would it just be a matter of having a TV with a wifi connection (do TVs have wifi these days?) and setting it up as a second screen on my laptop (can laptops mount extra displays over wifi?)? Or something else?

Smart TV. Switch it on, acquaint it with your network password, wait five minutes while it updates its firmware and Bob's your uncle.

Of course, you'll have to fiddle with the levels to make it look right, but it's pretty much an out of the box and up-and-running experience for something with a computer inside it.

The important thing then becomes how many HDMI holes it has in the back vs. the number of cables you want feeding the thing.

Which in your case is one, but I'd demand two just in case you ever decide you'd like cable TV or whatever.

The ideal number of cables is zero, but I see there are such things as wifi to HDMI convertors. Presumably these do what the name suggests? A lot of them seem to be tied to specific services.

[Raak] Given that you use OSX and iOS devices I suggest you get the most basic TV that has the picture size and quality you like, and an Apple TV. In addition to having far more and better apps than a 'Smart TV', it will stream pretty much anything from your phone, iPad and Macs.

The trouble with Smart TVs is that they can be pretty poorly maintained when it comes to software updates; a year or two in and they're basically abandonware. The only thing I use mine for (app-wise) is Netflix, because all my servers and things are Linux-based and can't do DRM. And the Netflix app is terrible.

If my home setup were Apple centric (and I didn't develop this sort of thing for fun and profit), the Apple TV would be all I'd get.

[Dan] I've wondered from time to time what the Apple TV is. It looks like the way to go. That will bring to a total of 6 the number of Apple things-with-computers-inside I have.

Having made that endorsement I have to add that every individual option has limitations. Apple TV's is that they have a slightly more old-skool than average walled-garden approach, and their app selection is consequently limited. For example, because they have their own digital video store, they don't support any competing online video rentals like Amazon, for example. But if you want that there's a pretty easy workaround: install the Amazon Instant Video app on your iPad and then stream it to the Apple TV via Airplay.

The reason I recommend it is because you'll be able to access all your content from your various computers -- certainly anything that can be put in iTunes, and that includes movies you rip yourself with third party software like handbrake or source in other ways we won't go into -- and anything that it doesn't provide an app for you can fling at it from one of those devices. And it does have the characteristic Apple virtue that what it does have is less broken than everybody else.

[Dan] I've heard other people talk about Chromecast, and I have even less idea what this does than an Apple TV. Does it play nice with iDevices? Is it any good?and err indeed what does it do? The website is a bit vague

[rab] It's a web streamer you control with an Android device or (to some extent) a chromebook or the chrome browser. Essentially most things you can do on your Android device you can 'cast' to your TV. It's a bit like a dumber Apple TV, one that doesn't have its own onboard apps but just plays what some other device sends it (or tells it to play -- the distinction is blurred).

Depending on whether the app's media type and location is supported by Chromecast, the 'source' device may actually be doing the work of fetching and rendering the material and 'casting' the A/V output to Chromecast, but commonly it's just sending the URL and various tokens and chromecast is doing the actual fetching/decoding.

It's similar to having an Airplay-only device on your TV; bearing in mind that they are similar protocols but not the same nor interchangeable. Its main disadvantage is that it can't play content that's local to your network, so if you have your own movies and things you have to play them on your device and screencast it to chromecast. Which may or may not be well supported and look decent. For several good reasons I'd rather tell the TV-attached gizmo "play this file, which you can find over on that computer", than tie up some other device playing it and throwing the video to the TV. You can do the latter with Apple TV as well, but the thing is you don't have to, at least for any content that's supported by iTunes.

There's a metric shedload of other ways to do this sort of thing, with various amounts of overlap and wheel reinvention. The Apple TV approach is one I recommend for someone who's already pretty invested in the Apple ecosystem. It's probably the quickest route to maximum versatility without going to a lot of expense or trouble. If you don't have least one iDevice and/or don't want to use iTunes for your local media, getting as complete a solution can be a little more complicated, though not necessarily more expensive and there are a few reasons why it might be worth the trouble.

[Raak] Sorry, I could have sworn I read your post as saying you intended to connect a disc player. Ignore HDMI cabling entirely.

[Stevie] I thought TVs all ran over HDMI these days? I do have a DVD player (other than my computers), but it and the TV are both so old they use SCART.

[Raak] You said you were going with a network-to-TV model. A smart TV will hunt for your network, ask for a password and then present you with whatever app-based interface it uses so you can start consuming content. No wires other than the power cable. You want to push a signal in over a wire, HDMI is the best way (but not usually the only way on a decent TV). You want to take the sound to somewhere it sounds decent (thin tellies mean small speakers, no resonant cavity and crappy sound) use an optical link (over a cable) to a soundbar for the most compact solution. You can buy a receiver later if you decide you need better sound.

I use wired ethernet for my smugsmart TV; no point in saturating the wireless network on a fixed device if you already have an ethernet drop nearby. It came with a separate WiFi USB dongle, which I repurposed on another machine after discovering it was a rather nice dual-band device based on the Atheros chipset. Netflix is all I use the TV's 'smart'ness for; I have played round with using it as a DLNA client but it's not nearly as nice as using the XBMC box.

I ended up buying a matched soundbar from the same vendor (Panasonic Viera), one that uses HDMI and connects to the ARC-enabled port on the TV, which means basically all three gizmos (HTPC+CEC running XBMC, TV and soundbar) can be controlled with just the TV remote. It also means if I turn off the TV and just use the HTPC/XBMC + soundbar for music, the xbmc mobile app can control the speaker volume.

It's all basically as straightforward and usable as it can get. If I were going to buy a Smart TV again I might get a Samsung or Vizio, as there's a Plex app available for both. Which is a whole nother topic. (I don't use Plex myself but it's what I'd recommend to pretty much anyone I didn't recommend Apple TV to, i.e. someone who doesn't have a houseful of predominantly Apple goodies already.)

[Dan] Yeah, but you are clever.

I avoided the price-attractive Vizio after reading a large number of reviews of later models that suffer from persistent random reboot issues. No point in a smart TV that can't be a TV reliably IMO. The picture on my Father-in-Law's Samsung (dumb) TV is outstanding.

I went Sony only because I have a good experience with Sony products, their tech support was rated higher than everyone else's and they offer four HDMI inputs to everyone else's two. It seemed to me that I'd be bunging wires into it from all over the place and better to find I had too many sockets than too few. I'm also familiar with the Sony video family "quirks" and it seemed likely I would have a better time getting the clown out of the picture.

[Stevie] FWIW I think the Plex client is available for Sony TVs as well. What I'm thinking there is that if a chap wanted to get by with just his smart tv plus whatever PC or file server somewhere in the house had all his own perfectly legal, honest media, putting the Plex server software on that PC or NAS would spackle over the crevices. Notably by providing a transcoding DLNA server, because smart TVs usually only handle certain formats and packages.

I think it's better to go with the direct-connected HTPC because transcode-network-decode-display is a lot more bother than just decode-display; but not having a HTPC would be attractive if your Smart TV was actually smart enough to do everything you want, and playing local media in whatever format is a major sticking point.

I've been binge-watching the US version of House of Cards and although I loved the original I can't for the life of me understand the vitriolic hate for this one I've heard and read. It is gripping, reasonably faithful in it's plot elements while moving the story believably into the quite different American political model. Kevin Stacy is a very worthy Francis Underwood. Sorry non-lovers, I think the show is well written, well cast and gripping even though I've seen the story once (or thrice) before.

I started a game. If it doesn't seem like a winner, please kill it with my blessing.

I just did a Google search for 'do not feed', and got '...hallucinogens to the alligators' as the third result. Now I naturally want to know, why not?

(SM) 'Cos they'll snap your hand off as they go for it. They'll pop anything, those buggers. Helps them alligate, I'm told.

I'm not a big fan of alligation while under the influence of mind-altering drugs.

John Cleese is currently pushing his memoir here and, being the darling of everyone in the media, is popping up all over the place.

Yesterday he was being interviewed on NPR as I was driving home and the interviewer asked about the difference between what people, upon recognizing him, were likely to shout to him in America as opposed to the UK.

His answer was interesting but too long to go into here. It did, however, include a snippet that might allow for much japing should one of us encounter the great man in the future.

He said that often, people would make reference to sketches that he couldn't remember participating in, and he would just smile and nod and say something neutrally agreeable to fake it.

So the next time you see John Cleese, get close, make yourself known (this may involve acting as I know none of you would never slip into nudge-nudge, wink-wink territory normally, being too cool for that nonsense, but the payoff for doing so will, er, pay off) and say something like: "What about that time you were the astronaut lost among the vikings, who all turned out to be women? Talk about funny! I only saw it on DVD, and they blanked the punchline. What was it you said right at the end there, when "Mrs" Eric the Viking Idle showed you "her" buttocks and demanded an autograph?"

I forgot to mention that Cleese claims that the central theme to his work, his personal vision of what makes things funny, is the exasperated lack of understanding of the person trapped in a farcical situation. The parrot shop sketch was his illustration of the point. This is your chance to bring this home.

The hour by hour BBC weather forecast today shows the temperature due to rise from 8º at 11am steadily upwards to 12º at 5am tomorrow. Similar trend for Cambridge and London. How does the temperature keep on rising overnight?

The sun catches fire sometime in the early hours of the morning and rises in the sky, heating the earth. This was explained over at MCiOS I think, a few years ago. At around noon the sun goes "off the boil", the cooling air around it ceases to support its weight and it slowly crashes into the sea for the night. Can't remember who originally explained this. Might have been CdM or Breadmaster. Whoever it was clarified in one paragraph something that so-called "scientists" have failed to explain clearly during my entire life.

Don't worry, Raak, it's just Santa breaking in a couple of new reindeer for the Christmas Eve run. :)

(Raak) It happens quite a lot in the UK and higher latutudes. Warm air is being wafted in and its warmth easily obliterates the feeble solar effect at this time of year. There is also no heat loss by radiation with this sort of thing because these airstreams are always cloudy.

I once read something to the effect that the apparent diameter of the sun's disk is just about the same as the light curvature due atmospheric refraction (or is it gravity-bending? that sounds unlikely) when it reaches you at a tangent; with the net effect being that when the sun's disk just touches the horizon it's "really" entirely below it. And it's by this means we know that, like the light in your refrigerator when you close the door, the sun doesn't go out when it falls below the world's edge and everything you've been told otherwise is a damned lie.

[Dan] Take it up with CdM or Breadmaster. But before you do, consider: wouldn't your "width" theory mean that you'd be forever smashing the fridge light bulb in the door? Something about that doesn't ring true.

Can't help I'm afraid but do have a very Happy Christmas wherever you are. _, who is now 3, is already as manic as can be. Not sure how to burn off his energy...

(Dan) True. If you see the sun on the horizon it is geometrically just below it. It adds a few minutes to daylight at each end. It's refraction (strictly, differential refraction) not gravity-bending which would need a mind-bogglingly dense earth. On Venus the refraction is so large the horizon is above horizontal and it looks as if you're living in a bowl. A hot one, 460°C. No oxygen. Occasional showers of sulphuric acid.
(rab) See MCIOS, FUQs.

(Dan, Stevie) Nor the light in the boot of your car.

[rab] Isn't there a version of those ball-throwing arm extensions for dogs that you can get for kids? Alternatively, send him off to an aunt and uncle for the afternoon.
Merry Xmas, all.

Unfortunately the only aunt-uncle combo is based in NZ, so it'd be more than an afternoon...

AFAIR playgrounds are good. Choose one with a convenient bench from which to watch. Or join in if you're not self conscious. Something requiring concentration, like Lego can be surprisingly tiring. The best thing is to forget your boring adult lifestyle and simply play all day.

[penelope] I looked everywhere but found no trace of these canine-oriented ball-atlatls you steered rab toward. How would the dog wield such a thing anyway, absent opposable thumbs? What rab needs is a keen, ankle-nipping bull terrier. Half an hour of being chased around the park by the dog will tire the child out nicely, and give him or her a healthy respect for vicious dogs.

Of course, if the dog is too keen there is a chance the plan will backfire as the dog chases you instead of the child.

To help prevent this possibility, soak the child's shoes in bacon grease before releasing the terrier.

Also, to minimize the risk of vigorous shoe-licking instead of ankle-nipping, thrash the dog soundly for five minutes a day with a side of bacon.

This sort of preparation escalation is why children should be avoided in the first place, of course.

[Stevie] We have managed to do that. We are, however, expert in Unclage and Auntage, with the proviso that the assorted nephews, nieces, godchildren and fledged apprentices repay us by taking us for interesting outings when we are elderly.

[Raak, a while back] Here in Melbourne a couple of years ago we had something like 40 hours (maybe more) of declining temperatures. I forget the details, but it was in the high 30s in the afternoon of Day 1, fell through the night, through all of Day 2, and through the following night. Only in the morning of Day 3 did the temperature start to rise again.

(CdM) Interesting and unusual that the temperature fell throughout day 2. The wind must have gone from northerly round to south-westerly, but rather gradually.
(pen) Pah! I'm a great-uncle three times over. Avunculissimus!

Started snowing this morning, around 8-ish. Stopped now (10:20 local time). About 2-3 inches of annoyance scattered all over the place.

(Stevie) I find snow meteorologically interesting but in all other respects a pain in the arse. The roads round here are at full capacity anyway and the slightest disruption (a couple of inches) causes vehicular constipation of a high order. Nothing moves.

I say, I say, I say. How about a new game to chivvy things up? A doggerel rhyming doodah? One of those complicated-johnnies that followed a limping pattern? Or maybe a songbook? Ferchrissakes, something, please! I'm really bored in the office this week.

I had a squiz through the Game Ideas Game at Orange-MC, and quite liked this one:
From an idea by one of the Minecraft crew at Mojang:
Epic Job Titles: Fireman, policeman, accountant. These are bland job titles. Why not be an BATTLER OF THE INFERNO instead?
Shall we give that a go?

[Simons] Yep.

I have just been out to see Comet Lovejoy.

(Raak) Did you see it? Optical aid? They've never interested me much - I prefer looking at the planets.

Yes, with binoculars. No chance of naked eye with the Moon so close. Even with binoculars, it was just a faint fuzzy blob, no tail visible. I'm assuming it was Lovejoy and not some boring nebula, as it was in the right general area.

(Raak) Not a sky in the cloud, as they say, here at the moment. We've had a bit of snow, not much.

I'm pleasd to report the new house has great potential for skywatching. It's clear tonight and the sky is full of stars. But it's too bloomin' cold to stand out there and look. We have snow every two days and it's been hovering around freezing all week, but sunny, which is nice.

[penelope] That should have gone: "I'm pleased to report that the new house has great potential for skywatching ... on account of there being no roof to speak of on it. Handyman Special indeed."

great potential for skywatching suggests a real estate agent dictionary game.

[Stevie] Yes!

I've got my annual appraisal in 10 minutes. The process is appalingly oblique and I think I'm supposed to want a promotion. Actually, I'd just like to get more skilled at the job I already do. I don't want to manage anyone. HR stinks.

I hope you came out feeling better than when you went in, penelope.
Managing your staff is fun. All the really difficult problems end up in your lap; lots of coffee (black two sugars) maintains your energy and keeps your brain sharp as well as causing palpitations; sleepless nights and constant worrying about everything and anything prepare you for the worst the world can throw at you; 80% of your time will be spent on trivial staff problems and internecine politics; 10% will involve pointless meetings - internal and external; that leaves 10% for 'proper' work, the stuff that matters. But wait, there's more. Managers don't get paid overtime so are expected to take work home for their attention at night and weekends.
Yes, penelope, I've lived in that world and it's not one which I would like to re-visit. Don't get me wrong though as it was exciting at the time. :)

[Duj] Thanks for that. In fact it went OK. He's 'pleased'. But it's just such a time-consuming process, and most of it seems to be to give the HR department something to do. (It was only last year that they gave us an online system for booking holiday time - until then we were crossing out squares on big sheets of brown card.)
On the plus side, I'm just about to send in a nomination for our alumni magazine (for what I am editor - not managing editor, mind - but editor - finding the pictures, making sure there's enough news to fill the empty pages left when one of the big star interviews pulls out etc) in the university marketing world's 'academy awards' (Oh how I laughed). I've written most of it already - quite impressed that I only have to add our names to it and get it in the post. Fingers crossed.

I'm still wearing thermal socks.

[penelope] Six inches of inconvenience all over the place again this morning. We went out to a friend's house for dinner yesterday and drove back through the snowstorm. I thought that was bad. Almost hit a car when the Steviemobile refused to stop and the car was accelerating between brake pulses - dunno why, could have been a mat caught on the gas pedal or I could have had my foot partially on it I guess, didn't feel like it but it has happened once before that my shoe has hung up on the velocitator and caused imminent trouser spoilage. Luckily I managed to shift into neutral so the brakes could stand a fighting chance of stopping us, which they did. Fortunately the Stevieling had shoveled out the drive before we got home, which is why you have kids in New York.

But all that paled into insignificance next to the drive to work, when I was caught behind two count-em two Toyota RAV4 4x4 Osamamobiles which were such a great option for the snow the drivers wouldn't assay more than 18 miles an hour the entire trip. The Steviemobile is front wheel drive and has traction control and is - yesterday's little moment of terror notwithstanding - great in the snow. I honestly wonder why anyone would buy one of those ugly 4x4 gas-guzzling monstrosities when there is such a better option available that costs about half the price and comes with a SULEV engine to boot.

Bright sunshine here, when it isn't raining. 60 mile bike ride last Sunday. The crosswinds were murder, though.