In the last ten days...
Monday, December 14th, 2015 06:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jesse_the_k...we have spent altogether too many hours juggling AV boxes. However, we are now able to watch modern Blurays with "subtitles for the deaf & hearing impaired" as well as actual 708 closed captions AND older DVDs with old-style line 21 captions. (The key is that the FCC finally promulgated regulations that any Bluray/DVD player manufactured after January 2014 must include its own caption decoder to handle the old-style captions.) Our new player decodes the caps and then paints those pixels over the image it sends via HDMI.
We also discovered the ZVOX Soundbase soundbar speakers. They're not very expensive, and particularly designed for hard of hearing listeners. It overcomes the current, terrible sound mix fashion. No, it's not y/our imagination: in most modern seasons & films, the dialog is mixed lower then the music & sound. ZVOX reverses this trend with a "dialog enhancement" setting that makes the most mumbling numb-lipped speech comprehensible.
http://www.zvoxaudio.com/divinity-cart/cms/accuvoice/accuvoice/1.html
I have discovered how to increase my glee and reduce my anxiety. I now group my daily healthwork in the mornings. SAD light at 6:30 (before dawn); my PT/yoga mashup at 7; meditation at 7:30; (pause for breakfast) (and 3x/week swim at 10). I begin the day with mellow. Turns out the free-floating "need to do healthwork" deadline had been buzzing my head like squadrons of deer flies. Level up to more serenity!
Good thing, since so many other things on the planet have been horrible.
I started a good book (or at least, its first 60 pages meet that criterion). Not on Fire but Burning, by Greg Hrbek, is a literary novel aflame with parallel timelines and mysterious bombs destroying SF and other SNfal bits while it digs deep into the psychology of racism, hatred, and other poisons of youth. The whiff of PKDick is in the plot (but fortunately the prose is way better). I was particularly thrilled by the appearance of Brood X, the 17-year cicadas which sprout on the US east coast.
http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/not-on-fire-but-burning
MyGuy found a beautiful, framed 1800 print of an iris at Goodwill this morning.
More news as it happens; maybe politics next time.
What's your favorite thing right now?
We also discovered the ZVOX Soundbase soundbar speakers. They're not very expensive, and particularly designed for hard of hearing listeners. It overcomes the current, terrible sound mix fashion. No, it's not y/our imagination: in most modern seasons & films, the dialog is mixed lower then the music & sound. ZVOX reverses this trend with a "dialog enhancement" setting that makes the most mumbling numb-lipped speech comprehensible.
http://www.zvoxaudio.com/divinity-cart/cms/accuvoice/accuvoice/1.html
I have discovered how to increase my glee and reduce my anxiety. I now group my daily healthwork in the mornings. SAD light at 6:30 (before dawn); my PT/yoga mashup at 7; meditation at 7:30; (pause for breakfast) (and 3x/week swim at 10). I begin the day with mellow. Turns out the free-floating "need to do healthwork" deadline had been buzzing my head like squadrons of deer flies. Level up to more serenity!
Good thing, since so many other things on the planet have been horrible.
I started a good book (or at least, its first 60 pages meet that criterion). Not on Fire but Burning, by Greg Hrbek, is a literary novel aflame with parallel timelines and mysterious bombs destroying SF and other SNfal bits while it digs deep into the psychology of racism, hatred, and other poisons of youth. The whiff of PKDick is in the plot (but fortunately the prose is way better). I was particularly thrilled by the appearance of Brood X, the 17-year cicadas which sprout on the US east coast.
http://www.mhpbooks.com/books/not-on-fire-but-burning
MyGuy found a beautiful, framed 1800 print of an iris at Goodwill this morning.
More news as it happens; maybe politics next time.
What's your favorite thing right now?