Lexin

Yesterday was an expensive day.

About two months ago I left my distance vision glasses on a bus. Or in the hospital. I don’t know which and neither organization has found them.

So I finally gave up and went to the optometrist. My glasses are always expensive, this time £200. Ker-ching! They will be ready in two weeks time. Meanwhile I am struggling on with my intermediate (computer) specs.

Then when I got home, I thought I would watch TV. April Fool, no you won’t. Your Freesat box has gone belly up, and needs replacing. So that’s another chunk of change.

Meanwhile, at least the cats are cuddly. So there is that.

I had an exceptionally pleasant weekend, finishing with a day off yesterday.

I achieved something on Sunday I’ve been trying to do for weeks.

The story is that I use my computer as storage for soft copies of my DVDs. Go me, and very convenient it is, too. But for years I’ve had to use my PS4 to access those soft copies using a system called Plex. Plex comes as a program on the computer and an App on the PS4. That PS4 App has never worked quite as it should; the PS4 would run for 45 minutes, then drop signal for no obvious reason, then I’d have to restart the PS4 and go on with my interrupted TV.

I knew that the TV, being a Smart TV, should also have the Plex app on it. But I’d never been able to get that to work at all. When I tried all I got was an incomprehensible error message about the IP address. Starting on Saturday, I decided to track that error message to its lair and work out what it meant. This I did, finally ending up on Sunday looking through the help files online on the Plex web pages.

It turned out that what I needed to do was to put the IP address of my TV into the Plex program on the computer and what should happen did happen. It finally worked. No ifs, no buts, no sudden drop outs. Much joy. I’ve finally been able to watch my film collection undisturbed.

I am a bear of very little mind and enjoy my TV even when it turns my brains to mush.

Monday

On Monday, after a discussion on Facebook in which we discussed the likelihood of being able to go to Wales in August, I decided that I might need to run my yearly adventure of “Rome with Magic” on Roll 20. With Roll 20 having a very steep learning curve, and “Rome with Magic” being an AD&D2e game I further decided to start now because that way I stood a chance of having the game ready for August.

So spent Monday happily engaged in trying to get my AD&D2e PC characters onto Roll 20. For some reason, Roll 20’s AD&D2e character sheet is even more complex and hard to understand than the D&D5e sheet. I’ve asked my players to help.

I also spent time playing with creating dungeons using one of their dungeon design thingies. So that was great, it’s just the kind of thing I enjoy.

Happy times.

Playing with Plex, I was choosing something to watch when I realised that looking at the TV from the seat where I use the computer while wearing my reading glasses means that the TV screen is just a mess of colour.

I had to choose a film at random, but ended up with the Hammer version of the Hound of the Baskervilles, so not a bad choice.

I also discovered that while Plex says that .mkv files are playable, my TV disagrees and I have to convert them to .avi or .mp4 - it doesn't take long to convert them and I have a gizmo that does it, but it's a minor PITA.

I'm still on a Criminal Minds thing. I don't know why, but I am.

Having watched series 5-10, I think I'll go back to the start. But Netflix (curse them) have stopped having series 1-4. I can't download series 2, the seeds have largely gone (though I can find series 1. Go figure).

I then check on the options for videos and a DVD of Season 2 will cost me £8.99 plus postage. I check to see if buying it instantly would be cheaper...and it's £24.99. From both iTunes and Amazon, same price.

WTF?

The hard copy is less than £10 and the 'instant' is two and a half times that price? What the hell is going on there? How do they justify that? If anything, I'd have thought it ought to be cheaper to download.

They are so cheeky, these people. Always check, do not trust them.

Am I the only person who finds "Game of Thrones" really boring? I've watched six episodes (so I think I've gve given it a fair trial), but I find I can't care about any of those people. Even the 'good' ones are dull, and the 'bad' ones are beyond horrible.

So as soon as I can get into Lovefilm, it's coming off my list. Enough is enough.

I don't know how familiar most of you are with Skyrim – my guess is probably not very – but it is in some ways the most bizarre game.

I started my latest incarnation from new, level 1, and he seems to have grown very differently from the first one. But one thing is clear – you can earn a very handy living on Skyrim as a potion maker and blacksmith. Forget all this adventuring rubbish, all that gives you to get you up close and uncomfortable to bandits and undead. I never have liked zombies, even when they're called "draugr" and have glowing blue eyes they give me a pain, and the less said the better about vampires.

So basically, while my character can be bribed to help out someone by killing bandits, he'd far rather make armour, jewellery and potions from stuff he's picked up that cost him nothing and sell them for a stonking profit. So from that point of view, it's an odd game. Like real life, but on a screen.

In other news

There is no other news except that I have a taker for my old TV. This is good.

Finally got around to watching the 2009 Sherlock Holmes film starring Robert Downey Jnr and Jude Law. Is it my cloth ears, or is the dialogue really unclear in parts? I struggled to understand parts of it, particularly when Robert Downey was speaking.

[Goes to clear wax out of ears.]

Today was an excellent day; I spent most of it playing "Dragon Age: Origins" (I'm afraid in 'casual' mode as I'm no great shakes as a game player on the PS3), and otherwise watching bits of the 2nd series of Criminal Minds.

This last showed up my prosopagnosia: I'd never before noticed that both the character and the actress changed mid season from one person whose name began with E to another one. I must have just never seen the two episodes either side of the change, but much that was opaque about the series now makes a bit more sense.