27th March 2020

My first world dilemma

posted in computing, media |

Go ahead, tell me this is a first world problem. We’re trying to watch a digitized movie, and normally the file is loaded on a laptop which then routes the signal to our TV via a small decoder box (for the sake of detail, our Apple TV). Most of the time, this is enough.

However, right now we’re faced with some serious choppiness. Time to point fingers. On the laptop, wonderful. On a flashdrive, plugged directly into the TV, we’re faced with an unknown codec. Time to try another method. The laptop has HDMI, and so does the TV, so via one of those magical cables that you buy from the dollar store, a direct connection is possible. I’m awaiting the verdict about quality. Total elapsed time, about five minutes. As I said, a first world problem.

We need the distraction of a movie, right now. The news feed is grim, unless you watch material from the alternate dimension which firmly believes that everything not praising the prez is “fake news”. I have my own opinion here. If people are dying, and the prez sez that the disease is a hoax, you have to draw your own conclusion.

Talking to my Mom, today. She’s as worried as I am, because despite the combined “century or more” of experience, we have nothing like this to fall back on. War, pestilence, hunger; good with all of those. A brand new viral illness… not so much. Obviously, there’ll be no visits between our two living rooms any time soon.

 In passing, I had an odd phone call this afternoon. Unknown number, familiar voice. More precisely, a well-known entertainer, who gave me a speech about the measures I should follow to avoid COVID-19. The closing sentence, thanking the government of Quebec for their sponsorship of this outreach surprised me.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 27th, 2020 at 20:03 and is filed under computing, media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 301 words. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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