Making an effort

90 minutes with a little cat on my lap this evening.  I watched an old movie on TiVo while she napped.  From 6:30 to 7:00 I listened to Kaleidoscope, which tonight featured Pearl Harbor and Wake Island and the events of December 1941.  

Then I came upstairs and watched a few informative things on YouTube, including another lesson in how to use OpenShot.  Not a whole lot of initiative, but with the exception of preparing photos for TP on Sunday night, more get-up-and-go than I've shown for a couple of weeks.  

For the record:  I TiVo'd Withnail and I some weeks ago, and at last got around to watching it in half-hour bites over a few days recently. It was great to see it available on TCM, as I'd heard so much about it since its release in 1987.  Maybe back then I would have seen it the way they did, and I'd have enjoyed it more too.  As it was, I made it through the entire film, which is more than I can say about some of the movies I've recorded, but it was easy to delete when it finished.  Ah, I'm sure I'm the outlier here.  I'm supposed to laugh at the talented actor who's wasting it with self-destructive behaviour.  Okey-doke.

A little extra cash in pocket -- wonder what to do with it?  I know:  I'll pay off the bills PG and I ran up yesterday!  First Costco, then Wegmans, then Wild Birds Unlimited, and finally to Weis for stuff we didn't find at Wegmans.  [insert "chi-ching" GIF here]

Windows 10 Bluetooth pairing dialog box too small

After visiting TP, I came home and tried to download photos from my phone.  I got a message saying that Bluetooth between the phone and the downstairs laptop was not connected.  I tried following the instructions in Settings, and this came up:

No yes-or-no buttons, not scrollable, not enlargeable.  The pairing failed time after time until I found that not only had many others encountered this problem, but also that it was a bug in Windows which was first detected in 2021.  Here's more info:

I ended up getting a USB adapter and plugging it in, and downloaded the photos that way.  But here's an answer I can vouch for:

So there's a bug that prevents people from pairing their phones and their contents to Windows 10 via Bluetooth.  We're coming up on the 3-year anniversary of its first appearance.  And it hasn't yet been fixed.  

When I get around to the new laptop, I'll see whether it still exists in Windows 11.

Insomnia

Awake since 2:15.  After a largely sleepless night last night that I blamed on the caffeine in the Pepsi I had with pizza, I don't have a similar easy explanation for this.  

Anyway, I lay in bed for an hour before giving up, getting up, and going downstairs.  Xitter doesn't work with Google Chrome, either upstairs on my PC or down here on my laptop, but it does work on Edge, which is based on Chrome.  I'll use that workaround rather than clear all cookies, which would force me to sign in everywhere else all over again.  

I had to wrestle the snow thrower once again yesterday in the wake of an unexpected storm that left six more inches on the ground.  A body would think that would tire out a body.  

Completed the Connections without a mistake, and even began with the tricky purple one.  Some are harder, some are easier.  Some days I don't even get one correct answer.  Followed Connections with Spelling Bee, which is generous with pangrams today.  I found two in the first three words, then checked the Buddy and learned that there are six in the puzzle.  So I found a third pangram and sent an IM to PG, telling her only that I had found half the day's pangrams and was leaving the rest for her.    

Yesterday, no drums, not even a half-time shuffle.  The day did have its share of things that kept me busy in an interesting way.  Now that the new laptop is here, I went through the app executables on file and deleted some outdated ones.  Unlike Samsung phones, Microsoft will only re-install apps that were on your old Windows machine if they are also in the Microsoft store.  That leaves out a few, like ACDSee.  

Not sleepy yet.  Watched another OpenShot tutorial video, and will bring up France Info after I finish writing.  Tried to find a free open source Windows video clip manager, without success.  I want to organize the video clips, recognizing that I'm probably the only person who cares about them and that after I'm gone no one is going to save them.  

C'est midi passé de six minutes quelque part, je viens d'entendre.  Moi, j'ai besoin de sommeil.  Bonne nuit à tous.

Focus

I was just reading an article from today's Le Monde, and I was doing fine with the language.  Not quite as smooth as English, but I knew what was going on.

But while I'm reading something in another language (one of the stated activities set for retirement) I'm not practicing any of the variations on the half-time shuffle; I'm not watching a tutorial on OpenShot; I'm not creating a video in OpenShot.

I already know what I want to do first.  Months ago, I saw a WWII cartoon with a character like Private Snafu.  In it, there was a section of gibberish consisting of a speeded-up human voice.  I recorded the audio and slowed it down in GoldWave, and found it was the same voice as the lead character in the cartoon.  It shouldn't be difficult to put together a video that reveals this fact to anyone with ears to hear.  Call it my latest contribution to the sum total of human knowledge.  

OK, kid, focus.  Back to Le Monde.  The rest can wait until tomorrow.  After you clear the latest snowfall on Saturday, and before you visit the cats on Sunday, there'll be time for creative activities.  (After you visit the cats, there'll be photos to go through, tag, file, and touch up for publication.)  Remember that Monday's an off day, too.  You can't do it all at once, but you can do it all at one time or another this weekend.  

Conversation

Me:  I've heard the stories, and it sounds like to become a major star, a woman had to be hard, tough as nails.  Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck.  

But then I read about Jack Benny and Bob Newhart, and the impression I get is that they understood that letting the rest of the cast get the laughs was the way to success.  Not tough as nails at all.  Are there any women like them who made it big ?

PG:  (after a moment's thought) Carol Burnett.

Content

Accent on the second syllable, to be clear.  

Around noon today, I drove somewhere, parked, got out, walked in, a minute later walked back out.  No pain in my back, in my knees, in my feet.  Blood flowing without any problem.  Breathing normally.  Recognizing how fortunate that makes me as a 67-year-old.

After six inches of snow Sunday night, I wrestled around a heavy snow thrower to clear the driveway, the brick walk behind the house, the sidewalk along the house, and the sidewalk along the street.  Later in the afternoon, came back out after the township plowed in the end of the driveway and shoveled the wet, packed snow onto piles on either side.  No trouble.

Floaters in both eyes, tinnitus in both ears, some plumbing problems, but the kind to have (the kind that doesn't require Depends).  

I love my wife, I like my job, and whenever I want, I can go spend time with cats.  They've asked me to take pictures and write about cats, I didn't have to apply for anything.  I am reasonably competent reading and hearing a second language (speaking it is something else, since I don't get any practice).  I am learning a musical instrument, taking lessons on drums for the first time after my most recent birthday.  

While putting together a piece for Special Needs cats, I found that it would help if I knew a little something about video editing and creation.  I had made a hundred or more short YouTube videos over the course of a 10-year period, then ran out of inspiration or something and stopped completely.  

Sony Vegas isn't available to me now, so I went looking for a replacement, free and open source if at all possible.  OpenShot seems to be the answer; it's installed now and I've been checking out tutorial videos on (what else) YouTube.  This of course leads to the realization that although I've done a better-than-average job of tagging the digital still photos taken over the past 25 years, the video clips aren't nearly as well-documented.  There's a project, and a big one.  It'll keep me busy when I'm not taking pictures and processing them, or loving on cats, or writing about them, or reading/listening to French, or practicing variations on a half-time shuffle.  

Back in time

This is genuinely for me only.  Most if not all of the other posts in Before I Forget can be read by anyone, on the off chance anyone else finds them.  But considering the miniscule chance that anyone will find this, and the even smaller chance they'll be as interested in early videotape as I am, I recognize this one's for me and me alone.

Back when I watched broadcast television, there was some special probably related to the history of a network.  I saw a clip of Sinatra and Bing and my mind snapped to attention.  From the live look of it, I could tell it was a videotape, and I knew that black-and-white clips from early TV were always in the form of lower-quality kinescopes.

On YouTube, I learned that it was a clip from The Edsel Show, which aired on CBS on October 13, 1957.  More about the difference between videotape and kinescope at Kris Trexler's website, King of the Road, as well as the story of how he helped make The Edsel Show available.

Also at KOTR is the story of An Evening With Fred Astaire, broadcast just over a year later on NBC, "in living color" as they used to say.  That used to be on YouTube, too.  

It also used to be the oldest existing show nationally broadcast on color videotape, until the announcement of the Kraft Music Hall that was on October 8, 1958, nine days before the Fred Astaire show.  

I have a little list of YouTube-available shows from way back when.  Some are videotapes, some are kinescopes dating back to 1948.  Near the top of the list:  the oldest color videotape of any kind:  dedication of WRC-TV studios, May 22, 1958, featuring President Eisenhower.  Here too, Kris Trexler had a hand in putting that up for everyone to see.

As of tonight, 13 of the shows I put on the list aren't available anymore, including the Playhouse 90 telecast of Judgment at Nuremberg.  When Rod Serling complained about serious shows that were interrupted by six bunny rabbits selling toilet paper, that was one of the commercials on this show.  

Also, this show was sponsored by the gas company, and for that reason, all references to gas chambers were muted.  Someone with a black sense of humor could come up with something far worse to take their place.  My sense of humor only goes so far:  I liked it when margarine ads, which were forbidden to use the word "butter", made the most of it by referring instead to "the high-priced spread."