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10 November 2018

Hi-Fi upgrade

Looking back I see it has been six years since I did this. Time marches on...

So, it's a Sony DN-1080. It doesn't look much different to the previous, just improved software really. It is set up for 4k and has Dolby Atmos and is thus a match for the TV and disk player. Let's test!

Atmos is good if the sound engineers take the trouble to set it up. If they just pick a few sound effects and put them behind the listener but otherwise use the old surround positions, not so good. There are Demos on YouTube that show what should be happening.

It comes with the two current surround systems, Dolby Surround and Neural:X. In different ways these do the same thing, spreading the sound out to all the available speakers. In my case that is 5.1.2, with the 2 being front height. The A/V uses a sound test to work out where these are.
As with Atmos, results are variable. A lot of prestigeTV programmes and movies are broadcast in 5.1 these days.

28 October 2018

And one by one they faded away ...


The Rosehaven 12th Anniversary Ball. As befits Halloween the grid failed and one by one the guests vanished!
Clever GIF by Princess Selena

05 September 2018

War! No one killed shock horror

Finally, I got the "nice space station you got there, shame if it should get blown up" message.

In EVE hi sec, within the territories of the big NPC empires, there are police. However a contribution to their benevolent fund will cause them to turn blind eyes to shenanigans. These are called WarDecs.

The rules for blowing up space stations are intended to prevent Corporations in different time zones from making surprise attacks when the other guys are fast asleep. First, attackers have to knock down the station's Shields. A week later, they can come back to destroy its Armour. Finally after another week, and that was today, they can destroy it.

Now my corporation specialises in arms dealing not combat, we are small, defenceless but wealthy so we hired mercenaries to defend us and the extortionists backed off without a fight. Hopefully they won't try that again, it cost them money and a complementary Bounty on their heads. It cost us a few million ISK as well, mostly in lost production, but we can make that up in a few days.

08 June 2018

... and 4K disks!

It's Sony again, the X700
This is the budget player so it has some esoteric features removed, mostly stuff a smart TV has anyway.


4K disk buyers beware! There is a lot of 'Ultra HD' in the shops that isn't 4K at all, it uses HD masters and upscales them to 4K which is what a 4K TV does anyway.

The player has been updated to Dolby Vision but weirdly via a settings switch. Since most providers don't say if they are using Vision this is a chocolate teapot.


YouTube has 4K demos such as
Wildlife in 4K

06 June 2018

Spacesheeting 63

The transition of EVE downloadable data from XML tables to SWAGGER has reached the point where the old system has been discontinued, which leaves me no choice but to convert.

SWAGGER is more complicated as it uses temporary tokens to get access to private data. This allows third-party apps to display your secret stuff without having access to your password, and that isn't easy to implement with a spreadsheet! However, a nice person wrote a guide:
SSO_Authentication_in_Microsoft_Power_Query

Right now I have the tables up and running, the next task is to get the many spreadsheet references to point to them. Which, with INDEX MATCH arrays, is a pain.

[added] Finished! Took six weeks!! Everything seems to be back to normal, updating generates a lot of error messages but these can be ignored.

05 January 2018

New TV

Santa gave me a new TV this year, a Sony Bravia KD55XE9005
It's pretty, but let's quibble!

The control system is labyrinthine. The most used bits are in an "Action Menu", the rest is buried at the bottom of the Android Home page that has the Netflix/Amazon pay us $$$ links I don't use.

The best advice for Video settings is to leave them alone unless there is an obvious problem - and I've not noticed any.

The computer's graphics card is willing to display 2160p but with my present three screen setup (!!) runs hotter if it does, more so with games. EVE would be unplayable anyway due to tiny text, a known problem.
Setting up the computer for HDR has to be done at both ends to work properly. Windows 10 will tell you if everything will work.

The previous TV couldn't cope with 1080p, no problem with this one. 4K is presently only broadcast by subscription. There is plenty of it on YouTube, including some wildlife and travel channels.

The Humax Satbox and Sony disk player link in OK. The TV comes with an "IR Blaster" that ingeniously attaches to devices and replaces their remote controls to some extent. I have it attached to the Satellite box so the TV's programme guide can operate it.


Mirroring from tablet to big screen is easy - one button.
Tablet remote control app? Fine!