Progress Report (Friday 30th December 2022)

Following the plumbing outbuilding disaster on the Monday before Christmas there has been little to report beyond the power being restored to the Old Forge itself later that day, and as they had 149 claim call-outs that morning for people less fortunate the earliest date they could give me for a site visit was 29th December.

That visit took place yesterday and went well. It seems that the insurers will be managing all the refurbishing, plumbing and electrics involved themselves, which was a big relief to me. The whole outbuilding will have to be stripped so that the carpet and underlay can be replaced, and they will also dispose of the items that have been written off, although I may have to be patient as to when any of this begins to happen.

Today the electrician called for a preliminary once over and managed to get the power back on in there, so hopefully there will be humidifiers and things at work there soon.

My blip shows components that are soon to be installed at my bedside, mostly new, including speaker cable that arrived today, although the mini hi-fi has been relocated from elsewhere in the house. In related hifi news a very old large vintage RAM speaker has been re-purposed as the front centre speaker in the living room surround system, and after some teething problems was tested last night by watching the film The Duke (Jim Broadbent, Helen Mirren) and is supplying greatly improved results.

L.
Friday 30.12.2022 (1707 hr)

Blip #3789 (#3539 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #000
Blips/Extras In 2022 #224/265 + #097/100 Extras
Day #4662 (1132 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #2930 (#2770 + 160 in archived blips)

Taken with Pentax K-50 (Red) and Sigma AF 17-70mm F2.8-4 DC Macro HSM lens

Diary Blip series
Old Forge series
Outbuilding series

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Max Mathews - Bicycle Built For Two (1961)
One of the earliest experiments in speech synthesis, this was realized at Bell Labs by Max Mathews in 1961. Also called Daisy Bell it was created to demonstrate computer capability at the time for speech processing.
The recording aroused the interest of the film-maker Stanley Kubrick. He adopted the melody in his film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Originally he wanted to use the sound materials as synthesized by Max Mathews, but in the end he decided for greater intelligibility to use a real human voice when the computerized song was used in the film.
Elizabeth 'Alcopops' Alker played this on Radio Three's Unclassified as I drifted off to sleep in the early hours of Friday morning.