F&B

I’ve been watching a lot of movies since the end of the CM&C project, but I thought it was time for another…  structured series of movies.monte

So I’ve decided to watch one movie per year since I was born, as picked from the ‘best of’ lists compiled by the imdb user g_monte.  Conceptual!

Those lists first came to my attention when I was checking out the imdb entry for the Marguerite Duras film Baxter Vera Baxter.  He’s got it on his “best of” list for 1977, so I thought “hey, cool beans”, and started reading his other lists.  His (or her) taste in movies intersect with mine to a large degree, but the films on his lists are more arty and serious than I’d naturally gravitate towards, so it seemed like an opportunity to expand my viewing in a random way.

I haven’t slavishly picked the most highly rated films per year, because I’ve seen a lot of the films that are listed, and others are impossible to get on DVD or Bluray.  But they’re mostly from g_monte’s top 10s or 20s.

But you gotta have two concepts going at once, so I’m also going to drink at least one bottle of beer per film.  And those bottles will be beer that I’ve never tasted before.

DSC01403The number of beers available in Oslo now is kinda staggering.  Ten years ago, there was a massive increase in the number of microbrewery beers available, and then the number seemed to be pretty constant.  But then, last year-ish, there was another explosion, and nicer grocery stores seem to have several hundred different beers.  Or something.  I’m bad at counting.

So I’m going to buy all the ones that I haven’t had before (or I think I haven’t had before; who can really tell? (and some beer-adjacent stuff)) and rate them all.

Films!  And beer!

Useful Consumer Review

The disk in my old kitchen computer broke.  Finally!  The machine was the only one in my DSC01351apartment with a fan, so I was kinda hoping something in it would break so that I could get an excuse to buy a new fanless all-in-one machine.

After binging around on the internet a bit, I found the Silentium from Deltatronic.  It’s a standard Intel i3/i7 machine, but fanless.  And all-in-one.  There isn’t even an external power adapter, so it’s neat and tidy.

Linux installed without any problems, although I had to go with Debian Unstable to get a version of the Xorg that works with its built-in Intel graphics.

The wifi works well, too.  This is the only stationary machine I have that doesn’t have wired ethernet, because getting TP over to its corner of the kitchen would be kinda complicated.  It’s in a corner of the kitchen that my laptop doesn’t think there’s any wifi signal in, so that’s kinda impressive.

I’m even able to watch DVDs with mplayer over sshfs over wifi.  Yes.  sshfs over wifi. I used the same parameters I used on my laptop:

sshfs -o Cipher=arcfour -o Compression=no -o cache=yes \
  -o kernel_cache -o large_read music@server:/tv /tv

Arcfour is the least CPU-intensive cipher, and switching off compression helps with both CPU and latency.  And mp4 streams don’t really compress very well.

mplayer -vo xv -cache-min 99 -cache 10000 \
  /tv/dvd/Against\ 2008/track1.mkv

But that’s not really sufficient.  mplayer also has to cache stuff, because the latency over wifi is just a tad too unpredictable.

With all this, watching DVDs while cooking is smooth and pleasant.

But here come the complaints: The screen isn’t as good as it should be.  It’s really bright at the top and bottom margins.  I guess it uses side-mounted LEDs to save money?  It’s an IPS screen, so the viewing angle is OK, but this is just annoying:

DSC01346The effect here is exaggerated by the camera, but it really is quite bright at the bottom there.

It’s less obvious when there’s something on the screen:

DSC01350See the blue shiny things at the left bottom edge?  That’s where it’s supposed to be totally black.

Oh, well.  Perhaps I can just avoid using a solid black background…  or something…

It’s so close to being a great machine, but I can’t really recommend it due to this edgy business.