Odd lots

I've been fairly active on e-bay lately, buying copies of British dramas on dvd. The most prominent of these purchases has been the five series of 'Cold Feet'; I didn't buy a box set for fear of shipping problems, but instead participated in several auctions until I acquired individually the entire set. Each season cost about three pounds, whereas the list price is much higher. Amazon lists most of the seasons at twenty pounds, but discounts them to six or seven pounds, not including postage. So my e-bay purchases were definitely at a sharp and worthwhile discount.

The problem with foreign-bought (ie non-Israeli) dvds is that they lack subtitles in Hebrew. This makes watching them problematic for my wife, whose listening to idiomatic English skills are not too high. But I've found it problematic as well; obviously, over the years I've got used to reading the subtitles and subconsciously using them to fill in gaps when I didn't hear properly what was being said. I've overcome this quite successfully by displaying the English subtitles, but have noticed that there are not infrequent discrepancies between what is being said and what is being displayed.

I have mentioned previously purchasing a disc of French composer Erik Satie's piano pieces. Whilst knocking around the Internet, I discovered musician Mike Dickson's mainly Mellotron based ruminations on the same material. Should one choose to download the music, beware that it comes as an ISO image file and so has to be treated differently than a series of wave files. I've listened to most of the album, and whilst the same as the piano disc, it is also different. It brings into focus a feeling which I've had about instrumental music - I concentrate too much on the music and too little on the whole. Obviously, the piano disc is wholly music, but the mellotron disc has atmospheric bells and whistles, and makes listening a holistic experience. I haven't got there yet.

I've mentioned before my recording dvd machine. Since its last visit to the technicians, it has been performing admirably. At the beginning of each week, I check our satellite tv provider's internet site and see which films are being broadcast during the week; I make a list of all those that I want to tape, including channel, day, time and duration. Then I record the films. I even sometimes get to watch them. We're having a Harrison Ford marathon on Friday/Saturday, which will allow me to record several films which I used to have on video.

As it's getting to the stage where I don't remember exactly what I do or don't have, I knocked together a small dvd database program the other day. This keeps track of the dvds and the actor who appeared in the dvd, so if anybody asks "Do you have any Jack Nicholson dvds?", I can answer positively, and even say which ones. I single out Jack because it seems that at the moment he appears in more dvds that I have than anyone else (although Harrison Ford may shortly overtake him).