NTSC: The Television

Well it is pretty much official. Come May 10th, I am moving out of this dump (which is a very nice way to refer to the only home I’ve ever know I must say) and moving into Rebecca’s flat. This will be very cool and will perhaps go some way to actually getting me some kind of life (if I don’t starve to death 🙂

The flat is completely unfurnished, which isn’t too much of a problem as this place has far too much furniture anyway, and I’m taking a fair swag of it with me. What is a slightly larger problem however is the lack of certain electrical appliances. So, yesterday I went out and bought me a TV, a washing machine (second hand), and put a deposit down on a fridge (also second hand). I figure that’s all I need in the way of major purchases, with the exception of a PAL/NTSC compatable VCR, which I’ll probably buy after my next pay cheque and finally be able to watch that KiTH/Twitch City video Stephanie send me long ago in the mists of history 🙂

I don’t actually have the washing machine around at the moment, they’re holding it at the store until it’s ready to be delivered, but the TV is great (in a way that a washing machine could never be, American sitcoms aside that is). It’s 51 cm with a built in game (which is pretty poor version of that one where the little man pushes blocks around a room but hey, that’s got to be better than no game at all, doesn’t it? 🙂 and most importantly PAL/NTSC playback. This means that I could finally watch the NTSC format Kindred: The Embraced DVDs I bought on eBay a good year ago. Damn that was a good show, even if it was by Aaron Spelling and Vampire purists object to much of the content. It’s such a shame about Mark Frankel (his death in a road accident meant the show was axed after only 8 episodes). Anyway I spent a good chunk of yesterday and some more today watching the entire series, and am now madly in love with Stacy Haiduk, a state that I am sure will pass as soon as I can catch up on some more normal TV (such as, I dunno, Parkinson 🙂

In addition to Stacy Haiduk (who was also in Seaquest DSV, in which if I remember rightly I was also madly in love with her) I was surprised to see that the series featured Patrick Bauchau (as Archon), who played Sydney in The Pretender. A nice little co-incidence, considering Helen is making such an effort to get it back on UK TV in some form. If you’re a Pretender fan in the UK, you should go along to her site and check it out. And eat lots of Pez.

(The series also heavily features Brian Thompson, best known to most people as the alien bounty hunter from the X-Files, and Brigid Conley Walsh who seems to have a recurring role in Angel. Fantasy/Sci-Fi TV in the states seems to be getting dangerously inbred these days 🙂

So, that was the highlight of my week. Watching eight hours of an axed Aaron Spelling series from 1996. As I said, I badly need to get a life 🙂

The lowlight (is that even a word?) of my week was Wednesday, when I worked nine and a half hours straight making changes to the Prochem website in order to get them all done before Thursday, which was the Anzac Day public holiday. We decided to take Friday off as well and have a four day weekend, great, but it meant the Prochem stuff had to be done. So I sat at my computer in the office typing, mousing and scanning from 8:15 through to almost 6:00, with only one five minute break to go to the bathroom. I didn’t even have time for lunch, which may not be unusual for some workaholic types, but not for me 🙂

It didn’t help that the whole site had been done in Adobe GoLive, meaning it was all graphics based. Including the text. Why anyone would use graphic files to put up text rather than actual HTML text is beyond me. Unless they’re completely anal about their anti-aliasing or something. Designers, sheeze!

Anyway I got it all done, and have not had my weekend disturbed by Prochem calling up to complain, so I guess I must have done an adequate job.

So that’s been my week. I’m going off to watch Run Lola Run now.

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