Don't Let Looks Deceive You

From the photo here left it looks like another fantastic day here on the Sunshine Coast.  And in due course it may well be a beautiful day.  I just readied myself for my daily bike ride.  I grabbed my camera, my bike odometer, my helmet and I was all ready to go.  It was a little cool despite the glorious blue sky so I reached for my 'splash jacket' as well.  Then I walked to the back of the yard and felt the full force of the steady freezing cold breeze out there.  The 'wind chill factor' would be incredible.

I'm too old for this I thought so I grabbed the odometer, the camera and removed the helmet and headed back inside to be out of the wind.  I may check it out again 'later' and if conditions have improved and I may set off on a ride later today!

As you can imagine life has continued along quietly with not a lot happening.

We are considering doing a road trip in a few weeks time.  One of the spots we missed from back in our caravaning days was western Queensland.  We would be away for around 11 nights and spend a few days in Longreach via Charleville and Isisford.  On the way home we would spend a couple of days in Yeppoon.  We would leave on a Monday and arrive back home on a Friday.

Trish is at Stitchers this morning so I am home alone.  I was planning on 'bottling' today but things aren't quite ready to bottle just yet.  That may happen tomorrow, we will see.

We are just over mid way through the TV Series "House of Cards".  Having a hearing problem I note when anything on TV is even slightly out of sync (OOS).  Trish says the movies are fine and she doesn't notice any problem with them at all (or rarely does).  All three episodes of House of Cards we watched last night were slightly OOS.  Is this a problem with the media player, the quality of the leads connecting it or is the problem with the files themselves?

I decided to dig into my archives this morning and replayed a section of one of the OOS episodes from last night on the computer.  Lo and behold, there it was, the files themselves are ever so slightly out of sync.  They do not appear to be fully as bad as when played on the media player, but then a computer has a lot more processing 'grunt' than a $120 media player!

To the right of this post there is a series of links under the heading "Finding Good Downloads".  If you want to have a try at getting some movies or TV shows for yourself download the "How To" at 09. Downloading From 180Uploads.  I tend to look for things that have been put on the tv-release website by "mSD".  Those files are smaller than other regular downloads because of the format he always uploads in.  All of his files are in a format called "Matroska" and end with .mkv  Matroska Files are well known for their high quality by small file size.  The down side is if you are going to have a problem with a file playing correctly, most likely it will be in the "Matroska" format so my experiences shows.

Give it a go!  There is  TV show playing in the UK at the moment called "Dates".  Each show is only 20 odd minutes long and mSD has uploaded his version of them at tv-release.  Each download is a mere 100mb so would be a good place to have a practice and see how you go!