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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Thursday 10 July 2003 (Day View)

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10.07.2003 – Thursday 10 July

• It is yet another overcast day, raining on and off.

Town

• Dad, Mum and I drove into town and did shopping. I performed daring and exciting deeds such as buying a pie from the bakery and a thick shake from the Mad Cow Café. I also went to the video store and got “Gandhi”, “The Wild Bunch”, “Dead Poets Society”, “Kiss of the Dragon” and “Romeo Must Die”. I only wanted to get one DVD to ensure the new DVD drive in this computer worked, but then I thought I had better get two in case one DVD was scratched, and then I found another so decided to get three. When I went to pay the lady at the desk told me I could get five for $11, which is cheaper than getting four and better value than three, so I got five. We dropped in at the Lion’s Den Hotel on the way home for Mum to check something about cleaning, so I took a few photos.

Night

• Mum has been invited to a “Jean’s Drivers” dinner at Home Rule with all the other people who have helped Jean while she’s been unable to drive, so I set the “Gandhi” DVD copying so I could drop it out to Ric later and got a lift out to Home Rule with her. I took two DVD’s that I’d already copied, “Dead Poets Society” and “The Wild Bunch” and set the DVD region on Ric’s computer and messed around with it for a little while, setting up a few things, and then walked up to Shan’s. Shan and I messed about on his computer and I had a little dinner and some pudding, then Mum came and picked me up again and we drove home. When I got back the DVD drive had skipped over three thousand read errors and was still trying to read the disc, and not much more than halfway through. This reminds me of how I ruined my last DVD drive – left it reading a scratched disc while I went to town and several hours later it was still trying to read it. It seems this one still reads DVD’s, but it doesn’t seem to handle scratches like my other drive down in Brisbane – either that or these DVD’s are more scratched.

Comment by DK – Friday 11 July 2003, 6:35 AM

  Is it a good idea to admit you "copy" DVDs on the web?

Comment by Ned – Friday 11 July 2003, 2:18 PM

  I should perhaps clarify the term “copy” in this context. A temporary image of the movie contained on the DVD is created on my computer. I then watch the DVD from this image, which is deleted after viewing. It should be thought of as temporarily “caching” the entire DVD for playback. On this computer, this provides a much smoother playback experience and avoids the problems caused by scratched discs during playback. At no point do I copy or duplicate, edit, broadcast, exchange, hire or lend the movie or the disc upon which it is contained.