Everything, Everything

A while ago I bought an NVIDIA Shield Pro to replace my old Firestick, but it had issues displaying things properly with my AVR and Sony TV so I hooked it up to my computer monitor instead and eventually went with the Firestick 4K Max. The performance of the Max is significantly better than the older Firestick, but it had a few limitations such as only supporting Dolby audio outputs (I swear older Firesticks had better HDMI passthrough support, possibly before the 4K versions?). I was able to live with this until recently the Plex client stopped being able to play EAC3 (Dolby Digital Plus) files for some unknown reason. I gave Kodi a try, with the Plex add-on, but the interface isn't as good, and sometimes the audio played up for the entire Firestick due to how they output audio). I ended up forcing the Firestick to DD+ (instead of best available) and using a recent Maven build of Kodi (Kodinerds ARMV7a for Android) to get support for Dolby Vision (the FireTV version doesn't have support for DV, apparently). I did try the Nexus build, but that seemed to hang when trying to play anything. I was going to stick with Kodi(nerds), but a recent discussion with friends convinced me to try the Shield Pro again.

I'm pretty sure I gave up on it before 9.0 came out, and after upgrading to 9.1 it seems to behave itself quite well with my TV. However, I couldn't get Dolby Vision to work at 4K with a high refresh rate using the aux HDMI port on my Denon amp (it was on the front and convenient for testing). But after connecting to the 8K HDMI port on the Denon (admittedly with a different HDMI cable, although I did try three other high quality cables) I finally had the option for the top frame rates with DV. And it seems to work fine. Although I've now lost the option to remove the toggle DV option from Quick Settings so I guess it's there forever.

In the past I believe they sent rec. 709 over rec. 2020 which my Sony TV (which I think has been updated since then) wasn't a huge fan of. I think they might have enabled DV all the time too. And I'm pretty certain they didn't have any frame rate matching support. But it's all looking much better now (my Denon AVR also has been updated since then, mostly to try and resolve Dolby surround sound audio issues), and if things continue to work I can see myself using the Shield Pro and relegating the Firestick 4K Max to my computer monitor.

The NVIDIA Shield Pro might (finally!) be the best device for playing a wide range of media.

BT finally updated the software on their BT TV Pro box last month so you can watch pretty much all their channels without needing an aerial. It seems you need to do a factory reset as you're only offered the option to not use an aerial during first setup; but if you've got an aerial connected it won't ask you what you want to do. To see the TV Channels Mode stage you need to unplug your aerial if it's already connected. Otherwise it will assume you want to use an aerial and won't prompt to let you switch over to the Internet only mode.

You lose a few Freeview channels (e.g. Dave), you can only record 2 channels at the same time, you need to sign in to view ITV shows, and BBC Radio involves using an app; but you get BBC News HD (I believe it was lost via aerial due to recent Freeview changes), and I think BBC One should show regional content in HD on channel 001 (and HD versions of channels replace the SD versions for the first 10 channels). A full list can be found at https://www.bt.com/help/tv/guide/ip-freeview-guide.

Around six months ago I said I was hoping to write a novel (or three). For various reasons I didn't get around to writing anything properly for the first month, but at the end of last month I finished writing the "vomit draft" of one of my rough ideas for a novel.

Many writers like to give their own methods for writing, although as I've never heard of their work I do wonder if some people's advice falls under George Bernard Shaw's quote "those who can't, teach", but the general consensus is there will be multiple drafts as you turn your pile of crap into something you feel comfortable publishing (the advantage of digital copies is it's much easier to fix things like typos, although you can't usually get away with fixing a major plot hole).

Stephen King apparently only needs 3 drafts, but he has written a lot of successful books and seems to know what he's doing (either that or he's a massive liar). Most people seem to suggest 4-13 drafts, although I suspect anything that needs more than a dozen drafts probably should be put in the bin. Some people count the outline as the first draft, although I wouldn't. After trying to "pants" my way through a novel that I'll likely abandon (despite writing 81844 words so far), this one had an outline. In hindsight, trying to write a time travel novel might have been a mistake, as it made it far more complicated than your traditional "boy meets girl" style books. After skimming through the draft I've already spotted one anachronism, and there's another time-related annoyance I can solve in a couple of ways.

The "vomit draft" seems to be the first thing people write. Mine's arguably not actually a vomit draft as I fixed typos (autocorrect fixed most of them), I went back to flesh out several "SOMETHING GOES HERE" type placeholder values, and I even did a bit of research in places. Hopefully the grammar, spelling, and punctuation is pretty good; but I still need to write a few more drafts. In terms of things to review, there's the main story arc, the subplots, character arcs, before I get as far as asking someone else to read it. I know the word count isn't meant to be important, but I'm up to 54683 words and I'm pretty sure that number is only going to go up by another 2000-3000 words as I go through my review process (and maybe I'll write my own blog entry on how [not] to write a novel?). It won't be the longest novel, but hopefully the story will be worth reading whenever it's done.

And if it does well (i.e. people say they like it; I know it's not going to sell many copies) and I can find the time (doubtful once I'm employed again), I already have a rough outline for two more novels in the potential trilogy.