Maybe an odd thing to say halfway through June, but spring has finally arrived! The UK had a ridiculously warm and dry couple of months instead of the traditional spring showers in April/May, and it looks like the rain is all finally catching up with us. Just in time for the undergraduate exams / May Balls / graduation ceremonies as well! It's been thoroughly miserable here in Cambridge for the last few days, and it's supposed to continue into next week. I shall remain grumpy as ever as I shall be doing research all through the summer holidays anyway (no more summer holidays ever as I am no longer an undergrad!) - in fact I shall be a little less grumpy because I will actually get time to do some of my own research for a change!
I saw The Hangover: Part 2 last weekend. That in itself is not exciting (although I did enjoy the film) - the exciting thing for me is that the film was shown on a "digital screen". It's all very odd - somewhat like the transition from LP to CDs all those years ago, or VHS to DVD not so long ago. At first you don't really notice anything - it's still a film projected onto a large screen (same size) with surround-sound audio blaring out all around you. Then you suddenly notice - the audio is much crisper (DTS?) and the picture is absolutely crystal-clear.
Do I like this? . . . I'm not sure. I feel somewhat nostalgic about when you go to the cinema and you see the flickers on the screen, those black spots from the reel appearing in random places and the odd crackle in the audio. It feels like this is my "format reborn" moment - I was too young really to go from LP to CD as I went straight from tape to CD. That was much better as tapes were in general dreadful quality. Even VHS -> DVD was one I largely avoided as I tended to watch a lot of videos on the PC (back on Windows 95!) and so I was already accustomed to digital format videos. The codecs back then were pretty terrible though - or good I suppose as they had to compress the video down to a tiny size to fit on your 200 mb hard drive!
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