poppy alexander change and decay in all around I see

I've been trying for a while to get a cheap system set up to transfer some old college videos from svhs to dvd. I've gradually accumulated bits and pieces including a VideOh! PCI card, which I put in my Windows pc. The card worked, but the software it would work with was very limited. I read it would work with Linux, so I've bought a better motherboard (ASUS P4B533-VM) for the Linux pc (still only 1.8 MHz, but I'm hoping to get a cheap chip to get it up to 2.4 or 2.8, the Asus sute has a list of compatibles) and I've updated my Ubuntu to version 10.

The 1981 John Carpenter film with Kurt Russell. Class on a no-effects-to-speak-of budget. The rather stupid premise (Manhattan Island has become a giant prison which the President accidentally crash-lands in) gains such a lot of atmosphere from its minimal treatment that it becomes something really strange. It's all filmed at night, in urban dereliction just dressed with a bit of burning rubbish and the odd police helicopter, Carpenter's own music sounds as if its been played on an old-style synthesiser with one finger .. and it is creepy, as well as funny.

Louis de Bernieres' 'Red Dog'. The dog, in 50s Australia, becomes a local character, hitches rides, lives its own life, becomes a metaphor for rugged independance among small outback communities, gets poisoned when newcomers start changing things. Reminds me of another metaphorical tale, 'The Tree' by Grey Owl, relating the passing of the American Indian way of life as seen by a tree over a couple of hundred years.

It's getting busier now, a lot of regulars are in from 'the fields' where the serious car booters find the big crowds in summer. A lot of: toys, ornaments, shoes with small wheels in the heels. What is the point of these? You can't skate in them. They might work if you held onto the back of a bike and lifted your toes up I suppose. Bought: 3 gilt picture frames, a Haynes manual for the Clio, a usb extension, an optical mouse, a pair of shoes with small wheels in the heels. These turn out to be rather like clogs, although styled like trainers: they're pretty rigid to hold the wheel fittings.

Celtic festival of Samhain begins, probably. A bit hazy, but assumed to be Celtic festival to mark the end of the growing season. Now to celebrate the farming year's end we have Hallowe'en, also a festival focussed on death. Quiet round our way, but this year we did get several sets of skeletally costumed children (the last two years we had none, and had to eat all the chocs ourselves. This year we were cleaned out, even the emergency Alpen bars).

By John Brunner in 1965, this is set in a new South American planned town, one where everyone plays chess. A traffic planner is called in to shift a shanty town around by reorganising traffic flow. He comes to realise the purpose of his employment is far from benign. It's not hard to see the underlying premise, but the author has been as systematic as the town's would-be social engineers in working it through ..

Canticle's quite funny, but it has a serious streak under its quirky humour. Written by Walter M. Miller Jnr in 1959, it starts long after repeated nuclear holocausts have wiped out C20th civilisation, and its successors. Culture is kept alive through the barren times between the rise and fall of cultures by monastic communities, as in Europe's Dark Ages. The monks find themselves not only custodians of philosphical thought, but of technological remains as well .. in the long ages before culture and understanding regrow, they copy out and illuminate circuit diagrams and blueprints..

Not much going on now. Picked a couple of smallish cabbage and some spinach, couple of leeks. Sprouts on the way. garlic and most of the autumn sown onions are now in. Got some compost to start off the broad beans, sweet peas.

Some of the onion sets coming up are getting nibbled by rabbits: put one bed of onions under a plastic cover to see if it helps. The downside is that it protects the slugs from the birds.

About two thirds of the pruning done on the raspberries, but the gooseberries still to do.

Decided I ought to try the VideOh! pci card I bought in a Linux box. It's supposed to be not a bad card, but in Windows the software lets it down, it's not compatible with much and the Ulead software I have for it won't install properly. It sounds as if it's compatible with Linux. So I'm getting a few bits to upgrade my Linux box: motherboard, cpu, case .. in fact it's really another computer. All on the cheap of course. Got an Asus P4B533-VM mobo on ebay with a 1.8MHz P4, now trying to get a compatible chip to upgrade that, and some memory.

I rate this top of the stuff we saw in our several-day stay at the Edinburgh fringe at the end of August this year. A vigorous physical theatre piece with a large stage, an international cast of nine (speaking a range of nonsense languages) and a strong atmosphere which livened up the underlying bleakness of the plot.