Dilly, dilly!

I'm sure you've seen and heard the pharse "dilly, dilly" a lot lately. So, where did it come from?

"That's a dilly of a question!" :) Yes, "dilly of a" can be a synonym for excellent and perhaps delightful, and it has been used that way since at least the early 1930's, but dilly is older than that.

Lavender Blue is the rhyme or song that introduced me to dilly, dilly. The first version I heard was back in the mid-50's, but the lyric goes back to, at least, the early 1700's. What does it mean in this lyric? Well, it looks like excellent, delightful, wonderful, pretty would all fit in there in place of dilly, dilly doesn't it?

And then there's the lullaby:

Lavender's Blue (Dilly Dilly)

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender's green
When you are king, dilly dilly,
I shall be queen

Who told you so, dilly dilly,
Who told you so?
'Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,
That told me so

Call up your friends, dilly, dilly
Set them to work
Some to the plough, dilly dilly,
Some to the fork

Some to the hay, dilly dilly,
Some to thresh corn
Whilst you and I, dilly dilly,
Keep ourselves warm

Lavender's blue, dilly dilly,
Lavender's green
When you are king, dilly dilly,
I shall be queen

Who told you so, dilly dilly,
Who told you so?
'Twas my own heart, dilly dilly,
That told me so.

By the way, I dug around and dilly is used in Australia as a combination of daft and silly...and that makes sense...but daft and silly in an entertaining, delightful way.

So!  Have a dilly, dilly day!

Bowl Games

I'm a fan of college football, specifically I'm a fan of the Auburn Tigers. So, I got up to watch Auburn play Northwestern Friday morning. It was a great game! Auburn won, so of course it was a great game.

Avatar

Went to see Avatar tonight. The 3d effects were very good, much better than I've seen in the past, but then I seldom go to movies. The technology has certainly improved!

I'd recommend seeing Avatar, and this is one to see in the theatre, not waiting to see it at home. The 3d *made* this movie, that and the special effects. Plotwize, it was pretty derivative, but there was a good bit of campy humor...maybe it was intentional, let's hope so anyway.

Replacing the VCR

Good luck if you have to replace a busted VCR!

I've been "time shifting" TV for 20 years now. Seeing as I work most week nights until 9pm, if I want to see 'prime time' TV I have to time shift. The last few years it has been getting harder and harder to find VCRs to replace the 2 or 3 I have running. Now, well as I said...good luck...finding a new VCR. Yes, there are still a few dvd/vcr combos out there, but only a few brands and in limited supply. I strongly suspect they've stopped making them and are just drawing down their inventories now. Sigh! It is the end of an era.

One of the three VCR's I use to record TV died about a month ago. I'm making do with the last two and playing the tapes back on the VCR/DVD combo in the TV room. I've been looking and no replacements are to be found. I will have to pick up a combo unit this Christmas season before they are all gone, and that should hold things together for a while, but only for a while.

So, how am I to really replace the VCR? I don't think DVD-RW is the way to go. The recorders are too expensive and the disks only hold about 4 hours each, and that's not enough for the 6 hour days I have sometimes. I think I'm going to have to go to the DVR solution.

DVRs (Digital Video Recorders) come in 3 varieties: Tivo, the cable/satelite company's box, and Media PC's. I don't want to go the monthly subscription route with Tivo or the Cable company...and they would require me moving to "digital cable" and I can't see a reason to do that yet. So, that means I'm looking at a Media PC...and nobody seems to be selling one that does what I want. Some come close, but I'm going to have to customize, upgrade, and jury rig a bit to get to what I've currently got with Cable, VCR's, TV's and coax cables.

Over the next few weeks, I plan to "spec out" what I need and start acquiring the parts. I don't have a PC I can dedicate to this project, so I'm going to have to buy one and customize it. I'm hoping I can get the entire setup done for under $700...we'll see.