People did, and do, actually cook in microwaves. Cite. I shudder to think of how many chickens and even turkeys were cooked that way. :eek:
And Crotalus, I hope that piano is tuned regularly. 
Making art. Sure, I can do things in Photoshop that I could never do on a canvas, but there’s nothing like real oil painting, especially the smells of the oils and solvents. I don’t entirely enjoy art that doesn’t get your hands dirty.
I miss the ritual of popcorn cooked on the stove. Dad always did it. He’d put the oil in the big heavy pot. And we’d wait until it got really hot. Meanwhile a bit of rushing about to get the butter in the other pan on low low heat. The sizzle of a few drops of water as he tested the heat of the oil. Then in with the popcorn and on with the lid. Then the sound of the pot scraping on the burners as he shook it to keep the kernels moving about. A quick flash of the left hand to make sure the butter is under control. Then the explosive sound of the first kernel poping in the echo of the metal pot. Virorous, noisy shaking and scraping of the pan while clamping the lid down tightly accompanied by faster and faster popping and sizzling butter. At last the popping stops and the pot is off the stove and the lid is off and the steam billows out and the smell of the popcorn overwhelms the scent of the melted butter. Watching the fluffy kernels pour into the bowl and the butter drizzled over them and then salt salt salt.
Yeah. I miss that. And I miss Dad. But I’d feel really silly cooking popcorn that way now. I have a hot air popper and melting butter in the microwave is a breeze. But still…
Terrestrial non-HD digital signals, at least in the UK, are not brilliant, but I was referring particularly to cable. Certain channels, and I’m thinking especially of Eurosport 2, appear to be compressed using a hacksaw. Trying to watch a tennis match is next to impossible - the ball often appears as a small yellow flickering square, and sometimes disappears altogether.
But even on terrestrial, with an aerial that gave flawless analogue pictures, I fairly regulalrly see the picture break up entirely when there’s a lot of fast-moving, detailed action on the screen. And certain types of picture seem to be totally unsuited to digital TV - anything with smoke or mist gets a kind of “posterised” effect where the gradual transitions of colour get compressed into half a dozen or so steps of gradient. And it’s not down to the TV set, as the same image looks fine on analogue.
Basically, as more and more of our media go digital – MP3s, digital TV, digital radio – quantity goes up but quality suffers as a result.
I am at a total loss as to the benefits of packet macaroni cheese mix. Macaroni cheese is an incredibly quick meal to make, and I don’t really see how using a packet mix could be any quicker! You still have to boil the pasta, right? Well in the time it takes the pasta to boil, your cheese bechamel sauce is practically ready. 20-25 minutes start to finish, if that. If you want it baked then that adds, what, 15 mins tops. How on earth could a baked macaroni cheese recipe take “hours”?
Eh, why 30? Do you use top end lenses, tripods and work for absolute perfect lighting? The average hand-held 35mm only has 4-12 MP, and you can certainly get a digital camera in that range for that range.
Not “hours” but at least 1 hour. 10 -15 minutes to boil water, cook the pasta, make the sauce, mix into a casserole dish (we layer ours so it takes at least 5 - 10 minutes), and 45 minutes to bake.
Mmmmm, Mac and Cheese in a box comes nowhere close to baked mac and cheese.
I took up calligraphy as a hobby because there’s something tangibly satisfying about laying down ink on prepared paper. I also enjoy mixing the ink, preparing my own nibs, and studying calligraphic styles. I’m not anywhere near proficient and I’m sure you’d laugh at my efforts. Printing the same thing on a printer in Lucida Sans Calligraphy font would be a whole lot prettier, but that doesn’t seem to be the point.
I bet what you’re seeing is over-compressed data. The same thing in an MP3 file would sound like a “watery” type sound in the background. The artifacts in smoky areas are probably a shortcoming of the compression algorithm, it’s probably trying to reduce noise.
I notice in the US when a digital over-the-air channel tries to run 1080i resolution and have 3 sub-channels (like 6-1, 6-2, 6-3), everything seems a little more pixelated.
Non-HD cable. Comcast, to be precise. The HD looks good, as do most non-HD channels. But non-HD TBS, WGN, and a few others are damn near unwatchable. Worse than a good signal from the old rabbit ears.
You need a kettle. 
You took it out of context though, it takes that long to do all the things I mentioned, not just boil water.
Ah sorry, misread. Ooops.
One of the problems - which will, with luck, go away when analogue is switched off - is that digital terrestrial transmissions are broadcast on low power to prevent interference with the analogue signals. Unfortunately this means the digital signal isn’t very robust, particularly if you live a long way from the nearest transmitter or don’t have a direct line of sight to it. Add to that the fact that some broadcasters cram as many channels into the available bandwidth as possible, and the results are less than impressive.
But until most people have switched to digital there’s no possibility of doing anything to improve matters. And until something is done to improve matters there’s little chance of most people switching to digital…