2008 — 5 May: Monday
Goodness me, it's just gone midnight.
Today's plan?
Rather depends on the weather and the pollen count. I might even just carry on reading about "Wubi", which looks very promising:
This is going to be a bit of a placeholder as it's definitely nearly time for some sleep. But I've always time and energy for another picture of Christa. Dial the flux capacitor back one whole year to 5th May 2007 and step into the De Lorean with me to see Christa pointing out what still needed doing (and what would be going where) as we converted our pond into its current incarnation as a bog garden:
It's 00:27 and raining; cheer up with this Knuth interview. Fascinating on multi-cores, too.
You call this "news"?
"Open prisons are being used as a release1 valve" says a chap on the morning news at 09:00 — "Bad teachers can make the difference between pupils passing or failing their GCSEs" says another. "Many areas can expect showers" — finally something I can relate to as I listen to the dripping and glower at the over-full buckets in the ever boggier garden. Meanwhile an American guest of Andrew Marr has just asserted that his country spends $700 billion per year on military matters but cannot afford to assess the carbon-capturing capability of new technology in coal-fired power plants because, at $3 billion, that's far too much. Back to Radio 3, I fear. Time for my morning cuppa, too.
I'm never sure quite how clever or insightful Charlie Brooker is, but I always enjoy what he has to say. Today he seems to have discovered existential angst, bless him. The readers' comments are pretty fine, too, if you follow the link:
We plod down the street holding remote conversations with voices in little plastic boxes. We slump in front of hi-def panels watching processed, graded, synchronised imagery. We wander through made-up online worlds, pausing occasionally to chew the fat with some blue-skinned tit in a jester's hat. We watch time and space collapse on a daily basis. Our world is now running an enhanced, expanded version of reality's vanilla operating system.
I'm left wondering if I've missed out on a Service Pack or two! What I do know is that Mike captured an avian cure for angst on the day I took my inadvertent mudbath in Sparsholt
Shades of "Money for nothing"...
If you recall that lovely old Dire Straits video and the lyrics about (M)TV, the forum chatter about Freesat is hotting up considerababble. I gather launch date is supposed to be tomorrow. (Does that give the consortium time to make anything worth watching?) More information here.
Be it resolved...
This Interweb malarkey has all sorts of stuff when you start digging!
Time (12:33) to resolve a bite to eat, methinks. Blood on the streets of Leeds. Good God! And General Franco rigged the 1968 Eurovision song contest? Is nothing sacred? And, do you realise, 668 is the Neighbour of the Beast?
I got that last from a pretty nifty "quotes" facility while looking into a Windows file defragmentation program. And that was only because I was yet further into my "Wubi" studies. As I say, this Interweb malarkey is amazing. Good grief, it's 16:00 already.
Progress may be a little slow (or, at least, variable) but I'm still having a ripping time. I've also made a start on DVD artwork titles beginning with the letter "C".2 And now it's already after 18:00 — Lorenz-FitzGerald, eat your heart out! Oops! All I was looking for was a nice neat explanation of the Lorenz-FitzGerald contraction, and (dammit) I've stumbled across two gems:
So should Ignatz throw a brick of dimensions 2"x4"x6" from the moon at lightspeed, the effect on the proximity of [Krazy Kat's] head on the earth would be the same as a mass closing on 1/4 (rho - say 1 lb/cu inch)*2*4*250,000*5280*12 suddenly appearing and existing for a duration of 6"/(186000mps*5280*12) seconds or about the same as a mass of 30,000,000,000 lbs for a duration of about a half a nanosecond...
It's not every day I stumble across an example of Krazy and Ignatz...
An audio CD titled Kelp Scum, with artwork, of pseudo-binaural audio recordings of Tibetan bowls, drumming, with desert winds, inside southwestern Indian cave dwellings, by the rushing water of streams & waterfalls, surf & ocean by Rob Tow and Brenda Laurel, from 1993 through 2006. We are calling ourselves Kelp Scum because of our love of snorkling in the kelp forests of northern California.
This second item reminds me that (sparked by Sennheiser's recent release of a 45rpm demo disc of binaural stereo at what was still a period of heightened interest in quadrophonic sound system technology) I actually made some dummy head audio recordings myself for a hi-fi magazine article I researched and wrote back in the summer of 1976. This was while I had the temporary use of a (very tasty) Nakamichi 550 Pro portable cassette recorder. See if you can recognise my lovely young assistant as she totes the microphones and the recorder!
I remember ICL taking a much more relaxed stance on freelance work than IBM did.