2008 — 12 May: Monday
It's 01:12 and I'm now long back from a most enjoyable evening, as it were, with Jo Brand (I was going to say "ineffable" but that's not quite le mot juste) at Winchester's Theatre Royal. It was being filmed (for "Equity"), but unobtrusively. It was hot, too; indeed during this weather I'd almost prefer to go nocturnal, as it were.
I hope, by the way, my recent CSS changes are also unobtrusive, though a reader who is (and perhaps should be) far-flung for his description of my verbal meandering as "The Wind in the Wellows" has a mild complaint about: "always having to read some of the previous day because you write cafeteria style1 — little and often, it seems and I get the post midnight the day before I get the rest of the day." The (ex-IBM) reprobate goes on to say:
I had in mind a reader-focussed minimising of non-essential keystrokes and clicks that would provide a bookmarkable link to the last page of the diary that one had visited — or the most recent page that there is. The latter is easier (no cookies) but not as useful as the former if you will spread your writing over both ends of the candle. But then CD ripping must have powerful attractions too.
I long ago decided against using cookies. And, as you visit diary pages, I add a "strike-through" to them on the quarterly "archive" pages. Though that visual cue will only last until you clear your web browser's private data, browsing history, or whatever.
(Non-)leaping lizard
From our Rhinefield walk last week:
Good grief! More people would like to see UK house prices fall2 than rise... BBC2 tonight at 20:00 may be interesting, it seems. Though I found the "news" link horribly simplistic...
Are people really so ignorant? What a change in fifty years.
Time for breakfast. Another bright sunny day, it seems, at 09:04 and Mr J Walker instead of Mr T Wogan for a fortnight... (Though they both have to sing from the same music playlist, it seems.) Oh dear. Write a book about the clumsy functioning of the human mind, get it reviewed, and discover "confirmation bias" on the reviewer's part. Was that so surprising? Personally, I am beginning to think (if that's what I do) that the whole of life is one, large kluge. (Lovely word.)
Moth(er's) passion
Did you realise the world of moth-obsession is a largely male one? What strange snippets you can hear on "Woman's Hour"! Meanwhile, I see Christa's preferred bank (and one of mine, now) is again writing off more money than I can feasibly contemplate. The old joke about "If you owe the bank £100 you have a problem, but if you owe the bank £1,000,000 they have a problem" needs updating:
28 essays on dignity
I read long ago that any fool can ask a question the wisest man cannot answer. And I've observed the idea at work in many a management meeting, too. Here's a good one: "How did the United States, the world's scientific powerhouse, reach a point at which it grapples with the ethical challenges of twenty-first-century biomedicine using Bible stories, Catholic doctrine, and woolly rabbinical allegory?" Of course, it isn't posed by a fool, but by Steven "the thinker" Pinker. Good stuff. He certainly has it in for Leon Kass (chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics from 2002 to 2005), most amusingly. But then the good chap does seem to lay himself wide open:
Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone — a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America but that still offends those who know eating in public is offensive.
Why, I was licking a turquoise ice cream cone just the other day, dammit! There is possibly more about this fatuous ice cream eating quote than is entirely sensible here. Dammit, yet another web site to soak up my time and ever shorter attention span. And just what, I wonder idly, would the UK equivalent of this chart resemble?
Late lunches
I generally adhere to the idea that I should eat when I'm hungry. And, on hot days, I tend not to get hungry. I also notice that hunger is, indeed, the best appetiser, which is often important when examining what comes out of my kitchen sometimes. And I have to keep an eye on what (I've always assumed) is my blood sugar level, as I can get all of a quiver if I go too long without food. But despite all this theoretical knowledge, I've slightly over-achieved today. I have once again failed to factor in the preparation and/or cooking time, so I'll not be tucking into my tasty glazed gammon and veg medley for another 55 minutes or so. (I'm also faintly appalled, given my hearty dislike of veggies, to see such a large pack of the things described as constituting merely one of my "5 a day".) What would Leon Kass make of my rumbling tum, I wonder? Audible tremors should die down around the 15:00 mark, I'm predicting.
On a completely different (musical) note: Why do I keep thinking of "Crocodile Dundee" when I hear this single from "Elbow"? Is it the repetitive two-note background beat? Or have I confused it with something completely different? And I've just learned that Neil Young has had a new species of trapdoor spider named after him. You hafta love what goes on on this planet, don't you think?
Wow-factor "high"
Here's a completely fascinating (to me) CSS-based photo-caption zoom technique used on this Vancouver chap's own pages and explained here. Brilliant! Big Bro; you might want to explore this a little should you decide to place your 90K slides on this Interweb thingy...
Stepping twice in the same river... dept.
Cast your mind back a mere day and a bit, and that detour part of the way down the Shoulder of Lamb Mutton for our lunch, and some stunning views. Mike took an almost identical shot, but with an astonishingly different colour balance. Click the pic:
As if I need more... dept.
Dear Mama rang earlier this evening, more or less demanding my physical presence. "Now that you're driving around..." Can't say I didn't see that one coming, though I must admit I don't remember her driving 300-mile round trips in a day 40 years ago (when she was even younger than I am, and herself a relatively new driver). Mind you, she actually wants to see both her "boys" together — that will be a neat trick.