2008 — 17 December: Wednesday
As I've mentioned, in June 1974 Christa and I went on our first-ever picnic, setting off from my parents' place in High Wycombe and ending up in Oxford. Tonight's picture is from that little expotition:
Christa in Oxford, 1st June 1974
Let's hope sleep arrives more easily this time, shall we? G'night.
It did!
It's (yawn) 09:34 and the sun is busily removing what looks like a touch of frost. On with the kettle.
Being slow to the iPlayer party, I was unaware of its use of the Kontiki "kservice" to leave open a peer-to-peer file sharing port1 on your machine. I've no real objection to this apart from the fact that I managed to overlook it. Ignorance can be bliss, of course. However there's no trace of this service running on the PC I used — I deduce I escaped this little "gotcha" because I ran the "view it again" facility in my browser's window rather than downloading and installing the iPlayer explicitly. I'm also not seeing the "100% CPU" that has (I belatedly discover) been complained of. (Of course, that could be because nobody else is interested in the Horizon programme!)
On closer inspection:
When you install the Download Manager you will also install peer-to-peer file sharing software from Verisign Inc. This software has a file share feature that enables other BBC iPlayer users to download BBC Content through your personal computer (using part of your upload bandwidth), via a secure link, to their personal computers... The peer-to-peer functionality is automatically turned on as a default setting. You can change your settings...
I have little enough upload bandwidth as it is. Oh well, time for breakfast. (Judging by the traffic carnage I'm hearing about, I'll need the blood sugar before I set out on any supplies trails later.)
C5, anyone?
Gosh, the Sinclair C5 electric whatever-it-was. Interesting to hear all the hindsight kicking in 23 years later. I would comment, instead, on the wildly divergent opinions about likely inflation and/or deflation (not both at once, surely?) on Robert Peston's blog but it's too wearisome.
Never too late...
... for a correction. In September, I mentioned the rumour about how a CD's playing time was determined by the Sony chairman's liking for Beethoven's 9th Symphony. This piece in Wired fills in many gaps in the story. Sorry for the minor misinformation.
Not half as sorry as Microspit, in an adjacent story:
Obviously Microsoft isn't recommending you ditch IE (though the company didn't hesitate to suggest dumping Apple's Safari browser when it suffered from a far less serious vulnerability). Instead the company has released a security bulletin with possible workarounds, including running IE in Protected Mode and running Windows as an non-administrative user (to limit the damage an attacker can inflict).
My cupboard is slightly less bare (to the detriment of the bank balance) so (at 13:04) it's time to grab a bite and then out into the impending sunset (!) in search of a congenial cuppa with my oppo opposite. The bliss of retirement, heh? Or if Christa could see me now...
Tea-ser and the Firecat
We had our cuppa in Hillier's, I had my customary grumble at the notice by the till that states you cannot use credit cards for payments of less than £5 (I was using a debit card, but the wenches remain inflexibly incorrect) then we pootled gently through a variety of Sombornes and Stockbridge before heading for home ahead of the impending sunset. A minor-league adventure, to be sure, but worthwhile. Apparently I missed the roosting owl quite near the "Potter's Heron", what with concentrating on the road. And since when did the whole of the urban bit of Hursley Road have a "30" limit?2 The upper part of it was "40" within, as it were, living memory, but now there's a "30" sign that lights up and says "Slow down".
Unpleasant Flashbacks
I switched away from the All in the Mind programme, interesting though it was — listening to the sounds of a patient having bursts of intense magnetism to induce seizures (to combat depression) sounded a bit too much like the sounds during Christa's radiation treatments. Mind you, the Choral Evensong with the synchronised chants of "Amen" was just as unpleasant. Back to Winamp, therefore. Though the first random tune that turned up was "Benedictus" by the Strawbs! <Sigh>
Pleasanter Flashbacks
I was browsing idly through some emails to and from Carol (in New York) from the middle of 2004. In one I was telling her how they recently converted an old power station on the south bank of the Thames into a new offshoot of the Tate Gallery...
Its turbine hall is several storeys high, and perfect for the display of extremely large artworks. What did they find to put in it? A bloody great piece of stretched plastic; I ask you! On the other hand, I would love to have seen Richard Wilson's installation, which was basically a shallow pool of motor oil used to yield a perfect reflection of a multiply-windowed room in the old County Hall building from which London used to be run by Red Ken long before he went on to become Mayor of London.
I was awestruck, years ago on Lanzarote, to find a large pool deep inside a volcanic cave system which perfectly reflected the ceiling and gave the impression (until disturbed by the chucking-in of a coin) of a gallery of dizzying depth underneath it. I'll save for later the blind panic when I lingered too long and the lights went out as I belatedly stumbled off after the rest of the tour group. That, and my first ride on a camel, were not my finest performances.
It's now pitch black outside. Must soon be time to feed the inner man. And I think I'll try the BBC4 programme on Palladio houses later this evening.
In later news...
Replete with chicken and lemon, plus a healthy dollop of fresh veggies. But I'm left wondering from where the BBC finds studio audiences3 willing to laugh raucously at totally unfunny comedy shows. A mild mystery to ponder over my latest cuppa. Then it will be time to clear the decks in the kitchen so I can begin the next round of crockpottery prep. At least it's becoming a well-rehearsed routine.
Here's a melancholy extract from a Wikipedia page:
Still no sign of "Shadow on the Sun", I notice! Now that was one scary radio programme...
The Andrea di Pietro della Gondola "Peter the boat!" (aka Andrea Palladio) programme was most interesting. Christa would have loved to see the shots of the Italian landscapes, as well as the amazing architecture. It's being followed, oddly enough, by the film "Cockles & Muscles" which (I note here) she and I watched together just over two years ago. Seems like only yesterday!