2009 — 4 January: Sunday
Good grief, it's 01:35 already. Tonight's picture? Well, it continues the Bournemouth / New Year's Day tradition.
Christa and Peter in Bournemouth, January 1983
I watched the newly-delivered John McNaughton DVD earlier. Not as good as Wild Things — it could well have been trimmed by a few minutes and gained considerably thereby. But it was witty and inventive. Funnily enough, I think the late Donald E Westlake managed the mixing of sex and humour better than most writers. I cite "Adios, Sheherazade" as an example, and leave it as an exercise to track down. I last saw a copy in the public library in Hatfield easily 36 years ago.
Incidentally, I may just have stumbled across a fellow font fanatic1 on the walk yesterday. Click the pic for my evidence:
It's actually a rather nice, almost hand-written font, of the type generically known as "Uncial" although that term is somewhat obscure, having no precise definition helpful to its description as a letter form. The Latin derivation is "ounce" or "inch", which may have some bearing on the amount of space an uncial character originally occupied.
Did I mention the car was mucky?
The muddy Yaris and its passenger
G'night at 02:15 or thereabouts. And g'mornin' at 10:12 or thereabouts. (It was too dark, too cold, and too early at 06:35 when the central heating kicked in so I confess I shut my eyes again.) But now it's cuppa time; quite frosty looking out there, too. Better get dressed, I suppose.
You haven't changed a bit...
Listening to the excellent Miriam Margolyes rattling through her collection (as it were) of Dickens' women I was amused to note that the awful Mrs Finching was based on an early love of his, as re-encountered 19 years later. Two days ago I published a photo of the house here back in 1982. I've just taken a new one, as you can see if you click the pic:
Lyrics
Perhaps it's because I've been watching a fair amount of footage of musicians just recently, but there's a delicious couplet in the Pete Atkin song "Sessionman's Blues" that's just whistled by on the HP Media PC (the Gateway is having its fragmented hard drive brushed and combed at the moment): "The squattin' in a booth alone / Isolated microphone, blues". It's on the album "Midnight Voices" and was written by Clive James. Cool.
Lunch? Already?
Well, it is 13:55 you know. Is it? Just before I raid the kitchen, let me share a lovely "Page not found" link which is also a mildly cautionary tale for people converting to Drupal. (How's it going, Geoff?2)
I am (it goes without saying) inordinately proud of my son. He's turning into a rowing software development philosopher. Perhaps I should introduce him to Robert Persig? Hey, when did it get dark? It's only 17:17. Aah, I see my cuppa needs zapping, too. Soon be time for the reliably excellent "Freak Zone".
That's enough...
... of my PC for a while, let alone the inane dribble from the BBC's "Money Box". I shall watch a film instead. It's 21:11 and time for a cuppa. And now it's 23:46 and (instead of a film) I've been enveloping myself in some episodes of "Shelley" by Peter Tilbury (from 1979). It's oddly nostalgic to see the old "Thames TV" logo after all these years.
Footnotes
1 As it happens, I used this particular font to set my name at the bottom of those 12 years of weekly letters to dear Mama. I mentioned
yesterday the elves who typeset all Hollywood movie artwork in a way that helps ensure maximum illegibility. Today — just for fun — I've revisited the example, but instead of
starting from a bitmap scan, I started with scaleable vector artwork. Mind you, to be sure of being able to display the final result in a web browser, I've used a GIF. Anyway, to keep my
credentials as a font geek intact, click the pic:
Director John McNaughton
Of course, I should really have used a PNG.
2 "Not badly," he says, as he slowly repairs his thirty year hiatus in active geekery! I know how he feels.