2009 — 17 April: Friday
It's just gone midnight, and I'm drooping fast. Tonight's picture of Christa shows her sitting on the then newly-assembled1 bunk bed we'd bought for Peter back in February 1987 (in time for it to do a sterling job accommodating two of his four NZ cousins later that year).
Christa on Peter's new "Stompa" bunk bed, 1987
It occurs to me that even the most casual viewer of the photos of Christa I've been publishing for the last 18 months or so will have been able to conclude that the colour red featured high on her list2 of favourite things.
G'night.
Unmoving news
Having (orange) juiced Junior, I'm munching my breakfast while contemplating a 256GB SSD SATA "hard drive" for a mere £550 (no moving parts, of course — well, apart from those probability clouds of electrons) and recalling that it's not so very long ago that I paid more than that for an IBM Deskstar SCSI drive of, ooh, easily 4.3 GB that, within eight months or so, also had no moving parts. The Acorn disc file system I'd attached it to also had a nasty problem somewhere around the 2GB boundary, but that's another story.
Progress? Don't make me laugh. Mike's just more or less confirmed that the passive hdmi switchbox3 I lent him has trouble with driving signals through a 7 metre lead without introducing sparklies and dropped frames.
The music on Radio 3 is about to drive me out for some food shopping. It's 10:24 already and I gather there's a lot of rain due this afternoon, hereabouts.
Literary Darwinism?
Some academics seem to have too much time on their hands. Source and snippet:
Flesch added that the pro-social tendency could have evolved through more basic adaptations, such as costly signaling through altruistic punishment — or costly signaling through
rewarding altruistic punishment. That might explain why readers of "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" can feel an ancient thrill upon reading of Elizabeth and Darcy bonding over their mutual
warrior prowess, despite a tongue-in-cheek joke that ensues when Elizabeth gives back some ammunition with the query, "Your balls, Mr. Darcy?"
"They belong to you, Miss Bennett," Darcy replies.
Speaking of "Balls" I only learned today, in the Waitrose car park (where else?), that an obscenely huge Lexus 4x4 is the only vehicle allowed to go the "wrong" way in their one-way system. (I suspect a "Hummer" might have been able to deflect it, but certainly not a Toyota Yaris.) It's taken me exactly 14,000 miles of driving to discover that. You live and, just occasionally, you learn. Oh well, it's 11:34 — my next excitement will be watching Len try to get on to the drive around the neighbour's three vehicles and the parker who has parked, clearly undeterred, alongside my main co-pilot's new anti-parking posts...
Later
Lunch? Lunched. It's started to drizzle. Junior is doing some programming. I'm amused — having clipped an item from the Guardian very many years ago that reads "Those who wanted only an orgasm out of life, now want a career as well" — to stumble across this:
And, if she does find a Mr. Right, she has no plans to wed to marry him. (sic)
She adds, "I don't believe in commitment. That's like giving somebody the responsibility of your happiness, like, 'Here, you make sure that all my orgasms are great, that I have somebody to hold
on cold winter nights, and just assure me that if anybody messes with me, you'll beat them up.' Other than that, I don't see the point of marriage.
Young people today, heh?
Now, then, Mr Postie, what'cha got there? A minor league ERNIE, the (interest-free) bill for the Oppo DVD player, and (possibly) tonight's viewing (bought in the wake of an NPR interview with young Mr Brand):
Much later
Junior's been back in his London flat for at least three hours. My evening meal is a distant memory, too. And I've just scanned Mystic Pizza which marks the end of letter "M". I shall now let the poor ol' Epson scanner cool down for a bit. It's 23:42 and seems to have been pouring with rain. Nonetheless we've planned a "bluebell" walk for tomorrow to show it off to a couple of chums from near Ringwood. Let's hope the ground isn't too soggy.