2009 — 4 May: Monday

Where better, I ask you, to fly our new toy helicopter than on the giant sandpit that was our building site back in 1982?

Christa and Peter

Chocks away! G'night.

Sleep having fled...

... despite the series of nocturnes on BBC Radio 3 so far this morning, what else can a Bank Holidaying chap of leisure do but ablute, dress, and sup his cuppa while calmly contemplating a (so far, reasonably sunny-looking) day of world-class pottering?

For Christmas 1963 I pestered my parents (who? me?) to buy me a typewriter and they very kindly did so, though it was only one of the ghastly plastic toy "Petite" variety whose keys actually pulled plastic fishing lines to activate the type hammers.1 Still, it was (marginally) better2 than nothing. I was reminded of this by the enchanting NYT obituary of "Mr Typewriter, New York".

Breakfast beckons. It's 09:21 and still seems to be sunny.

Having smiled all the way through the sublime "Ladies of letters" and their contending with the credit crunch, my reaction to this was less certain:

Hacking Exposed is probably the most awesome hacking manual there has ever been or will ever be. It uses such terms that your basic 13-ya-old script kiddie can follow, listing the tools and showing by hand how to use them. If you compare it to any of those horrendous "hacker" written testimonial articles that range from blog entries to tech reviews to what is equivalent to IBM handbooks with no sentence structure and even less spelling accuracy.

Encyclopedia Dramatica


Cheek! says an ex-writer of IBM material...

Lunch isn't just for wimps

My chicken breast is calling out to me, to add the salad, peas, and microwaved chips. Time (12:39) to descend from the Mendelssohns-filled study to the kitchen, therefore. How can I keep getting hungry? It's a total mystery.

That's better.

Arachnophobia

I've previously mentioned not only my irrational fear of (or, at least, strong distaste for) spiders above a certain volumetric threshold, but also one of my self-administered visual therapies (to try not to pass my reactions on to Junior). Christa was completely unbothered by arachnids, but had a fairly major problem with canines of most sizes. Anyway, here's a little verse that tickled me:

Spyder spyder burning bright
in the cobwebs of the night
what immortal hand or eye
gave you so many legs, you freaky f*****g bastard?

Comment added to the Charlie Brooker column


I see Mr Brooker has the same sort of herniated disc-in-his-neck problem that is currently causing my chum Mike some grief. Ouch. Pity tea isn't a sufficient cure; it generally works for me.

Koestler...

So, the radio programme about our fruit tree genetic bank shifts seamlessly into a piece about (among other things) the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. This event enthralled Christa, as you might expect. I catch the name of one of the commentators — Vitali Vitaliev — raise my eyes just slightly above the Dell 24" screen, and see:

Vitaliev

His 1997 collection of articles about a Russian coming to terms with life in the (decadent) West. (Shades of that wonderful Ursula K LeGuin novel, "The Dispossessed".)

10 cc

Once again, there's to be an extended repeat of the "Record Producers" programme that I've just finished listening to. Fascinating stuff. (Once again, the BBC 6Music schedule has yet to reveal details.)

  

Footnotes

1  I had by then made a copy of the keyboard layout to familiarise myself with what still strikes me today as their bizarre layout — and was further mystified (having also by then read "Cheaper by the dozen") how anyone could possibly type successfully on a keyboard with blank keys (a short-lived fashion statement in some posh offices).
2  A significant step up, at least, from (although not much less messy than) my little "John Bull" printing outfit!