2009 — 20 August: Thursday

There's some chance, at least, of a walk later today. It depends on the activity of e. coli (or worse) in the tum of my chum. Right! Time for another picture of Christa:

Christa in March 2007

Taken during an evening of animated chatter with Big Bro and niece #1 on 31st March 2007.

G'night.

I have the predictive capability...

... of a gnat, it seems. While my chum's e. coli are now behaving themselves this morning, the weather most decidedly isn't. It's already raining in the vicinity of what was our intended destination, and there's seen to be no point in my delivering half of the A/V goodies either. Tomorrow is also already spoken for, in my case at least. (I mentioned God's attitude to plans here, of course.) Still, I'll now get a crack at the chicken pie that's teetering on the brink of "Use it or lose it" — I've belatedly discovered that I'm just as offended by food waste as Christa was. It's 09:20 and my cuppa awaits my pleasure, as it were.

I liked the comment appended to an otherwise essentially content-free piece about autonomous robots:

A homo sapiens Mk1 stepped out in front of my bicycle yesterday, its sensors having failed to detect my approach. Others of the same model are running amok in several parts of the world because their programming is obsolete and can't be validated or corrected by modern methods, and some are even consuming valuable oxygen, to no apparent purpose, in the local town hall. I think that we should stop producing more of these semi-autonomous robots until the design is improved.

"Go down broon" in The Guardian


It reminds me of the letter from JG Riddall to that same, once-fine, newspaper. But what is one to make of this? Right! Assuming I can find an unbent spoon, then what's for breakfast, David?

Here's a fascinating list (a PDF file) of the diverse amusements requested for tours of duty on the ISS. I must admit, I was a little thrown to see "Catch as catch can" attributed to Joseph Heller! NASA even responded to (in my opinion, justified) criticism of some of the items on the list. Truly out of this world.

Good news, bad news

I've got lots of MP3s. Too many to play from my external hard drive via the Oppo's USB input.
My pre-amp/power amp combo is on its way. The parcel tracking facility is blissfully unaware of this.
It didn't rain here. We cancelled our planned walk.
I cooked and ate the chicken pie. It wasn't very nice!
Elgar's "Nimrod" is on BBC radio 3 right now. I had enough trouble with this even before I lost Christa...
Mr. Postie dropped off a new DVD for me to watch. It might be too scary for me :-)

DVD

I fancy I could force down another steaming morsel or two. It's somehow already 18:34 and I'm vaguely wondering whether to listen to Handel's "Samson".