2009 — 8 September: Tuesday

The clock on the wall (not that I have one) is suggesting it's round midnight yet again. So it's time for a picture of Christa from no earlier than January 1977:

Christa in 1977

I can tell, because there's a new-looking copy of Harlan Ellison's "Deathbird stories" paperback visible on the shelf by her right shoulder...

Book

... and I didn't buy that until 22nd January of that year. Note there was an interesting "hair-do" going on, but I kept my opinions of that to myself. The smile still says it all. G'night.

Next thing I knew, officer...

... it was 09:10 (but that was 45 minutes ago, and the cuppa has revived me). Bright, trying to be sunny, and a forecast (from over the road) of mugginess later. Indian summer, anyone?

Ever since I wrote to the BBC with my suggestions for 3D TV back in 1968 I like to keep (both) eyes on this always-promising, but never quite arriving, technology.

This sounds like another Iain Banks novel I won't be reading:

[Transition] features an alternate version of earth, in which a world dominated by Asian influences is under attack from Christian terrorists. "It's meant to be a similar society to ours," he says, "but with some of the stuff inverted. Christianity would be a great religion for a terrorist; Catholicism especially because nobody's innocent, everybody's guilty. Babies are born guilty. Absolutely sick idea."

Maxton Walker in the Guardian


Another day...

... another release of WinAmp. Another set of options to untick before I get a load of unwanted stuff cluttering up what is still a nice software mp3 player. And another pair of HP security updates, the second of which invariably fails. (What is a PML driver, in any case?) Any day now, too, I should get the OS-X Snow Leopard update DVD. Won't that be fun? Still, at about £22 I guess it's pretty good value. And I have to say it's still prettier than my Linux Ubuntu 9.04 (though that's also about to metamorphose — next month — into Karmic Koala1). I've been vaguely contemplating "Crunch Bang" to ring the changes. After all, one of its features is "sans brownness"!

Browsing through the supplied applications, what makes me think, do you suppose, that the designers of the covers of those two Daniel Levitin books (see yesterday) took some inspiration...

Inkscape

... from Inkscape?

It spoiled my light late lunch...

... with a few light late tears, but this was a wonderful programme.2 I had to nip out into the (hot!) garden and photograph a spider to recover. (Click the pic for full size):

Boris

And I don't even like spiders! I think it will soon be time for a tea-time expotition in search of the lost ice-cream cornet.

Later

Having spent longer than sensible wandering around a series of BBC HD TV blogs waiting / hoping to spot sensible answers to pointed questions about picture quality, bit-rate, and those stupid and pointless onscreen DOGs, I gave up when I saw a comment from an ex-BBC engineer who claimed that the golden rule in Television Centre (back in 1964) was "we do not apologise" and that, in his opinion, there had been no change in that simple policy in the 45 years since then... It's 21:10 and seems to be pitch black outside.

Lest we forget...

I caught Mr Postie before he could drop these through the venetian blinds on to the windowsill. He seemed almost disappointed.

Book and Blu-ray

So my collection now has its first Mayan language exhibit! It can go alongside that Catalan title.

  

Footnotes

1  The actual Koala is permanently high on its Eucalyptus diet. ("Eats, shoots, and leaves" — like the Panda — if you can trust Lynne Truss.)
2  Mind you, the last time Christa and I actually tried to watch the 1967 version of Casino Royale we both gave up before we got to the Dusty Springfield song...