2009 — 28 September: Monday
It's our 35th anniversary, Christa. Here you are, back in 1974 (or thereabouts) en route for Meisenheim, with your faithful copy of "Der Spiegel" and your new boyfriend (wielding your camera) in — unless I miss my guess — the harbour at Ostend:
Those were happy days. And I've been playing myself some of the music from that time, but I now need some sleep.
G'night.
Understatement of the software century
From the overnight Ubuntu weekly newsletter:
Shuttleworth noted that there traditionally has been some tension in software development between user interface (UI) people and developers, which is a big problem. "If we can't figure out how to bring these two communities together in a powerful way, I don't think we'll achieve the dream," Shuttleworth said. "If we can't make design cool in free software we won't take first prize."
Where's that sunshine the chirpy weather forecasters were banging on about last night? It's 08:27 and a mite chilly. Time for the cuppa that warms.
"Official corruption in the Afghan guvmint is as much a threat as the insurgents." "We like short, clean wars and tall, clean guys." Yep; Harry Shearer is back in full flow on Le Show via NPR. Great stuff. (Why am I not surprised to find no trace of radio1 on the "Sky" platform, by the way? It reminds me very much of a lyric from "The Wall" by Pink Floyd.)
More fun to read Victoria Coren on a recent, if perhaps atypically bizarre, UK court case.
Another four...
... bin bags are ready for Monsieur Le Tip. Plenty more where they came from, as it were. The sun has come out, clearly revealing some of the dust! "Effectuates the recommendations". What kind of fancy talk is that? (Typical, it seems, among the US military.) I think it may be time to retreat back to BBC Radio 3.
Make that seven bin bags. It's 11:48, the living room is (finally) looking a little less cluttered, I've plumbed a spare hdmi lead into a spare socket on the Edge video scaler, exposed three power sockets, and await my next visitor. Len has promised to tote along his latest Netgear video streaming toy for me to evaluate. Watch this space.
Balls
Rugby has been defined, I grant you inaccurately, as "a game played by gentlemen with odd-shaped balls". But did you know the football coach at the University of Southern California was paid $4,300,000 last year?
Heavens! It's 16:56 and here I am, crouched in front of the iMac happily using a newly-updated "TextWrangler" to edit a newly-downloaded diary entry file with a newly-updated "Cyberduck" while listening to a newly-downloaded (from the loft) CD of Supertramp's superb Crime of the Century and Crisis? What crisis? from 1974 and 1975 respectively. I have to admit, the process is a lot simpler under OS X than under XP. Now all I have to remember is that I've updated the file directly on the web server, and it's now ahead of the local copy I serve locally on the XP box.
Meanwhile — he continued, resuming in greater comfort on a chair at the XP machine upstairs, but while still listening to exactly the same music — I'd set off (after Len's lunchtime visit) with every intention of equipping myself with another section of network cable long enough to run a second device down in the living room. 'Twas not to be. As I rounded the bend from Stoneham Lane it was immediately apparent that something nasty was clogging up the motorway (the "40" sign was an extra hint, too) so I hightailed it past the airport and looped round back to the ranch.
I've temporarily swapped my little Linux notebook for Len's Logitech "Squeezebox receiver" and will be trying it out as my mp3 streamer once I've decided which machine to load the (web interface) control software2 on. I quite fancied trying it on the iMac (hence the need for another length of network cable, which is where we came in) but there are variants for both Linux and Windows and (it slowly occurs to me) I have wireless capability in both my Linux boxes (one of which Len now has, which is also where we came in).
Pitfalls
Oops. Turns out you need a PIN, for which you first need a controller (such as the "Duet") before you can activate the simple hardware DAC receiver box on your network. Poop. So, the question becomes how important is it for me to be able to get digital music from my library of high-quality mp3s via a high-quality DAC rather than tolerating the analogue-only headphones output from the iMac output delivered in turn from the ever more cumbersome iTunes software? Is this more expense on the horizon? Could be. But first (at 18:32 or so) I'm feeling a bit peckish and in dire need of more tea, too.
That which can't be accomplished on a clogged motorway in the mid-afternoon can be managed3 (to the accompaniment of a stunningly dramatic "red sky at night" sunset) in the early evening on a free-running motorway. So the new toy awaits my inspection, and the new network cable awaits my connection. Now, where's that tea?