2009 — 29 December: Tuesday
Midnight again, already?1 I was skimming through Bob's current issue of "What Satellite" magazine a few hours ago to see what they had to say about hi-def on terrestrial Freeview transmissions, not that this area is threatened by any until 2012 at the earliest. There was also a review of a satellite receiver that could store 10,000 TV and radio stations. Just imagine the electromagnetic cacophany that we're pouring out into space. The equivalent, I suspect, of a huge neon sign flashing "Warning: here be dragons" (or, maybe, idiots). "Keep away!"
I've been "playing again" the Words and Music that was devoted to Tennyson. 'Tis better to have loved and lost, etc. <Sigh!> Ho-hum. Time for bed. G'night.
Off the beaten track
I recall the pigly encounter on my first-ever Forest walk with Mike just a few days after Christa died. Yesterday's minor diversion to avoid too much of a busy road through the 100-acre wood yielded another porcine picture of Piglet:
Mike sent his photo over in the wee small hours. It's now 08:48 and there's been some Bach (Trio Sonata #1 in Eb) pedalling away that's just ground to an (organ) stop, though it was preceded by an equally lovely piece of mutated Tchaikovsky from Ellington: "Sugar Rum Cherry". The vital first cuppa is working its magic inside as I vaguely contemplate a slightly moist exterior cloudscape.
My lucky day
A computerised call from a depressingly jaunty-sounding American lady assures me I've won a Caribbean cruise. Haven't had one of those for ages. But I think I'll settle for breakfast. It's 09:58 and now actively raining.
Well, that's clever. I just resumed the BBC's Words and Music iPlayer stream and it picked up exactly where I left off last night. How thoughtful.
The (book) culling...
... continues, though — as I've just noticed it's 13:26 — I suppose I'd better pause for a spot of lunch. The rain drips depressingly on. I missed most of this, but heard enough to make sure I shall catch the repeat. I'd never previously heard Wendy (previously Walter) Carlos speaking, though I did once (back in 1975) have to remove a brief piece of her music from 17 audio mastertapes while recording the ICL 1900 Series PLAN training material when CBS Records turned out to want far too much money as a flat fee ($1,000) for its use. I'd intended it as a suitably abstract signature tune.
I'm a sucker...
... for web sites like this. Fonts have struck me as an interesting blend of art and engineering since long before my encounters with the RISC OS font manager a couple of decades ago. Acorn's expertise with anti-aliased scaleable fonts made the PC world's pitiful attempts at the time look, well, pitiful. I mean, generating a bitmap of a font in a strictly limited range of sizes? They had to be joking, right? They weren't. Compare and contrast:
It's 16:25 and the weather is still positively miserable out there. Grrr.
Bob Dylan has been consistently interesting for many years now. But 20 years since "Oh Mercy" already? How can that be?