2010 — 1 May: Saturday — rabbits!
Another midnight has crawled into firing range. Last night's filmic interlude was an overdue watching of one of that day's deliveries...
... namely, the Clint Eastwood film "Mystic River". Rather gothic, and (literally) very dark until I tweaked the video brightness from -6 to +6 on the Oppo. The other title (one of my very favouritest films) is a spare copy that has enabled me to pop my original NTSC pressing through Brian's letterbox on my way back from Roger and Eileen. If he doesn't enjoy it I've ordered him to pass it straight on to one of his daughters.
The rest of the evening, when I wasn't eating or tidying up afterwards, has been devoted (if that's the right word) to Ubuntu. Starting by cutting the ISO image to one of the last of the first pack of 50 CD-Rs that Christa bought for me back in the days of my little Shuttle PC1 (an Evesham machine). Yawn. G'night.
Dull but dry
And a chuffa puffed past a few minutes ago. It's a very evocative sound akin, I suppose, to Proust's bit of cake. Right. Cuppa on hand; let's see what this latest day has to offer. I'm predicting software-induced suffering — we shall see.
Military Intelligence
You have to gasp at the workings of the military mind. US children need to be thinned down lest they stop being readily available as cannon fodder. I would have thought there are many better reasons to wish to improve child nutrition. (Source.)
As for dating by blood type... gimme a break! (Source.) Virginity restoration? (Source.) And Hawking worries about what aliens would make of us?2 Clean out the irrational human infestation and use the planet to grow themselves food, if they have any sense. (Source.)
Despite assurances...
... from m'learned friend over in his bungalow that "it's too early for wasps" two more have diced with death by entering the study, and one the bathroom. My kill rate remains high. Meanwhile, having eventually uncovered a checksum integrity failure on my initial CD, though not on the downloaded ISO image, I'm now using a different PC and burning process. Two down, two to go...
It strikes me as a bit rich to cut a CD on the same machine that's going to be re-lobotomised by it, but I may well end up doing so. Such good fun. It's 12:10 and still dry out there. [Pause] That didn't last, but the shower has stopped. And my little walk down to the newsagent to get the Radio Times I forgot to buy this week was made entirely between raindrops.
Five or so Stephan Micus albums later and including a break for a healthy lunch (!) and interspersed with reminding myself of the beautifully clearly-written essays in Richard Dawkins' A Devil's Chaplain it appears I now have a fully-working basic Ubuntu server with (initially) just LAMP, Open SSH, and Samba all sitting idly waiting for me to feed them something meaningful to do. Here, for example, is the web server:
So, next task: find out how to upload3 my data to it for serving out to my little LAN. What larks, heh Pip? I must say, once you get past checksum failures the whole installation process is hardly a strain on the brain. Meanwhile, I had to stop Mr Postie from trying to shovel this through the letter box...
Although US Zone A4 Blu-rays come in thinner cases it was still a forlorn endeavour. Excellent film, by the way. It's way past time (14:49) for my next cuppa.
What...
... is the sane reaction to this?
