2010 — 16 July: Friday
I've been re-arranging stuff (mostly those large format awkward-to-accommodate books that even libraries tend to clump together randomly on the so-called "Oversize" shelves), and fitting my set of classical music CDs into the little revolving rack that can hold 200 of the things (which means 400, given my habit of rehousing pairs of CDs in single-width double cases). I'm now finally just about ready to move my PC's desk downstairs into the back of the living room. I've also arranged with Brian a supply of the analogue audio and optical digital leads I will need to let my external Soundblaster card talk nicely to the hi-fi at the front of the room.
I've also been thinking about whether or not to move my little collection of frogs back on to display. After all, we spent years adding to this odd menagerie. However, first things first: I need some more sleep. It seems to be pouring with rain; makes a change. Planet Rock has been keeping me going. And I'm quite impressed with how cool the Rotel power amplifier runs. The new speaker leads have settled in nicely :-)
Yawn. The big hand having fairly recently done its usual trick of overtaking the little one at the top of the dial, I'm going to call it a night.
G'night.
I love the sound...
... of breaking glass in the morning. (Almost the title of a Rupert Hine track from late in the 1970s.) Yes, the glass collectors are making their rounds and, this time, I was ready for them. Farewell to my six-month accumulation of Dutch jars of blackcurrants. Meanwhile, here's a photo (taken a few minutes ago) of an almost-tidy front corner of the living room. This helps prove to me, if nobody else, that a tiny bit of anti-entropic progress is occurring:
If you click the pic you'll see a couple of the frogs (and a pair of newly-hatched dragons). The two cassette racks1 at top right are all that remain2 of a collection of nearly 800 home-recorded rock music tapes. The black folders at bottom right compactly contain (264 per folder) the several thousand DVDs that would otherwise clutter up the walls to an alarming extent. And in all probability do something odd to the acoustics of the room.
It's now 08:59 and I have a desk to dismantle, shift vertically, and un-dismantle (remantle? mantle?) behind the sofa. So far, so good. Could use some breakfast, too. And another cuppa. The dark clouds are suggesting it's going to be a bit of a "confined to barracks" sort of day, but I'm in no danger of running out of things to do...
My cute little sucker, although fully charged and raring to blow, isn't quite man enough for the job — unsurprisingly. It's 10:53 and I've resorted, in desperation, to NPR's Morning Edition so I have something worth shouting at from time to time. I must say the Catholic church decision on classifying the ordination of women as the "gravest of sins" is a worthy candidate. If that church didn't (sadly) already exist, I wonder who would be mad/bad enough to invent it?
Mantled!
After a further inordinate (some might say shameful) amount of dusting, Dysoning, and shifting stuff around to get at and have half a chance of moving other stuff, I can't help noticing it's now 13:38. I shall shortly be going off the air as I shut various systems down and move them three or so meters to the left, on to, under, and around the remantled desk (damnably heavy, or should I say "well-built"?) that is now waiting there to receive them. Then it's a simple matter of finding enough power cords, plugging everything back in, switching everything back on... What could possibly go wrong?
Plus, I shakily realise, it's probably time for the next batch of calories. Christa, if you think I'm going through this hellish exercise once every 29 years or so, you have another think
coming! :-)
Rather an odd saying, that, my love, nicht wahr?
A report on Mr Postie's latest droppings will have to wait until I have my scanner back in the land of the living. Assuming I can find it. (The scanner, that is.)
Mission Control...
... is, more or less, back on the air, as this quick snap shows. The left hand box is the HP MPC Core 2 Duo box that was so nicely subsidised for me by IBM as their parting shot. The right hand box is the dual Core Pentium D Gateway machine that dates back to 2005 (before Comet moved from Shed City down to Millbrook, in fact). It's my day-to-day machine.
You can see part of the internal server's keyboard on the far left, and that's its screen, but the box itself...
... is hidden by the desk. The iMac remains at the other end of the living room:
Now, if I could lay my hands on my spiffy new USB hub, I could more easily re-instate my scanner and printer as before.
Definitely time (18:38) for a bit more food. After all, I've been a busy chap.
Remember therbligs?
I mentioned them a while ago. When Frank Gilbreth wasn't busy fathering a dozen children, supposedly for reasons of domestic economy, he set out to show them what "one million" looked like by bringing home and displaying a sheet of graph paper that had one thousand squares on each edge.
This modern variant is a fascinating exercise in data visualisation, too.
Can you resist strange maps? I can't! I particularly liked the Dell Books section.