2010 — 14 August: Saturday

I've just proved1 the effects of my new heating system do indeed percolate (as it were) upstairs if only the thermostatic valves up there are set above minimum. I knew it worked, but it's still a relief. Next item, the main part of the new cooker, perhaps?

Too early for breakfast (at 08:27) but very timely for Brian Matthew's music show. "All day and all of the night", heh? The Kinks' second hit in 1964.

Pay day loans

I noted these were happening in New Mexico three and a half years ago, so I suppose it was logical to expect them over here in Blighty. Today's news suggests they are indeed an issue here, too. And with staggeringly high annual interest rates. Not good.

Perhaps all those UK banks we now supposedly "own" could be persuaded to step up to (as it were) the dinner plate a little bit more readily? (You hafta love the BBA2 spokesman's "quite frankly it does not do any good to lend money out to people if they can't afford to repay it" quote. It didn't stop the banking system doing precisely that on an industrial scale quite recently, did it?) I still think the only way to get a reasonable loan is to be able to prove you really don't need it — my most recent example being the two-year interest-free loan from Toyota for my last birthday present from Christa. The system is truly smoke and mirrors.

Friends

Leaving to one side the delicious chorus ("You gotta have friends") of vultures in Disney's "Jungle Book", there's a well-written piece in the Wilson Quarterly. The fact that it kicked off by noting Asimov's "The naked sun" predisposes me in its favour, of course. Source and snippet:

Friendship, like baseball, always seems to send intellectuals off the deep end. Yet there is more biological justification for our predecessors' paeans to friendship than for our modern-day tepidity. Friendship exists in all the world's cultures, likely as a result of natural selection. People have always needed allies to help out in times of trouble, raise their status, and join with them against their enemies.

Daniel Akst in Wilson Quarterly


In later news

Mike's just picked up my SATA/USB gizmo, and warned me of heavy traffic on the motorway. I may yet nip over to the care-home carrying their next heavyweight cheque (just short of forty cwt, in "old" money) as an invoice for the next four weeks thunked onto the door mat a few minutes ago. On the other hand, there's some lovely live Bach from the all-day Prom3...

Soon be time to think about lunch, too. It's 12:40 and distinctly cool and grey out there. [Pause] And now, after my lunch somewhat (14:30) later, it's pouring with rain. Most uninviting.

Email clients

I've been reading, and wholeheartedly agreeing with, the points made in Andrew Orlowski's Register series on the dire state of email clients. (Mind you, what do I know? I never even realised the Opera browser has email built-in.) Having already, and effortlessly, exchanged emails with NZ and a few points nearer so far today, it reminded me of my early days of having a PC at home. This "Shuttle" Windows box warily co-existed with my much-preferred Acorn RISC machine while I slowly and systematically transferred my cyberspatial life across to the Dark Side. Here's how my very last email of 2002 (as was often the case, to my friend Carol in New York) ended:

I was going to copy this to myself at my "home" e-mail but, until I network my PC and my Acorn, it will actually be quicker for me simply to drop the text here onto a diskette file and walk it home tonight. Otherwise I go through a crazy "Hu's on first" routine where I receive the mail on my home PC, copy it out to a shared folder on Christa's PC (providing our magic home network box behaves), copy it thence to a diskette on her machine, (my wonder PC box has a floppy controller, but no floppy drive), walk that back to, and plop it into, my Acorn, convert it on the fly from PC-format to ADFS (which includes changing all the line end characters) and finally edit it into my DTP file of our 2002 correspondence.

DCM in December 2002


Aren't computers wonderful?

Audible news

I've just been connecting up and testing my massive AudioLab 7.1 power amplifier (before the end of its warranty period) and am delighted to find it still works perfectly. So, there was no damage inflicted by the expensive unsoldered Chord speaker cable episode. If I tire of my current simple stereo lifestyle, I can tiptoe unquietly back into the fraught world of multi-channel surround sound. But I've been enjoying the sound of my newer Rotel amplifier, so I'm in no great rush. Besides, programmes like this one featuring Bix Beiderbecke are glorious even in mono. (I have definitely metamorphosed into my own father.)

Unlike the (150W) AudioLab, of course, the (250W) Rotel goes all the way up to "11" too — or, as I've seen it expressed neatly by Ian Gillan of Deep Purple: "Could we have everything louder than everything else?" Time for a celebratory cuppa. I wasn't looking forward to packing the AudioLab and sending it back for a service... far too much hassle. And a large number of postage stamps, I expect.

All is Vanity

Chuck ("Big Bang Theory" [etc]) Lorre has written a particularly fine vanity card. Source and snippet:

Armed with this insight, I walked up to an old, prune-faced woman at a seafood stand and asked her if she enjoyed her work. She looked at me with a toothy grin and said, "American?" I said, "Yes." She said, "How you be so stupid to elect George Bush twice?" I shrugged and said I did what I could.

Chuck Lorre Vanity Card #278


Vanity

I'd been playing that lovely 1959 Miles Davis album "Kind of Blue" when Len called round for our lunch on Thursday. Listening to NPR's "Jazz Profiles" I've now learned that it's still selling 5,000 copies per week fifty years later. Amazing!

  

Footnotes

1  In good time for winter.
2  The British Bankers' Association (BBA) claims its members are already being as flexible as they can. Well, they would say that, wouldn't they? (Source.)
3  And on the other other hand, the weekend staff may not be equipped to accept and process payment paperwork.