2010 — 22 August: Sunday
Here endeth the second season of West Wing1 with the funeral of poor Dolores Landingham in the Two cathedrals cliff-hanger final episode (not that it's really a cliff-hanger, of course). And the music from "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits — well nigh perfect.
Mustn't forget to stuff my next crockpot in a few hours from now (I forgot this morning until it was too late). Perhaps I should get checked for Alzheimer's? As, perhaps, should whichever idiots think it's sensible and sane to spend £20,000,000,000 on a new generation of Trident submarines.
G'night.
Overnight, my chum...
... Ian in NZ has proved he's not up for a twilight career as a copywriter for Apple's iPad. Which reminds me: the TV series "Mad Men" was loosely based on incidents from the colourful career of Jerry Della Femina, if the new introduction in the re-issue of his excellent 1970 book can be believed.2
Angry Birds? Never heard of them, Ian. A tad Hitchcockian, perhaps?
This piece stimulates the grey gorp inside the skull. Source and snippet:
Now it's the Web's turn to face the pressure for profits and the walled gardens that bring them. Openness is a wonderful thing in the nonmonetary economy of peer production. But eventually our tolerance for the delirious chaos of infinite competition finds its limits. Much as we love freedom and choice, we also love things that just work, reliably and seamlessly.
Things that just work — "Wouldn't that be loverly?", sings Eliza.
Risk assessment chaps
Mike warned me of the potential for a swim rather than a walk, last night. However, the BBC weather forecast tune has changed its tone/pitch this morning. So, the crockpot has been stuffed and is now getting slowly hot under the collar. My breakfast is going in. And we're going to risk a local road walk in a few minutes. It's 10:22. Tick tock.
It means missing the lovely Cerys, but at least I got the full Jo Good treatment earlier while I was slicing and dicing.
It scarcely drizzled
Though it was very humid. I also discovered, too late, that Otterbourne road is currently being resurfaced and, indeed, is likely to be closed for the next few days. Also too late for me to get to the kit at the other end of the room, Huey has just played Popcorn by Hot Butter. There's an earworm that may take a while to wriggle away. Time (13:58) for a spot of lunch, the laundry, and whatever else the afternoon holds.
Mike just sent over today's crop of country pixels, including a couple of shots I'd taken with his Nikon. Click the pic for the rose on steroids:
And if these aren't autumnal colours...
... then I don't know what are.
Cruft Index
As a fully paid-up slo-mo I.T. pensioner, I stumble delightedly over some things literally years after everybody else. For example, although I still remember reading the description of Francis Beaufort's scale of wind speeds in my Pears Junior cyclopedia when the integer count of my age had but a single digit, I hadn't previously seen how "Verity Stob" had wittily re-applied his scale to gauge PC decrepitude eight years ago. Source and snippet:
Cruft Force 10. Expiry. Description: Machine only runs in Safe mode at 16-color 800x600, and even then for about a minute and a half before BSODing. Attempts to start an app are rewarded with a dialog "No font list found."
Ordinary dodges, such as reformatting the hard disk(s) and starting again, are ineffective. Cruft has soaked into the very fabric of the machine, and it should be disposed of safely at a government-approved facility. There it will be encased in cruft-resistant glass and buried in a residential district.
Wikipedia tells me the Beaufort scale now goes up to 17.