2011 — 29 May: Sunday
Midnight is already rapidly receding1 and I need some more sleep if (as now just planned) there's another walk on the not-likely-to-be-sunny horizon. I shall just take the time, therefore, for a view of the bottom corner of the back garden long before trees and a shed had sprung up there.
The skylight visible on the house in the background is on our "mirror image"2 house — the only other one on the estate like ours, although it's no longer visible after 30 years of trees growing ever taller. Should you be wondering what part, if any, I played in all these earthworks I was the poor devil who had rotavated the whole ground several times before anything else was done. I removed what seemed at the time to be enough bricks to build a substantial house extension. I seem to remember our builders' term for this was "top soil".
Cho(m)p, cho(m)p
Breakfast is top of the current task list. It's 09:26 and soon time I wasn't here. Sorry about last night's missing image — I shall talk severely with my webmaster. Meanwhile, my odd memory has been nagging at me. I've just confirmed that one of the "good guys" being interviewed on "Inside Job" was indeed the same Charles Morris who wrote the fascinating 1993 study "Computer Wars". And the filmmaker (Charles Ferguson) was that book's co-author.
I shall dig it out after my walk. Small world. Their confident predictions back then didn't take into account the transformative effect of a certain Lou Gerstner...
The rain stayed away, the bod has been showered, lunch is a thing of the recent (re)past and the day's quota of fresh air and gentle exercise is safely gathered in. Time (13:49) for my next cuppa, methinks. And to load the washing machine.
Despite not caring...
... overmuch for his politics, I usually enjoyed whatever Larry Niven chose to write. Mind you, I didn't keep the novel he wrote with Jerry Pournelle about asteroid impact ("Lucifer's Hammer"3) on my shelves, and I have still yet to finish the turgid "The mote in God's eye". I have also remained (until today) blissfully unaware of the Torino scale. Let alone the fact that (two days ago) there were currently 1,230 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids. The UK's own "NEO" project has a fascinating report here. (PDF file.)
Reality is
I got to Torino (as it were) from an offhand link in a journal that I visit from time to time. I liked this:
I saw a friend I hadn't seen for a while and I asked him what's he's up to these days, and he replied: 'I'm between failures.' Which I thought was very witty. I could say, 'I'm between delusions.'
Call me a naïve...
... fool, but I'd rather hoped Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit SP1 would have evolved (by now) beyond the need for blue screens of death. Apparently not. Perhaps applying the latest two optional patches from Microsoft's Update site (one for the graphics card) wasn't such a smart idea after all? I'm going to power it off and let it sulk for a while. It's 20:35 and I feel the need for some True Blood (having tried, but given up on, The Runaway). Need tea, too, obviously.