2011 — 20 June: Monday
A damp start1 with more or less uniform grey cloud cover, a mere 19.5C down here, but (swings and roundabouts) a nice fresh hot cuppa smiling at me. It's only two days since my last visit to dear Mama (and even she is unlikely to have demolished an entire chocolate orange by now) so I shall not be heading there yetawhile. I will be away for much of tomorrow, however, depending on how lost I get.
So, thinking the usual range of breakfast-type thoughts that are normal at this time of day (it's 10:06), let's have a breakfast photo from an earlier day, sometime in 1981 (but before we'd moved from Old Windsor). I took it within a few seconds of the shot I published here a mere 978 days ago :-)
I always tend to focus on the spines of any books visible in photos. In this example, the three English-language titles nearest the top of Christa's head are one of Robert Harbin's books on Origami, the Penguin Book of Sewing, and a "Teach Yourself" on Translating. Just thought you'd like to know...
Breakfast, Mrs Landingham?
History of Electronic Mail
I, for one, find email a boon and a blessing. Apart from the tedious spam. I had no idea of the part Noel Morris played in its early development. 'The idea of sending "letters" using CTSS was resisted by management, as a waste of resources.' No comment. (Link.)
I found that bit of history in this interesting article by Errol Morris. There's more good stuff on Tom Van Vleck's web site, too. This on "Management Tactics", for example:
Upper managers, especially, tend to get their bad news late, filtered, and de-emphasized. Occasional contact with the front line folks might provide another channel
for information to flow, if the manager can listen.
Rewarding a programmer with serious attention, and the tools needed to do a good job, makes a lot more sense than handing out monogrammed items.
I still smile when I recall watching a senior manager in the IBM Hursley Lab chucking out the heap of "recognition" plaques he'd accumulated over many years as he was clearing his office to take an assisted passage to the real (that is, non-IBM) world.
PM
As I listen to the BBC radio's gloomy NATO? Secretary General / spokesman with his Libyan news and military propaganda (and, if we're honest, an assessment of little or nothing to show for three months of bombing) I confess I also find myself a) feeling rather hungry, and b) exploring the many OCR options here, starting with the simple freebie. What a species we are, to be sure.
While waiting for the ambient temperature in my kitchen to take the chill off my intended roast chicken and salad, let's see how my initial attempt to do a tiny spot of OCR with this latest lump of bits turned out. Since I was leafing through my Taschen catalogue at the time, I scanned part of a column of text (at 300dpi greyscale), saved it as a TIFF, and fed it into "Simple OCR". Here's the input...
Still a few bugs in the system
... and if you click the pic you'll see the resulting output. I think I'll be scratching this one off my little list. Right. Time (13:56) for that lunch.
Bother!
I'll also be scratching Ikea off my list of chosen suppliers of domestic accoutrements. That sharp cracking sound was the noise my new carpet guard makes when it splits as I wheel my lightweight office chair over it, with my admittedly not-quite-so-lightweight body on it. That was one of my shorter relationships, wasn't it? Less than two weeks. Mind you, buying it led (indirectly) to my discovery of the burst pipe under my hallway carpet. <Sigh>
That chap Oblomov had the right idea, if you ask me. As you can tell from this yellowing clipping from the "Radio Times"...
... (of the synopsis of the plot) that I keep in the cassette case of one of my 1970s BBC "Drama" recordings. I expect it was wiped a long time ago.
At 18:38 I'm recently back from a tea- and biscuit-seeking expotition over to Roger & Eileen. When I arrived he showed me a printout of my OCR test lifted from this web page and offered up to the OCR facility within his copy of Office Word — it did a well-nigh perfect job. Not that I see myself forking out for a copy of Microsoft Office in the near future. Actually, I bought Christa an OEM-licensed copy a few years ago, but that's doubtless locked away on her old Dell box, which hasn't now been switched on for nearly three years. I shall keep looking.
Time for my evening meal, methinks. [Pause] Followed by another small dose of "House". It's 20:15 and rather moist outside. Rules out my use of the clothesline, certainly. Ho-hum. Ever onward.