2011 — 12 July: Tuesday
A somewhat sluggish start1 slightly enlivened by the news that "Word" magazine's email robot deems me fit to "lay your thoughts before the mighty humming collective brain that is the Word community". And by a corrected2 download link for that troublesome accounts package for me to see if the Java3 malware dragon has been slain.
Breakfast first, methinks.
Shades of "Casablanca"
This is getting daily richer. Source and snippet:
"I'm shocked, I'm genuinely shocked, to find that this happened because of their links with criminals, known criminals, who were undertaking this activity, hired
by investigators with the Sunday Times," Mr. Brown said.
Mr Brown added: "I just can't understand this — if I, with all the protection and all the defenses and all the security that a chancellor of the Exchequer or a
prime minister, am so vulnerable to unscrupulous tactics, to unlawful tactics, methods that have been used in the way we have found, what about the ordinary citizen?"
What indeed? But recall we're subjects, not citizens. We live in and under a monarchy, not a democratic republic. Unless someone can show me a written UK constitution (which presumably wouldn't say "Kingdom" in it anywhere) that says otherwise...
Time (12:10) for a burst of fresh air before the next monsoon.
Hunger...
... really is the best appetiser. I've just powered my way through a late light lunch of ham salad and boiled spuds having just got back from financial errands in Soton. That's the first time I've been gently but firmly encouraged forward through a "stop" light, too. By the car behind me. Mind you, it was full of a clutch of our finest blue-clad young law-enforcement types, complete with flashing blue lights, noisy siren, and a general air of impatience with the ol' chap in the blue Yaris impeding their no-doubt-lawful progress. Not so much as a cheery smile as they eased past.
It's now 15:19 and the monsoon seems to be biding its time. [Pause] Now that I've drunk the Windows Kool-Aid I finally decided to watch the Windows 8 preview video here. A "reimagining", heh?
I bet it wasn't...
... too long after Gutenberg set his last type that people started banging on about the impending death of books:
There are, I admit, a few slivers of vinyl4 still lurking in dark corners up in my loft. But I always spent more time admiring the 12" sleeve artwork, and as little as possible actually handling the vinyl.
Bearing in mind...
... Lord Acton's suggestion about all power tending to corrupt, it's hard to argue against signing this petition. I wonder if Ian Hislop has signed it?
Later
While BlackBeast (having stuffed itself silly with the latest batch of patches) is now backing up a refreshed System Image to its little NAS bolthole I can quickly update the Gateway XP machine, too. And that will be quite enough computing for one day. There's a "New World" about to start...
Well, what do you know? It turns out that reading the manual can be a big timesaver. I had plenty of time for reading while backing up a System Image to my network device. It takes quite a while, and furthermore you can only have one such Image at any one time so, if anything goes wrong during the over-writing of the previous one, you're left without a usable Image. But backing up to a local SATA drive is a lot faster in the first place, and subsequent backing-up is done incrementally rather than all-or-nothing. So I reckon I should aim to do one of these Image creation jobs after each round of Microsoft patches.
Sounds like a plan to me.