2011 — 15 July: Friday
Despite having subscribed to "The Word" magazine1 it seems the process can take up to eight weeks for magazine deliveries to begin. I'm therefore predicting a quick trip into Soton at some point today in a belated continuation of a long-established Friday tradition that I belatedly realise seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent months.
Last night's video entertainment was spent in Verona Beach, revisiting the stylish 1996 update of the "Romeo and Juliet" tale courtesy of young Mr Luhrmann. No repetition of the dreadful bang on the left rear channel that startled the life out of us when I first played my LaserDisc copy en famille many years ago now.
This morning's frown
Irritating beeps from the Buffalo NAS warned me it had initially failed to load its Kernel. Two successive pushes of the "power" button and all now seems to be well. Things like that make for a slightly less bright and sunny start to one's computing day, but there's a lot more to Life than computing, happily. "Anita" for one :-)
First night of the Proms, too.
Coincidences
I love coincidences, even after reading Koestler on the subject — I wonder when I culled "The roots of coincidence" from the shelves? (It was still in one of my catalogues in August 1995. No matter.) I see I mentioned Constance Penley yesterday, three years to the day since I'd last done so, though I note the Canadian link I found back then has now suffered software rot. Still, at least I saw the Jim Holt joke again. Is it a coincidence to be hungry every day at breakfast time?
A day of...
... pleasant discoveries, tales of which will have to wait while I visit Roger & Eileen for a late afternoon cuppa :-)
Good grief, it's already 20:53. Anyway, both RAID arrays earlier reported themselves as fully present and correct when I did a 'check disk' operation on each of them, which is reassuring.
What else? Well, the new issue of "Word" magazine is clutched to my bosom, with twice the normal number of 'free' CDs, too. And, having yesterday permitted myself a minor spot of expenses reimbursement from dear Mama (to which she'd agreed, I hasten to add) for the last six months supplying of chocolates, Scotch, petty cash and petrol costs in making weekly visits over to the care-home, it was such a nice day that I decided to venture back into the classical basement of HMV to see what was cooking in the CD line.2 Here's my haul:
The Stravinsky (an excellent performance and recording) is notable for using the 1910 original version of the Firebird, and restoring two long, valveless trumpets on stage, each playing a single note standing out above the entire orchestra (asserts Mr Craft). As for the Beethoven, it was (at the time) the world premiere recording on modern instruments according to the new Bärenreiter Edition. So it only goes to show! After treating the ears, I got these for the eyes:
Though the Blu-ray actually arrived care of Mr Postie while I was doing the lunch dishes (having by then already chortled my way through the Hitchens' quotations).