2011 — 13 August: Saturday
Illness and frailty are damned efficient reminders1 of mortality. But a good night's sleep, preceded by a good evening's sleep, and accompanied by a plastic bowl (just in case) have done much to restore my more normal even keel. To the point, in fact, where I think I can even read a depressingly robust but well-written piece in the Daily Mail (!) without throwing up. Source and snippet:
They are illiterate and innumerate, beyond maybe some dexterity with computer games and BlackBerries. They are essentially wild beasts. I use that phrase advisedly, because it seems appropriate to young people bereft of the discipline that might make them employable; of the conscience that distinguishes between right and wrong. They respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others. Their behaviour on the streets resembled that of the polar bear which attacked a Norwegian tourist camp last week. They were doing what came naturally and, unlike the bear, no one even shot them for it.
It's a relief to turn from our "yoof kultur" to the latest bit of ingenuity to be suggested to me from those frightfully clever chaps at the Gmail bit of Google:
I would ask "What about my little Tablet PC and its Android 3.2?" but I don't doubt the answer, probably delivered with withering scorn, would be along the lines of you can already do this, you twit! How come you didn't know?
I think I shall risk a simple bit of toast for breakfast, supplemented by another cuppa, of course. It's 09:41 and the sun is fighting some fairly heavy clouds out there. A quiet day at home, methinks.
Perking up, and keeping my lunch down!
My lunch shows no current inclination to, as it were, re-appear. This is goodness. It's 15:04 and I've been indulging in a wide range of lightweight pottering about, as well as making sure dear Mama's current account can stand the strain of her next care-home monthly invoice. Tentative plans have now been made for a small burst of fresh air and exercise tomorrow, too. Life is too short to allow bacteria to set the agenda.
Back to Black
I happen to prefer a nice, plain desktop wallpaper. (Jet black works for me.) Getting one on to the Tablet PC is quite convoluted. There's a "Wallpaper" App with a handful of very-far-from jet black examples preset in it, but exactly where is a good question. So I created a jet black rectangle of slightly greater width than needed, saved it as a Jpeg, transferred it across to the Tablet, and wasted a couple of minutes loading it into the Gallery App and the File Manager App in hopes that one of these might let me wallpaperise it (as it were).
Plan B. I'd already discovered that if you aim the Browser App at a web page with an image on it and touch that image for a couple of seconds, a menu pops up offering to make the image into wallpaper for you. So I put my jet black Jpeg temporarily on a web page, pointed the Tablet's browser at it, "fingered" it, and Bob's your uncle. One nice, plain desktop wallpaper. I expect Brian or Len will tell me the "proper" way I "should" have done this in due course. I still have absolutely no idea where this Jpeg lives on the Tablet, though I know where it doesn't live: in the place where the system keeps its other "Wallpaper" images.
It's 16:31 and I'm feeling a lot better. So I'm pointing the finger of suspicion at the tasty but elderly pork paté I was finishing off for lunch yesterday. It wasn't past its "Use By" date, but the small print did say, "Once opened, consume within two days". Had I spotted that last week, I might well have avoided any intestinal unpleasantness! What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
Yesterday's later arrivals
One book and one Blu-ray; neither tackled as yet.
The "Comedy Prom" was good in parts, but at no point did I actually laugh. And they faded what sounded like a second encore.