2011 — 14 August: Sunday
Regeneration1 is the word of the day. I'm back to "normal" after another good night's sleep. Just time to grab a quick bite of breakfast and I shall head out to the walking rendezvous. Since a lot of Chandler's Ford is currently being excavated, with all manner of temporary traffic lights springing up, I shall allow an extra five minutes.
I read Mark Dean's comments on the post-PC era; I will merely observe that he's toeing the IBM party line. Personally, I trust a robust data backup strategy in a corner of my living room a great deal more than I do the "cloud", much as I've been enjoying the first week or so with my little Tablet PC. There was also a horror story in a recent opinion piece by Barry Collins in the October edition of PC Pro magazine about "Dylan" — a chap who was comprehensively (shall we say) "inconvenienced" in all areas of his computing life when Google basically turned him into a non-person following some unspecified transgression of one or other of their myriad Ts & Cs.
Asking Mrs Google to tell you about "Gmail account locked" is a bit of an eye opener. (Not that I wish to read over 14,000,000 results.) Simply typing "locked out of" with predictive search also offers "Hotmail" as the likeliest next word, so it's not just Google, of course. And Facebook (38m hits) is right up there (just behind Windows 7 [6.5m]) and "car" (10.7m).
Lazy Sunday afternoon...
The washing machine has just done its thing. The bod is freshly showered after the six miles or so strolling. My lunch is safely down the hatch. I'm now pottering around, listening to John Peel's son on BBC 6Music and thinking how like his Dad he sounds. I think I shall head upstairs for a burst of book for a while. I'm currently halfway through Julian May's "Diamond Mask" for only the second time. Great stuff.
Returning to Earth (briefly) I've just snaffled a pair of Blu-rays that have taken their own sweet time to appear on that format. "Four Weddings and a Funeral" is an old favourite and so, too, is "The Name of the Rose". Right. I shall grab a fresh cuppa and return to outer space... It's 17:35 and still dry out there — I need to grab my shirts off the washing line so I'm keeping a weather eye out, as it were.
Well, that was different
Last night, while I was listening, live, to the Comedy Prom, it turned out BBC2 was showing Gabriel Prokofiev's Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra (still available here for another six days). Mike happened to have recorded this, and I've just watched it from a USB memory stick. It was a remarkable piece of work. I suspect Frank Zappa would have loved it.
Lazy Sunday evening...
Just how I like 'em. I must say, that moon's looking remarkably full out there just now. Now being 21:37, give or take. I've been sitting up in the reading room, doing what comes naturally in such a place, answering some email with the Tablet and, of course, listening to 6Music in the background.
To see dear Mama...
... through younger eyes:
I didn't notice much difference in Gran during the 2 brief visits I had, she still seems well cared-for physically, and yet completely oblivious to anything going on in the present. She had forgotten
your visit only a few days prior to ours, and said no-one ever came to see her, and that she missed her friends but couldn't tell us who they were. She mentioned not seeing much of her parents, who
were retired...
Difficult to maintain a conversation, so we only stayed half an hour or so.
Remind me why I visit2 so often? And for "a few days prior" read "two days prior". Thanks, Mich. Perhaps your Dad would like to take her back with him to NZ after his September visit? I'm sure your Mum would love the company :-)
On that note, g'night.