2011 — 24 August: Wednesday

There's a hint of sunshine out there (at 08:37) but it's obviously only recently stopped drizzling.

Cheques and balances

I'd never even heard of the "Payments Council":

Unfortunately this whole sorry saga illustrates the mess the government has got the country into over the interests of 'consumers', 'customers', members of the public — call them what you will. Most people will have never heard of the "Payments Council" and, like too many other hidden influential bodies, it only came out of the woodwork when it did something particularly stupid.

"JamesdelaMare" in The Guardian


I'd naively assumed that the decision1 to get rid of cheques had been made by the Treasury :-)

"Ego depletion"? Whatever next? "Freud speculated that the self, or ego, depended on mental activities involving the transfer of energy. He was vague about the details, though, and quite wrong about some of them (like his idea that artists "sublimate" sexual energy into their work, which would imply that adultery should be especially rare at artists' colonies)." Nice corollary. (Link.)

At least I still have enough mental energy to decide to organise a spot of breakfast.

It's a good job...

... I managed breakfast because it's now 16:41 and I've just about managed to make it this far without any lunch. Well, apart from a "power bar" and some hastily scoffed crackers and cheese mere minutes ago. I was up at "Gecko" home cinema with Mike and Brian, mostly to listen to the new (and far smaller / cheaper) Steinway loudspeaker system. A beautiful sounding snip at £16,000 or so including well over £10,000's worth of digital amplification and 'Room Perfect' DSP software.

This was then followed by a detour of an hour-plus to see Brian's progress-so-far with the metamorphosis of my little Asus notebook from a basically useless (and hence long neglected) Linux mini PC into a much more useful, all-singing, all-dancing, web and music server. Both demos were extremely interesting.

Before I forget

I also picked up a handful of cheap DVDs on Monday's trip to Asda:

DVDs

I'd been put off the recent Liam Neeson film "Unknown" by the irritating columnist in The Guardian who casually revealed its nifty plot twist, ironically while he was writing about "the movie plots that technology killed". So I settled for this — to me, equally unknown — Neeson film.

  

Footnote

1  Next thing you know, I'll be wondering if the guvmint actually runs the country.