2011 — 25 August: Thursday
No sunshine this morning (at 08:35) as it's pouring with rain from a uniformly grey sky.
You probably had...
... to be there, but a couple of these jokes made me smile. Source and (prize-winning) snippet:
I needed a password eight characters long so I picked Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.
Tea, Mrs Landingham?1 :-)
Tomi Ungerer
I was delighted to learn (in an excellent interview you can see in PDF format by clicking the pic) that Phaidon is republishing his books as I have only four of them. I've just re-read his 1985 collection "Testament", as I do every few years:
Time for some breakfast with a lovely bit of Philip Glass.
One of my jobs...
... is to convince people who swear by the command line that GUIs are gooder. It's (obviously) an uphill struggle, but that's what makes it a worthwhile hobby.
The cosmic operating system uses a command-line interface. It runs on something like a teletype, with lots of noise and heat; punched-out bits flutter down into its hopper like drifting stars. The
demiurge sits at his teletype, pounding out one command line after another, specifying the values of fundamental constants of physics:
universe -G 6.672e-11 -e 1.602e-19 -h 6.626e-34 -protonmass 1.673e-27....
and when he's finished typing out the command line, his right pinky hesitates above the ENTER key for an aeon or two, wondering what's going to happen; then down it comes — and the WHACK you hear is
another Big Bang.
Now THAT is a cool operating system
So just before I did my latest dash of supplies shopping I dropped a copy of the current "Ubuntu User" magazine over with Brian for him to read about Unity's inner secrets in the leisure time he will shortly have. That is, while he's re-installing a back-level Ubuntu server on my tiny little Asus netbook now that a) he has a clearer picture of what's needed, b) I've just delivered my latest customer requirement,2 and c) he hopes the older server may be a bit "skinnier" as we're rather pushed for memory space on that device. Indeed, he's thinking of re-visiting the whole issue of hibernation as the space eaten up by that is a significant percentage of the total.
Mercy me. It's already 12:30 and getting brighter out there. No wonder I'm feeling peckish.
Let ax2 + bx + c = 0
"How often do most adults encounter a situation in which they need to solve a quadratic equation?" Good question. Why, I had to solve one just the other century. (Link.)
I want one!
A total hoot. (Video link.)
Somewhat later
It's now 19:37 and that ravenous inner man has once again been fed. Dear mama has been visited. And I've also agreed a couple of precautionary vaccinations for her ahead of the winter bugs. She was a bit lower than usual this afternoon (which never fails to cheer me down) but revived with tea, a cake, and a visit from a nurse peering into her ears. Not that she will recall any of this. Staff there delightedly told me that she's been socialising a lot more, but she clearly doesn't recall that, either. Not much fun as an end-game, is it?
Some time this afternoon (after that) was spent watching Brian installing a series of attempts to find a working DAAP plugin for several Windows-based music players to give them the ability they would need to find music on my new little server. What is trivially easy on Linux turns out to be quite a headache on Windows given that we both take it for granted that the last thing anyone would want on a Windows system is a copy of the horrible iTunes. I must try harder to find that Roku Soundbridge device. It's in one of the geological layers of 'stuff' from Christa in Peter's room. I think.
Found it. It was in the books warehouse, mostly hidden by two surplus flatbed scanners and several wall warts. (I find I tend to find things better when I look in the right place.)
Brought it downstairs, changed the batteries in the remote (on principle). Plugged it into the network. Connected it to the Audiolab pre-amp with one of those extortionately expensive (but free to me) Chord Co-ax digital cables — making sure the arrows point the same way as the electrons are flowing (though I had to guess which way that was). Updated the Internet Radio list. It found 13,054 channels, and I'm now listening to the "50s, 60s Hits" ("Oldies") channel on the .977 multiplex. Just like magic.
Wonder what I've done with my duster?
There's not much dynamic range, but that will improve when I get it playing my MP3s rather than other peoples' compressed radio streams. But that will be the full extent of my testing until the little white server settles into my network sometime tomorrow. Better dig out another network cable or two, methinks. I shall keep the new server and its associated 1TB hard drive upstairs in Peter's room, right by the ADSL router.
I think the Roku will live downstairs. And the liberated mini-sized HP MPC that is currently my massively under-used Intranet web server will get a 1TB hard drive transplant, a brand new level of Ubuntu desktop, and then be moved up into my "reading" room. If I can also persuade my expensive KVM box back into life I shall be able to move one of the two 24" screens up from the living room to go with it. And, with luck, I'll also be able to teach the Android Tablet PC how to pick up streamed music wirelessly anywhere in the house. After all, it can already tackle web browsing and email "on the hoof".
Black humour
I saw this a couple of days ago, and have just typeset it. I suppose it's funny. It's certainly quite clever:
Technically, I know you can't fly in the absence of an atmosphere, (before anyone points that out to me).