2011 — 16 September: Friday

Although my return to consciousness1 occurred at a slightly more civilised time, I manfully resisted the urge to get up, contenting myself with a morning cuppa and last week's "Sunday Times" colour mag that Chris had saved for me for its article on Vint Cerf. So it's now 08:39 or so and I'm pottering gently around.

Today's not yet fully-planned agenda almost certainly includes a trip to the care-home, though I do find myself wondering "Why?" — having not been able to come up with much by way of a coherent reason when asked exactly that by Gill yesterday. Certainly not before breakfast, that's for sure! I'm already starving.

Flarf

I found this piece on unoriginality original and interesting. Source and snippet:

For the past several years, I've taught a class at the University of Pennsylvania called "Uncreative Writing." In it, students are penalized for showing any shred of originality and creativity. Instead they are rewarded for plagiarism, identity theft, repurposing papers, patchwriting, sampling, plundering, and stealing. Not surprisingly, they thrive. Suddenly what they've surreptitiously become expert at is brought out into the open and explored in a safe environment, reframed in terms of responsibility instead of recklessness.

Kenneth Goldsmith in The Chronicle


In the words of the immortal Yosser, "I could do that!" (I was tickled to read in Wikipedia that Alan Bleasdale claimed to have saved for years a 'Desperate Dan' joke that he gave to his character.)

Browsing...

... a week or so after its arrival my latest "Bibliophile" catalogue, I learn that (according to PG Wodehouse): Memories are like mulligatawny soup in a cheap restaurant. It is best not to stir them :-)

It's nice enough for me to venture out, predicted I. [Pause] I was right, confirmed I, on my return. Now, how about a spot of lunch?

Found a round tuit

As I said last week, I'd been looking at XAMPP. This afternoon, after my little expotition to Best Buy and my lunch, but just before I set off for the care-home, I finally downloaded, installed and configured an Apache web server, running it as a service on BlackBeast. It took easily three minutes, soup to nuts, and I now (after returning via a cuppa and biccies with Roger & Eileen and having made and scoffed a healthy salad-based evening meal and caught the "News Quiz") have a live version of my molehole website instantly available regardless of the state of any of the rest of the network hereabouts.

Time for some lighter cerebration, viz., the Kermode and Mayo film review podcast, as I was out and about basically all afternoon. Besides, I suspect it might well be illegal to drive while laughing along with / to a Kermodian rant.

[Pause]

Crikey. The remake of "Tinker, Tailor" came in for an incredible amount of praise... but what was wrong with the original Alec Guinness BBC production? Oh well. For my evening's video entertainment I chose the highly enjoyable film that I last watched, with Christa, on the last occasion that Mike and Bryan came round for a meal-and-a-film. A mere 1,772 days ago. Doesn't Time fly?

And so to bed.

  

Footnote

1  Such as it is, or seems to be.