2011 — 24 September: Saturday
What the Dickens? SHC? I first read about that in the early 1960s,1 and very weird it was too. (Link.)
As it's now somehow crept quite a long way past the midnight barrier, let's see what the next day brings, shall we? But first, I could definitely use some of that sleep stuff.
G'night.
As I prefer...
...(as it were) the cock up rather than the conspiracy theory approach to explain the bizarre behaviour and decisions that accompany our not-always forward lurches2 through computing history, I was initially more amused than worried by the splutters surrounding the issue of dual-booting non-Windows systems in the presence of Windows 8. Pretty picture and link to article here:
Don't you just love the idea of trusting a doubtless-digitally-certified "Attestation" service up in the cloud somewhere? I know I don't.
One OS to rule them all, One OS to find them, One OS to bring them all and in the darkness bind them...
I recall with pleasure the much simpler boot process, starting with a 128-byte bootstrap loader on the first record of a minitape, on the delightful C4 desktop minicomputer (as they were called, back then, children) that was designed by George Cogar. I recall with much less pleasure that that was four decades ago.
Just back from...
... a pair3 of piggy bank raids to cater for the cost of trimming the two remaining back garden trees, the tree hedge at the bottom, and clearing much of the accumulated débris both from this work and the earlier efforts by Peter and Peter's g/f. "Much" but not "all" as the active wasps' nest established in the undergrowth has already claimed one victim. It's a jungle out there.
Time (10:50) for a spot of late breakfast.
Nice to learn...
... during a brief dalliance with Mrs Google that it's Jim Henson's 75th birthday:
It's a cheery thought to offset my embarcation, after sunset today, on a new (and hopefully temporary) career as a mass murderer. The wasps (any survivors, that is) will doubtless dub me "Chemical David".
Thanks, Mr Postie
An Andrew Davies adaptation that completely passed me by back in May 1993, it seems.
Having passed my copy of "Matilda" over to Ian yesterday,4 I've reassigned my CaseLogic slot for that to this new title. And so, too, has DVD Profiler; the only curious difference being that I cannot (even after running the 'repair' utility) persuade "Harnessing Peacocks" to fit correctly into the sort sequence on the local DVD Profiler even though it does get properly sorted by the online display here. Rather irritating. It looks as if the "collection number" may be the permanent primary key.
Pah! Permanent or not, I've just forced the program to reassign the complete set of collection numbers. Since I use my own, separate, "location code" as an index pointer into my set of CaseLogic folders that hold the actual discs I don't think I have any need to use their generated collection number. I hope not, anyway. 'Cos it's a bit late now if I do / did.
<Sigh>
This won't do, David. It won't do at all. As a birthday treat in 2008, I bought the 5-DVD ultimate collection of "Blade Runner". I even mentioned it in this diary a mere 1073 days ago. So how come it was only when browsing just now for the other films I have with Joanna Cassidy in (having spotted her — though I don't remember her performance! — in Robert Benton's excellent "The Late Show") that I only belatedly realised that those 5 DVDs were conspicuously absent from my DVD Profiler database?
It's 20:55 and I've just completed the first wave of chemical bombardment. I hope the little perishers were all sound asleep in their dormitories and simply won't know what hit them. I shall inspect the war zone very carefully, tomorrow afternoon. From a safe distance.