2011 — 19 November: Saturday

Did you know Lesley Manville is a fan of "Free"? Let alone that she maintained lists of "Top 20" hits in a large A4 notebook each week?¹ It's a bright, if cool, sunny morning, and I've been giving the six cores a few hours off to rest. Gives me time to consider whether I really want to embark on what some might regard as a barking mad jog along video ripping lane.

Drupal isn't my pal

It's flattering when my ex-ICL chum Ian asks me (from time to time) to look at some of the web site issues he grapples with on behalf of the sainted Tuppy Owens. I don't believe I've ever managed to solve one of his problems (of course) but each time tends to reinforce my belief that there's much to be said for keeping things simple. The overnight issue concerned an image mis-alignment or displacement that was provoked by a subtle change somewhere in the newer DTD that his later version of Drupal specifies and that — if you please — he told me he eventually solved:

I had to give the first image a negative bottom margin
and the 2nd image a negative top margin
that together added up to the height of each image. This works.
Actually I made the frame 0.1em larger (higher) than the portrait
so it overlaps by about a pixel.

This is precisely the sort of web page-wrangling that gives me the heebie-jeebies these days. In fact just thinking about it induces an overwhelming compulsion for my next cuppa. Not to mention breakfast. Heavens, it's already 09:47.

Last night I very much enjoyed my recent acquisition "Outsourced". A real gem at £2-99 though it's already ancient in web years. It would have had far greater resonance if I'd seen it back in 2006, of course, as that was the year I was cheerfully told my IBM job was moving to India. Happy days :-)

Come back, Douglas Adams

An interesting piece by a reliably readable chap in "The Loom". It's on Neanderthal neuroscience and a gene called FoxP2, mutations to which have been shown to have a deleterious effect on language. Source and snippet:

From a purely scientific point of view, the best way to investigate the evolution of FoxP2 would be to genetically engineer a human with a chimpanzee version of the gene and a chimpanzee with a human version. But since that's not going to happen anywhere beyond the Island of Doctor Moreau, Paabo is doing the second-best experiment. He and his colleagues are putting the human version of FoxP2 into mice.
The humanized mice don't talk, alas. But they do change in many intriguing ways. The frequency of their ultrasonic squeaks changes. They become more cautious about exploring new places. Many of the most interesting changes happen in the brain.

Carl Zimmer in The Loom

I've just listened to a rather truncated new radio version of an old favourite — "The Weirdstone of Brisingamen" — which managed to omit all the bits I personally found scary in the original novel (last read in April 2010). And, it seems, Alan Garner is now writing a novel about the adult life of one of the characters.

A dollop of 'ketchup'

Here are the covers of my most recent video arrivals:

"Rev" has now gathered some interesting reviews
"Bridesmaids" (says Brian) is worth persevering with
"Silent Running" I first caught in the cinema while I was at Hatfield Polytechnic
"It takes a worried man..." is a literate treat
"Californication" continues to amuse me
"Moody and Pegg" is an experiment. It was transmitted just before Christa and I married in the summer of 1974 when TV barely featured in our lives

Footnote

¹ I didn't.