2011 — 11 December: Sunday
On an impulse1 I brought my evening to an end by listening to the three music tracks I chose to play at Christa's funeral. And jolly fine pieces of music they are, too. I'm very glad I can still listen to them with pleasure, albeit tinged with melancholy. I then moved on to that excellent compilation album "Into the Blue". And from that, to TONTO's expanding head band. Quite what I'd do without music doesn't really bear thinking about.
I think I've just about finished restoring BlackBeast to its former glory (as it were). With the dishonorable exception of that Home Accountz (sic) program with its embedded Java trojan, or whatever the heck it is. But then, who needs to know how much money they've got in any case? It's not as if it's worth anything. Right, I'm off to bed. It's late, and it's cold. G'night.
I was too tired...
... last night to allow the newly re-fitted Creative sound card2 to fetch and install all the components and updates it demanded (a mere 310 MB or so) and too groggy this morning to stop it doing its thing as I supped my cuppa. I will merely observe that the process finally seems (45 minutes later) to have finished. Of course, whether it's worked will have to wait until after the inevitable reboot. Still, it gave me plenty of time to see that this is not a day for walking. It's grey, was wet until just a few minutes ago, and is a not completely balmy 6C.
Time for Cerys on BBC 6Music. Audio bliss (though not [yet] via BlackBeast). And that reminds me: I was browsing Eric Raymond's Hacker Jargon site yesterday and was amused to spot this:
It should also be noted that hackers exhibit much less reluctance to use multiply-nested parentheses than is normal in English. Part of this is almost certainly due to influence from LISP (which uses deeply nested parentheses (like this (see?)) in its syntax a lot), but it has also been suggested that a more basic hacker trait of enjoying playing with complexity and pushing systems to their limits is in operation.
I've had only minor exposure to LISP having been brain-damaged by BASIC all those years ago. Eric's comment reminded me of Ian Watson's novel "The Embedding", though I read that just once and fairly promptly discarded it. (It rather cured me of a brief interest in linguistics though.) Anyway, who gets to define "normal"? I was also pleased to see that my Firefox browser is finally displaying all the oddball characters on his pages correctly. Progress of a sort. Next: breakfast.
Preceded by some plum stewing and a complete Windows backup and system repair DVD creation while listening to Natalie Haynes (whose book "The Great Escape" is lingering, unread, on a footstool within arm's length since I bought a used copy — for 1p plus postage about a month ago).
I recognised...
... plenty of truth concealed in both the satire of this piece (about IT failures in computerising the NHS) and in many of the comments it's attracted. Source and snippet:
How's everyone finding this subject, by the way? Yeah, I know what it's like — you'll be fewer in number as every word goes by. The mention of the NHS in the headline will, like the first wave of machine-gun fire at the Somme, have mown down the majority; then a whiff of IT will have worked like mustard gas on the rest; and now a straggling remnant are being sniped at by other activities, by chores, by whatever's on the opposite page, by the TV: Andrew Marr might be talking about something funny in parliament or that comfy new planet astronomers have found or the weird witch's house that just got dug up in Lancashire.
Sympathetic magic
I figure if I play the new Kate Bush album again it may persuade the snow not to fall between now and a planned walk tomorrow morning. It's 16:03 and I've already had to draw curtains and blinds and switch on a light or two hereabouts. Switching back to BBC 6Music as soon as I realise it's time for Jarvis Cocker, I walk straight into a much earlier Kate Bush track: Babooshka. Immediately followed by a strange variant of "Little drummer boy" by, of all people, the Soulful Strings... these guys.
Having been a happy user of the truly excellent Copernic desktop search tool (for quite a while) I decided the time had come to pay for the "Pro" version — not that it brings to the table anything I particularly want. I just feel people who write good, useful, usable software should be supported even if they happen to make a "Home" version available for free.
In recent months, my MP3 player of choice (on Windows, at least) has tended to be Foobar2000, but I've just been trying out an even simpler one from the same chap: "Boom". (Link.)
In between vital...
... matters3 I've also exchanged emails with Big Bro regarding our joint policy towards dear Mama and her failing health. He is in complete agreement with my assessment of the sorry situation, and with what we should instruct the care-home staff to do about it. Now, where did I file the damned Power of Attorney paperwork?