2012 — 13 January: Friday
Having watched another three episodes of "Bones" last night, I think I'm prepared to declare my whimsical choice of next TV viewing a good one.1 Next on the agenda: some more sleep, even though the delightful (and, sadly, late) John Walters is currently tracing the history of the Hammond organ on BBC 6Music.
G'night.
And a frosty...
... start to the morning, too. Brrr. Though I only noticed when I peered blearily through a window or two and saw various neighbours' cars with non-seethrough windscreens and clouds of vapour. It's really nice not to have to get up and go to work in such conditions, particularly when one actually turned off one's reading light a mere six hours ago (nearly).
"Highlander", anybody?
As I browsed towards the foot of Larry Niven's blog I found a link across to Scott Meyer's "Basic Instructions", and couldn't resist sampling a panel from the rather wonderful "How to Give Someone Advice About a Major Purchase"...
... which can, after all, often be a fraught business. [Pause] Speaking of less fraught business, no sooner had I returned from a supplies run when I stumbled over a couple of droppings left by Mr Postie from good ol' Uncle ERNIE, so I nipped straight back out to my bank before he changed his mind. Only then did I turn my attention to the other post, the bill2 for last month's laptop PC, and that very long-awaited DVD of "The Outfit"...
... I was a little alarmed to find it's actually a burned "DVD download" but (having watched the first 10 minutes) it plays just fine. What's really alarming to grasp is how this excellent movie can a) have been so criminally neglected, and b) how it can be so many years since I first saw it in the cinema. I was still an engineering apprentice living in student digs in Hatfield. Good grief!
If only...
There's a neat little potted history of my favourite software house and its relationship with my favourite computing hardware here. Source and snippet:
According to Moir "the early Intel processors were awful" — the first IBM PC ran a 4.77MHz Intel 8088 CPU. IBM PCs running Microsoft's DOS stormed the desktop. "Had I taken a purely commercial view of it, I should have done IBM," he says.
Moir eventually succumbed to the PC and Windows in 1992 out of frustration with Acorn. "We knew Acorn had had it. They were doomed," he says. The company that had inspired him at 17 had fallen under the control of accountants, he said, who overpriced the Archimedes to protect the BBC Micro. Then: "There were a series of marketing cock-ups from Acorn that I found frustrating; that's when we made the decision to switch."
'Twas ever thus, I suspect. Meanwhile, on my newest platform, I see there are some interesting style guidelines here. Ice Cream Sandwich, indeed. And how's this for a piece of bitter truth? Extract:
But programmers are notoriously bad at design. The lack of social skills which makes one so good at working with computers often renders one equivalently incapable of designing competent user interfaces, a failing which is very much in evidence in the deeper recesses of the Android Marketplace.
Couldn't possibly comment.
Blimey. Got a bit of a shock just now (20:53) when I found the lid of my black bin was frozen solid. It's already down to -2C out there, and there are stars a'plenty visible. Brrr.