2012 — 10 June: Sunday
Not for the first time1 I find, on powering up BlackBeast, that the Internet connection has gone AWOL. I grant you it's pretty early, and there may well have been a spot of overnight maintenance at the exchange, but it's another slight nudge in the direction of the BT Infinity service. After yesterday's chat with Mike (who's also poked at this possibility) and an earlier discussion with Len, we'd concluded that the only things2 my present ISP has going for it over BT is the provision of (in my case) five static TCP/IP addresses. And that's because I've got some sort of legacy deal going that dates back to the days of Videotron before they were acquired by Clueless & Witless, before etc. etc.
Since I stopped running an external webserver here in August 2007 I no longer have any need for these. And no intention of getting back into that business.
Time to contact Junior, methinks. Give him a chance to see if he wants to talk me out of it.
Saint Pilling...
... mentioned (while taking a tiny bit of stick regarding some of the instructions on his Ovation Pro [DTP program] "CD" website) a very useful piece of advice he found in a user manual:
I always liked the fine print in the McCullough chainsaw manual which says "keep reading this manual until you understand it".
I was keeping this in mind as I reached the end of Steven Carlip's article on 2-D gravity (in the April 2012 issue of "Scientific American") that was claiming to offer new perspectives on quantum gravity, but was mainly making my head ache. This was my third reading, too, so — this time — I glanced at the "More to explore" list, finding there a reference to AK Dewdney's 2001 Springer book "The Planiverse: computer contact with a two-dimensional world".
So what? So, my little books database reminds me I bought this 1983 SF novel back in March 1984, though (as usual) it doesn't remind me exactly which shelf it lives on. My book-storage principles are clearly derived from the late, great, Eric Frank Russell's wonderful 1955 SF short story "Diabologic" — the science of driving people nuts.
As I enjoy...
... the musical choices of Siouxsie Sioux on BBC 6Music (I still have a minidisc of her "Top 10" choices from a BBC Radio 1 show she hosted nearly 30 years ago) I've been working my way through a huge pile of Amazon and Play invoices, making sure before I finally chuck them out (though I have no real idea why) they are all 'logged' (for want of a better word) in the appropriate database. I've just stumbled across the one for this not-so-little gem, that arrived in March 2007:
As I mentioned, some while back, I admire the work of Robert Crumb immensely. His second wife, Aline, is equally talented though with a vastly different graphic style. By 2007, Christa's failing health obviously meant I was paying a lot more attention to her, and was being correspondingly less than assiduous in paying heed to most of my hobbies. So this lovely book's arrival went unremarked at the time. I got it for £13-20 by the way — cheap at half the price. Yet you can now snap up a new copy for £2. Amazing.
Time for lunch. I nipped out to Waitrose earlier, having run low on cow juice and a few other essentials. And I have an evening meal and video engagement over in Winklechestershire to look forward to. We intend to re-watch "Brassed Off" now that it's out on Blu-ray. Lovely film.
I was drafting...
... an email reply on GUIs versus CLIs and found myself off on a mental wander (recalling Raymond Chen's book "The Old New Thing") that led to me finding this little chortle-maker on that gentleman's blog:
Love to see the results when it gets to work on some of Big Bro's spellings. Oh well, I've still yet to send my email...
Having arrived home...
... despite the ghastly weather, in time to catch the last 30 minutes or so of Guy Garvey's show, and having just heard him play a Mary Margaret O'Hara song, I've succumbed to the temptation of "September Songs" — a 1997 album featuring various artists (including MM O'H) performing the songs of one Kurt Julian Weill, husband of Lotte Lenya (aka Rosa Klebb in "From Russia with love").
And on those notes... g'night.