2012 — 16 July: Monday
Were it not mid-July1 perhaps it wouldn't be raining again? Slugs and snails (though no mention of puppy dog tails) are the main beneficiaries, it seems. "Little Steven" (of Underground garage radio show fame, not to mention "The Sopranos" and the "E" Street Band) is describing his life in rock music and what motivates him (sex and money).
Tea motivates me right now.
Despite my enjoyment...
... of TV shows "Boston Legal", "Suits", and — in earlier years — "LA Law" I'm not really a big fan of the legal 'profession'.
The entertainment industry may not adapt swiftly to the technology people use to acquire and enjoy media, but its lawyers certainly do. It took the music industry
a matter of weeks to sue Napster, the pioneering online file-sharing site... Federal enforcers are not so nimble, but they've been gradually expanding their efforts
from direct infringers to enablers...
'Something that lets you find illegal content can also help you find legal content,' said Mitch Stoltz, a lawyer with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'When you go
after intermediaries, you're going to shut down legal and legitimate speech and commerce and innovation to get at what they perceive as illegal copyright violation.'
It's an interesting pickle.
I have procrastinated...
... long enough. I've scanned the cover art of today's DVD arrival...
... signed the final trio of Uncle ERNIE's little cheques. Had a coffee. Sorted out some lunch. It's time to try squeezing all my MP3 file data into one giant spreadsheet and see if I can't bend it to my will. I've never had all this music data available in machine-readable form before.
I have a poor...
... relationship with my venerable mobile "no contract; just pay as you go" phone — the one I bought for Christa to use in the hospice just a week before she died. Latest example: I barely hear something from across the room. (Peter's g/f set it to "discreet" some while back for me.) So it takes a few seconds while my subconscious "parses" the sound and I then put down my book, and amble over to see whether it is, in fact, the source of this odd noise that's almost in time with the current musical choice on BBC 6Music.
By the time I get to it, its little keyboard is all aglow with excitement, and it proudly proclaims I now have "1 missed call". I vaguely recognise the Winchester number. Then it rings again, so I catch it. But a mechanoid cuts in to inform me that I've used all my calling credit2 and am now in need of a chat with "Operator Services". One word that springs to mind is "pathetic". Not — funnily enough — the first word I used.
Turns out the care-home (which really should know better by now than to waste everybody's time trying to call me on the mobile) is once again closed with the norovirus. This will put a slight crimp in Big Bro's plans to visit dear Mama again this Thursday unless they are a lot quicker than last time in disinfecting and quarantining all the little old ladies and gentlemen. If it's not one Intelligently-Designed thing it's another.