2012 — 4 August: Saturday
What would I do1 without the "Sounds of the 60s" every Saturday morning, and its genial host Brian Matthew?
Could I find my copy of the Lindsay Anderson diaries last night? Don't be silly! I thought I was doing well just to find his collection of 'writings'. I need a better system. Oh well. Exhausted by the effort of reading my gas and electricity meters and supplying my cuddly French giant company with the data, I shall now filch enough electricity from them to boil a few drops of water to pour over a used teabag.
Being a semi-literate...
... boring old fart in the twilit-portion of my post-computing 'career', I quite often find I have better things to do with my pitifully-limited time nowadays than follow the hysterical twits (who were so beautifully skewered, many years ago now, in Small World by David Lodge) as they swirl around the planet from one academic conference to the next. I've rarely had the weird pleasure of reading a hatchet job quite as entertainingly vicious as this one of a recent TED pamphlet. Source and snippet:
Only the rare reader would finish this piece of digito-futuristic nonsense unconvinced that technology is — to borrow a term of art from the philosopher Harry Frankfurt2 — bullshit. No, not technology itself; just much of today's discourse about technology, of which this little e-book is a succinct and mind-numbing example. At least TED Books — the publishing outlet of the hot and overheated TED Conference, which brought this hidden gem to the wider public — did not kill any trees in the publishing process.
I was only vaguely aware of TED and thus somewhat intrigued when my friend Val in Stockholm mentioned in an email yesterday having enjoyed watching one of the talks. So I read this piece out of pure curiosity, but "increasingly" with gleeful enjoyment. "Techno-babbling power couple"? .. you hafta smile.
This piece on Lenny Bruce is also very entertaining. I always found his "Berkeley concert" album (which I first had on vinyl back in 1974) quite hard listening. (Link.)
Today's post...
... brought an autumn/winter programme for Christa (I haven't bothered to tell "The Point" to address me instead) and this DVD:
Today's blood pressure spike...
... was caused by this examination of UK financial malfeasance. I still remember how aggrieved I felt (back in 1976) at being forced to accept an insurance-related 'extra' from Abbey National (as it then was) before they would agree to our miniscule first mortgage. (£12,800, if memory serves.)
From that point on, I always refused any form of PPI, quite possibly out of sheer cussedness. Mind you, I remember reading that, at one point, Dixons (as it then was) was making more money out of its extended warranty sales than out of its products, and I always thought of PPI as an extension of that philosophy.
Happily, (un)wicked Uncle ERNIE has smiled twice more in the direction of my bank account this month. I shall celebrate with some late lunch.
Settle down, children...
... it's time to play with this afternoon's new toy — a nice dull black CD player (the Audiolab 8200CD). It has somewhat different DAC technology from its sibling, the Audiolab 8000AP pre-amp (which has been tickling my ears deliciously for the last three years or so). But, like its predecessor (the NAD CD player) it sports both digital audio input and USB input to enable it to be used as a DAC as well as a CD player.
Were I to use its USB input from BlackBeast there are apparently a few audio rocks lurking in the depths, as this tiny extract from the manual suggests:
However, BlackBeast's Creative X-fi audio card sounds perfectly OK through its optical digital output directly into the Audiolab pre-amp. Be that as it may — and I've been reading around several user forums to try to separate myth from reality — I suspect I shall simply use it for the time being as the superb CD player it has already proven itself to be after several hours of very careful listening.
Meanwhile, the NAD CD player that it has displaced is on its way back in some disgrace to the maker for a repair estimate. I got fed up with the skipping and the fact that it no longer responded to any of the front panel controls. I must say I'd hoped it might keep going for a bit more than three years. If and when it returns, it will now be relegated to the reading room system upstairs.