2012 — 24 August: Friday
Several weeks ago now, Len showed me a few clips from a young Bradford magician called Dynamo, whom I'd never heard of. And, since I refuse to pay for any of Mr Murdoch's satellite TV channels, I'd not previously had any access to the show. To my considerable surprise, I've just finished watching nearly three hours of his ridiculously enjoyable (and good-natured) "Magician Impossible" TV show.1 And I have to admit I haven't been so intrigued by such an act since the distant days of David Nixon in the monochromatic 405-line era of the 1950s.
But since it's now 01:44 and some, I think I'd better get some sleep. Perhaps, when I wake up, I'll have worked out how some more of the tricks were done. G'night.
So far, this morning...
... I've realised it's a bank holiday weekend coming up, and that the glass recycling gang have once again been untroubled by my little black crate (though the sun has turned it grey in the last four years). So that leaves my remaining quota of impossible things to be believed before breakfast at a mere four. "Red Queen to kitchen."
"Tooth fairy" agnosticism
Too good to pass up:
PLAYBOY: Assume there is a god and you were given the chance to ask him one question. What would it be?
DAWKINS: I'd ask, "Sir, why did you go to such lengths to hide yourself?"
PLAYBOY: Do you have any deeply religious friends?
DAWKINS: No. It's not that I shun them; it's that the circles I move in tend to be educated, intelligent circles, and there aren't any religious people among them that I know of. I'm
friendly with some bishops and vicars who kind of believe in something and enjoy the music and the stained glass.
Gotta love that polyphony filtering out through coloured glass.
Who programmed this?
I happened to mention my irritation with my USB3 drives. Specifically, that they would refuse to dismount for "safe removal" after I'd finished using them, or wanted to move them to another device. There is a "cure", it seems. (Not that this would be acknowledged as a bug in all probability.)
I've just disabled the "Distributed Link Tracking Client" service because (as PC Plod might put it) "acting on information received, I had reason to believe that doing so will enable me to dismount USB3-connected hard drives in future without having to restart the damn' Win7 operating system". Which is, of course, a heavyweight sort of thing to have to do simply to pull the plug on a USB device. And (my informant goes on) the service is of no use unless you have exported a share to one of your NFTS drives and have shortcuts on other machines which point to files on that drive and you then move a file which a shortcut points at.
Another solution is not to use NTFS, apparently :-)
I shall now reboot to see if2 it works. 'Scuse I.
Aside to Christa
I don't know why, as I've done nothing differently (and, indeed, nothing) but it seems I'm not going to be picking any pears this year, though I have just picked a blackberry. The red gooseberries aren't making themselves known, either. Not so tutti frutti out there this year, it seems. [Pause] No matter. Waitrose had a nice pack of "weather-blemished" English plums which looked delicious to my age-blemished old eyes. Yum.
Hadn't noticed the drop in the barometer, but can hardly miss the grey clouds and the shower. I shall nip out again to pillage a cuppa from the (non)-broken biscuit emporium in a short while. That nice Mr Toyota has sent me a fascinating brochure all about the new hybrid versions of the Yaris. I can't say I'm not tempted. After all, it's only money. And 81 mpg is pretty cool.
Back at the ranch, contemplating my evening meal and listening to the (just-downloaded) wonderful track "Golden Clouds" blending the Orb and Lee 'Scratch' Perry. Fabulous. It's 18:07 and gloomily wet out there. Not in here, though.
It's a very long time...
... since I've watched such a quirkily-interesting film as this one, which I picked up in Asda yesterday for less than a tenner...
I knew nothing whatsoever about it, or its (Italian) director, but Sean Penn is an amazing actor, and Frances McDormand is invariably interesting. The music is grand, naturally, as you'd expect from David Byrne. So, a nice piece of serendipity.