2012 — 20 September: Thursday
Mother Nature1 clearly seems to have decided it's time for Autumn. It's a not terribly thrilling 19.9C here at the Technology Towers centre of my little universe2 though heat spilling from my fresh cuppa will soon change that, no doubt.
I'm happy to announce3 that it's both brighter and quieter from the patio end of the living room. Furthermore, I now realise that the previous unit (fitted when the house was built in 1980/81) lacked the draught excluders the new one has. Cosy.
My mission...
... should I choose to accept it, is to bring a little diversion into the Figg Tea Shoppe this afternoon as the kettle-wielding proprietor of that fine establishment is having an unreasonably extended anti-bacterial skirmish at the moment. I shall therefore swing by on my way back from signing off on dear Mama's next annual 'flu jab this afternoon. Meanwhile, it's getting jolly near time to do something about breakfast... I must say stewed damsons (no sugar, of course) make a delicious topping to the otherwise unexciting healthy cereal sludge that I use to line the morning tum.
Meanwhile, it has now soared to 20.5C as the sun pokes its shiny head around the edge of the curtain. Cool.
I'm frequently bemused...
... by the low general level of understanding by 'the public' of computing issues. The WSJ piece here...
The real question isn't whether to live with algorithms — the Sumerians got that much right — but how to live with them. As Vonnegut understood over a half-century ago, an uncritical embrace of automation, for all the efficiency that it offers, is just a prelude to dystopia.
... is a typical example, as it performs a gently incisive (but apparently necessary) hatchet job on a new book. (I culled "Player Piano", and all the rest of my Vonnegut fiction, from my over-burdened shelves in the mid-1990s.) One algorithm to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them? I hardly think so. Recall Gerald Weinberg's anecdote?
There are weightier issues being chopped up in "Private Eye" currently:
Got to smile at that "enjoyed/endured" dig.
According to...
... a Fox News commentator called Shep Smith: "Politics is weird. And creepy. And now I know lacks even the loosest attachment to anything like reality." Click the pic for his 27-second Youtube clip:
Nicely put, I thought. Who says our North American cousins can't do irony?
Dibby Doo Dat
I heard a smashing track from this CD last Saturday and 'zoverstocks' had a used copy at £3-75 inc postage. What's not to like?
Mr Rae plays a mean bass for a chap from Musselburgh. Besides, who could resist an album with that title? Not me.
I believe...
... I may finally have hit on a way of dealing with the regular (and too frequent) cold-calls from the Indian subcontinent seeking I know not what (though I have a suspicion it's nothing more than an attempt to get me to revert to British Gas, oddly).
"How much are you willing to pay for this information?" seems to derail their scripted 'conversation' fatally. And they don't even bluster and threaten to call every day until I have "confirmed" my "information". My next line of defence will be to ask them precisely which "HR department" supplied my number. I remain prepared to swear at any truly persistent callers (though I would prefer to launch the fully automated Magrathean system of nuclear missiles).
Somebody working for...
... my good buddy Jeff Bezos (we must be buddies as he once sent me, unsolicited, a free DVD of one of the worst films ever made — "Braveheart" — as he just knew I'd like it) is obviously stupid enough to think that this is also a good idea:
It isn't. In fact, as 'Betterizers' go, this is definitely a (much) Worserizer. It's not even as if they don't know the verb "improve"...