2012 — 1 October: Monday — rabbits!
I suppose if I had even the faintest understanding of why anyone but a rich moron would wish to own, let alone pay anything for, the gun Bonnie Parker had strapped to her thigh when shot and killed I might be able to begin to understand the gun culture across the Atlantic.
But then I don't understand economics1 either, yet I rely on my pension showing up regularly. And I should feel quite aggrieved if the sun didn't shine (as I'm almost sure it's doing up there way above this morning's rain clouds). Wait! It's already time for cuppa #2... how about that?
I enjoyed...
... yesterday evening's radio play "Collaborators" enough to have ordered a copy of the playscript. Two hours of wonderful mental pictures. What else to follow it with (last night) than the last couple of episodes of "West Wing" Season #1? (Rhetorical question.) [Pause] I think that I shall simply ignore the mild drizzle and saddle up the Yaris for a little expotition. Stretch my legs, as it were... [Pause] Well, it was drizzle last time I checked, but it's now full-on rain so I shall stay put. Bother.
Somewhat later
All raindrops successfully dodged while I nipped out to Asda... even though every time I go to Asda I'm reminded of the cocktail of reasons that generally keeps me away from the store. I wandered around for a while with the latest Aardman DVD but decided in the end I simply couldn't be bothered. So here I am, back at Technology Towers thinking it's about time (14:28) for my next infusion of tannic acid (or whatever my leaf tea is full of that stains everything it touches, including my little sacrificial teapot).
I'm willing to bet...
... that most programming mistakes occur at the margins, the edges, the boundary conditions. For example, when I click on "Log off" with one of my online banks, it quite properly displays a new page with a window inside it that carries a summary of what I've been doing during the session. It quite properly asks me to confirm my wish to log off by giving me 'yes' and 'no' buttons. The bits it gets wrong — and has done for at least a year on my preferred web browser — are the calculation of the width of this contained window (so it doesn't munge the transaction time on top of the transaction date) and the vertical depth of this contained window which rather alarmingly goes on growing dynamically down the page at getting on for one centimetre per second until either I click on one of the two buttons or the web session simply times out in any case.
I've never bothered to check just how deep the browser page becomes. After all: the programmer didn't, so why should I?
Santander... take a bow.
Contemplating...
... the fact that my new patio door's double glazing is filled with Argon set me to wondering (after trying to remember) the different chemical elements in our air. I knew perfectly well that Nitrogen was nearly 80% and Oxygen around 20% but after that, things got a bit hazy. Wikipedia not only came to the rescue, but also helped demonstrate how nicely my Firefox web browser "plays with" scaleable vector graphics files.
Take a peek at this cube. And then try varying the depth and/or width of your browser window. Magic!
I've just had a TV show called "Moone Boy" recommended to me, but by somebody who didn't think much of "Bones"! Still, unless I sign up for the Dirty Digger's satellite system, I won't need to worry about it. Time (18:51) for my evening meal. Although it's stopped raining, and although we've pencilled in a walk for tomorrow, the current BBC forecast looks lousy.