2012 — 5 November: Monday
I must remember to ask Mrs Google1 when she thinks it will be safe for me to delete the contents of the "Windows.old" subdirectory that's currently reducing the free space on my system drive by nearly 25%. I have a mere 29GB free. Two glitches2 remain:
- the loss of a DLL that has removed my ability to update the Radeon graphics card drivers (which, fortunately, are bang up to date at the moment) by means of the Catalyst Control Centre, and
- a constant crashing of the Adobe Flash plug-in that Firefox uses. It's up-to-date but is being widely reported as an issue against my Firefox web browser, not Win8. Besides access to (for example) iPlayer video material from the BBC works fine under both Chrome and IE 10.
I regained audio output by reminding applications of the preferred system device to use. Oddly, VLC already knew this, but both Foobar2000 and Boom needed a tiny adjustment. I haven't yet tried the Media Centre 'facility' that was a freebie addition to Win8 — and which brought with it its own Product Key that seems to have supplanted the one for the Win8 base system. Still, everything activated without complaint. Besides, I have two emails from Microsoft quoting the Keys. How much more legit can one chap get?
Before I do much more investigating (playing), however, I need to get out into the fresh air and refill Mrs Hubbard's rather bare fridge lest I be reduced to gnawing on an old cheese rind and the crumbs from the kitchen floor — and I prefer to leave those for the mice and cockroaches that I assume cavort there after midnight...
A major benefit...
... of being a gentleman of leisure is that, when the weather is glorious, one can change one's tentative plans for a walk tomorrow into definite plans for a walk today. And at fairly short notice, too. "Make it so, Mr Sulu." Come to think of it — if I'm brutally honest — it's also one of the (extremely few) benefits of now living on my own as I have only myself to be consulted. Ciao for now.
There's something...
... more than faintly depressing about a day of glorious sunshine (albeit rather a chilly wind) that turns so early into a dark, cold evening. I've been back for an hour or more, and have (I hope) solved the issue of the lost DLL, having first tried re-installing the entire graphics card control suite from the original CD-ROM, and then just gone on a web hunt for the missing item, scanned it for potential nasty intentions, and popped it into a couple of likely locations. The error message has gone away and nothing appears to have stopped (or started, for that matter) working differently. That leaves just the issue of the Flash plug-in failing to play nice with Firefox. Since the only way it manifests in my use of Google Mail is for the silly little animated progress bar as the inbox loads, I'm not too bothered.
Meanwhile, on with the laundry. At one point during our 8.5 miles or so my left boot was entirely submerged and at another we had to scrabble through a hedge and scale a small fence to avoid a foot or so of standing water blocking the entire width of our road.
A truculent local in his Range Rover declined the opportunity we politely offered him of giving us a lift for 20 yards or so but I'm sure the fleas of a thousand camels will soon be infesting his armpits.
I was able to use the Win8 "Disk Clean" utility to zap the old system files, and have recovered all the 'lost' space on my system drive. There's no going back now. But, in fact, there never was — the upgrade-in-situ option made it abundantly clear that if I changed my mind after installing Win8 I'd have no option but to do a complete Win7 re-install. So why it bothered to keep the old files remains a (mild) mystery. They did not, by the way, include that DLL. It had simply disappeared.
I've always found...
... the story of J Robert Oppenheimer fascinating3 (since reading the play based on the transcripts of the investigation into his "loyalty" when I were nobbut a lad at school), so I'm pleased to note a new biography even though I have three already. (Link.)
Would I be...
... right in thinking that, in space...
... 'nobirdy' can hear you squawk? It would cost me £3-49 to find out, so I guess I will never know.