2013 — 7 April: Sunday
I shall take the advice of ex-PFC Wintergreen1 and try to be less prolix today. Besides, I need tea.
I was deriving an unseemly amount of somewhat atavistic pleasure yesterday evening by taking some venerable CDs out for a spin in the NAD player. I must admit I don't do this all that often, even though the listening experience still seems to yield a result that is (slightly) "higher in the fi"2 than the best efforts of ripped high variable bit-rate MP3s. But then, there was a time when I thought vinyl sounded pretty good, so what do I know?
Cerys is winding towards the end of her show, so it must surely be time for lemonses. And — following an email — to reflect on my use of the pluperfect yesterday when I obviously meant to use the perfect. It was late, I was tired, and I'm not that bothered but... thank you, Michael. I have been warned!
A mere 17 years ago...
... I had just welcomed Christa and Peter back from quite a costly week in the Alps. They had a great time, arriving half a day before a new heavy snow fall, and leaving half a day after it had all started melting again. (This was in Wengen, in the Bernese Oberland, basically under the shadow of the Eiger, the Münch and the Jungfrau. I spent 10 days near there, in the tiny village of Wilderswil, in 1966.) Anyway, I recapped my week to dear Mama as part of a weekly letter:
My week has been nice and quietly relaxed, apart from the cold that we seem to have split between us. Fed the fish, fed the birds, fed me. Read the papers. Wandered up to the local shops a couple of times. Nothing on TV, no callers, no mail, no deadlines, no e-mail (I've returned my modem to IBM — if they really want me to have a home terminal setup they can jolly well pay for a proper one rather than the sad joke that, at 2400 bps, took forever to do anything but handle a few small items of text mail.) Back to the Lab on Tuesday, of course, and (no doubt) a bulging electronic mailbox...
Interesting to hear from the teachers' conference that somehow a backlog of £3 billion for repairs has built up in our schools during the last 15 years or so. Even though I observe that that sum would buy a non-floating fragment of one Trident submarine. What strange priorities our leaders of those last 15 years have set for us. Still, I'm sure they know better than us what's good for us. Perhaps I should change jobs and become the boss of a building society so I can fiddle my expenses on a grand enough scale to curry favour with them and get knighted!
Compare and contrast with my current range of pleasantly slothful inactivity. And I somehow doubt that the backlog of school repairs has disappeared.
Examining the list...
... of HTML items explicitly removed in the new HTML5 is quite satisfying. Included are many that I was (sometimes strongly) urged to use during my time as an IBM webmaster. I remember being regarded as some kind of Luddite idiot for my disdain of frames, for example. Plus ça change.
Meanwhile, Jarvis has been chatting amiably to Sir David Attenborough. Excellent programme.
Carol has just sent over a deliciously ripe piece on political corruption in the Big Apple. Almost makes me jealous! Sample:
According to the indictments, one Republican official from Queens frisked a briber, who was actually an undercover F.B.I. agent, to make sure he wasn't wearing a wire. Then failed to find the wire. Then took the bribe while being recorded. This all happened at a super-secret meeting at Sparks, the steakhouse where John Gotti had Paul Castellano rubbed out. I believe there should be an unwritten rule in criminal conspiracy that you do not schedule your big payoff at the most famous gangland murder site in Manhattan.
That's twice today I've read a mention of Gotti. Simon Hoggart has an anecdote here.
My "traditional" Sunday music...
... download this time was prompted by my earlier listening to one of my three Jeff Beck CDs. I was on the point of ordering one of those "Original Album Classics" re-issue sets of 5 CDs in cheap packaging when it occurred to me to see if it, too, was available in MP3 format. It was, and cheaper by a couple of quid than the physical CDs, into the bargain:
- Rough and Ready
- Jeff Beck Group
- Blow by Blow
- Wired
- Live, with the Jan Hammer Group
He's a mighty fine guitarist. I expect Tall Thomas will approve.