2013 — 25 June: Tuesday
Just for fun, I left BlackBeast powered on overnight so I could check out various operating temperatures and other behaviour. I've moved one of the internal fans to a different vent (in the side of the case) and I've set disk "optimisation" to a daily schedule that (as far as I can gather) is kicked off at 03:00 — a time that doesn't seem to be alterable or, at least, not until I can pinpoint a Registry value somewhere.
So here I am1 but where's my wake-me-up cuppa? Oh, that's right, I hafta make it myself these days, dammit. Meanwhile, what of my disks, spinning rust and static silicon?
OK so far, it seems. I've also set the spinners to stop spinning 20 minutes after lack of activity, so overnight wear and tear should be more or less confined to the power supply and the cooling fans. I also confirmed (for the first time) last night that the new Synology NAS is equally accessible to the laptop that lives upstairs. It had been 12 days since I'd last switched that on. I blame my new Kindle.
There are worrying...
... signs of stability in my A/V system. I've hardly changed anything in the last 12 months, unless you count replacing the DVDO Edge video scaler by a tiny, far cheaper, 5-port HDMI switchbox, adding a digital satellite box purely for 24x7 US NPR. Oh, and replacing the Netgear media streamer by a tiny (and even more capable) Western Digital ditto:
| Source | HDMI box | Audiolab setting | (Audio only) | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Panasonic Blu-ray | #1 | hdmi #1 | — | |||
| Humax Freesat | #2 | hdmi #1 | dtv | |||
| WD media player | #3 | hdmi #1 | — | |||
| Oppo Blu-ray | #4 | hdmi #1 | — | |||
| US NPR | #5 | hdmi #1 | VCR | |||
| Freeview 'DAB' | — | dab | — | |||
| BlackBeast PC audio | — | dx2 | — | |||
| CD | — | cd | — | |||
| Minidisc | — | md | — | |||
| Cassette | — | tape | — |
Hark! Is that the call of the breakfast bird...?
R.I.P. Richard Matheson
And another old favourite of mine shuffles off to that Great Retirement Home in the Sky. (Obituary.)
The chap who...
... was vilified for calling 'Dubya' Bush a liar (over the unverified claim "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" carelessly slipped into the 2003 State of the Union address) and his wife, whose CIA identity was later revealed by senior administration officials as part of an orchestrated revenge campaign, make some telling points here:
Prism and other NSA data-mining programs might indeed be very effective in hunting and capturing actual terrorists, but we don't have enough information as a society to make that decision. Despite laudable efforts led by Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall to bring this to the public's attention that were continually thwarted by the administration because everything about this program was deemed "too secret", Congress could not even exercise its oversight responsibilities. The intelligence community and their friends on the Hill do not have a right to interpret our rights absent such a discussion... We are now dealing with a vast intelligence-industrial complex that is largely unaccountable to its citizens.
Recall that lovely joke, found in a 12th-century Persian poem?
The story of the sheep who try to leave the country, explaining to the border guards that they want to get out because the secret police have received orders to arrest all elephants. 'But you're not elephants.' 'Try telling that to the secret police.'
What a strange state...
... I find myself living in: The home office minister Nick Herbert has stated in parliament that it's acceptable for police to have sex with activists, for the sake of their "plausibility". This — suggests George Monbiot — doesn't sound like a state in which we should invest our trust. Hard to disagree. (Link.)
It was my naïve hope...
... that, having introduced the Thunderbird email client to BlackBeast for the first time ever (after a separation of 40 months or so, while I dallied with Google Mail) I might be able to persuade it to renew its acquaintance with some dusty mailbox archives I just happen to have knocking around. And from which I'd quite like to retrieve some attached photos. Alas, it has become so smooth and sophisticated (dare one say, dumbed-down?) since I last used it that it's so far turning up its nose. Investigations are ongoing, as PC Plod might say.
After snaffling a mug of tea and some broken biccies with Roger and Eileen it was time to uncork my experimental meal, with yesterday's leeklessness tastily/hastily substituted by some petit pois. Yum. It's now 19:07 and Peter's g/f has just called to "book" the weekend after next for some long-awaited "stuff" removal from Peter's room back to their new house up in the Smoke.