2013 — 14 July: Sunday
I was shocked, I tell you, shocked1 to find piles of unwashed dishes etc scattered around my kitchen worktops when I wandered down this morning in search of the initial cup that soothes. My house may only be in that state of moderate grace characterised by Junior's partner on her last visit as "boy clean" but I never leaves dishes to fester overnight.
Looks like another warm day heading our way. I showed them "Untouchable" last night; it went down well, though they both now wish to try para-gliding. And, to my surprise, the native capabilities of OS X proved able to rescue2 my 16GB USB3 stick after (as I'd half expected) Peter had reduced its reported capacity to less than 1GB in futile attempts to install FreeNAS from it onto the Gateway PC that is just a little too venerable to allow booting from USB devices.
Software. Yah gotta love it. As a reminder (for me, for the next time I need it):
The (scary) instructions are here.
Recalling...
... the amusing urban legend mischievously kicked off by Stuart Maconie (and debunked by the Pedia that is Wiki) is it any safer to assume I can believe Gideon Coe's assertion that it was his dad (Tony Coe) who played the sax solo on John Martyn's well-nigh-perfect "Solid Air"? (Which — unless I'm equally deceived — was a reference to the way Nick Drake was basically starving to death "living on solid air".)
What clock?
Such clock! I built one of these. In an early demonstration of Murphy's Law, its ambiguous instructions allowed me to solder the LED display chip the 'wrong' way up — a minor detail that I didn't realise until a later testable stage (and the first appearance of inverted digits). My extended letter campaign to Sir Clive's organisation did eventually bring me a full refund. Not that he was a benighted knight back then.
I am still amazed at just how many items I recognise (and, sometimes, owned) here.
Their fetish gear wet suits...
... are now down out of the loft, as is one of my suitcases. Wonder if I'll see it again? It's just gone noon and I'm not yet quite clear what their next plans are. I've switched on one of my two little room fans, and am left wondering why I ever thought any of the fans inside BlackBeast struck me as noisy.
Am I to deduce...
... that someone wasn't a big fan of Sorkin's "The Newsroom"?
"The Newsroom" started as an eloquent but overwrought tutorial on politics and journalistic ethics that, for all its wit and dazzle, was laborious to watch: insufferably high-minded
characters kept interrupting their reporting to declaim the sanctity of the news.
"The Newsroom" is still righteous and romantic, but the characters now compete less over virtue than over virtuosity. There are new faces this season, and two of the better additions
aren't even journalists. Most important, the narrative this time around is driven by an overarching story line — a libel suit — that pulls viewers past the rocks and eddies of
liberal piety.
This revamped version of "The Newsroom" is no less preachy, but it's a lot more fun to watch.
Liberal piety? Pah!
The more I...
... use the GIMP, the more I find enjoyable about it. That was not the case back in 2008, which marked my previous attempt at peaceful co-habitation while I had temporarily mislaid my Photoshop Elements 5.0 CD. (That fairly ghastly piece of code eventually had the cheek to declare itself 'no longer supported' and refused to install. Had I not by then long since transferred my fickle allegiance elsewhere I would have been mighty peeved.)
Meanwhile, I suspect my co-habitants will be back in their London pad by now. It's 17:25 and quite oppressively warm and sticky. [Pause] Come on, Mother Nature! A joke's a joke but this heat is getting ridiculous.