2013 — 27 July: Saturday
Studying1 the online credit card and current a/c statements that my phone's email alerted me to suggests that not only has my recent switch of bank been beneficially "interesting" but also that my recent severe attack of Kindle addiction has been saving me a fortune in DVDs, Blu-rays, MP3 downloads and CDs that I've not been buying while I've had my nose stuck — recently — in a great variety of e-books. That may yet change, of course. (Andrew Niccol's "The Host" is released on Monday, it seems, which should therefore find me scouring the 'new release' shelves of Asda where Mike assures me it will be cheapest.)
Meanwhile, studying the hallway barometer (and contemplating hordes of happy shoppers) has just sent me out (despite Brian Matthew) to hunt'n'gather while the going remains good. [Pause] Now, where's my next cuppa? And some breakfast would be good, too.
Given that...
... the front cover of the latest "Private Eye" simply states "Woman has baby", and Steve Bell has designed a celebratory mug stating "Another royal mouth to feed", I assume the worst of the coverage should now soon be over.
I find it...
... both interesting, and rather sad, that the recommended method of capturing a screenshot from the phone, as detailed by the HTC One official support website, doesn't work for me, (fat fingers? don't wait long enough? who knows?) whereas the method explained on YouTube by some enthusiast does. (Power button plus capacitative 'home' button at the same time.) Oh well. After a comedy of boring errors, I eventually retrieved the file I wanted from where it had been stuck up on Dropbox:
"I can see...", as Eddie the shipboard computer was wont to say, "this is a relationship we're all going to have to work on." But I do like the jet black wallpaper. Generated, like its predecessor for the Tablet PC, with Xara. But you can clearly see what I mean about dismal mobile signal here in Technology Towers.
I cast my...
... get_iPlayering audio fishing net just a bit further out this morning, and have now got the first blast of WOMAD and three sets of "New Generation artist" to listen to. I live in hope. Anything's better than all this (un)blessed Wagner nonsense.
Other BBC nonsense currently (16:28) includes their weather forecast. Were I to believe what it says on the website for my own postcode I should already be under water, it seems. Yet to happen. Though the current grey cloud cover has persuaded me to close the skylight up in the books warehouse.
Having just risked...
... 99p on Eric Newby's "A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush" (which is yet another in the ever-growing list of places I doubt I will ever visit) I've also flung rather more virtual currency up the virtual Amazon for two, old-fashioned, ink on paper books:
An exquisitely well-matched pair, I thought. I was unaware, until reading more details of the Wally Wood title, that in earlier years (from 1948, in fact) he'd been working with Harry ("Stainless Steel Rat") Harrison.
I'm not pleased...
... to learn of the death of JJ Cale. Christa brought over her vinyl copy of his "Naturally" album on that memorable (indeed, life-changing) ferry trip we made when returning from my "meet the family" trip to Meisenheim just a few days before we married, in September 1974.
Happier days...
Oh, the shame!
There is (of course) a much less painful way of taking a screenshot. It is (of course) jolly well-hidden. If you drag down the notifications bar from the top of the screen, and then tap the top right-hand 3x3 set of square blobs (unlikely to be the technical term, but it's my phone, dagnabbit), a new screen appears. The bottom right-hand option on this screen (of course, the one captioned "SCREENSHOT" — how intuitive), if touched, takes a screenshot. And, of course, it ends up on Dropbox about 10 seconds later.
Now back to our normal programme...