2013 — 8 August: Thursday
I don't know1 how it can already be time to start thinking about meals and supplies for the weekend since it was only Monday a few seconds ago, surely? Most odd. And let's not even hint at the fact that the current morning seems to have an alarmingly autumnal taint to it.
I had no idea...
... Xerox copiers/scanners were "clever" enough to use a compression/decompression algorithm that could change characters if the user selects a mode to reduce document file sizes or transmission times. How very embarrassing. The ability of JBIG2 to substitute similar patches from different parts of an image results on occasion in the numeric data in tables being changed. Lossless versus perceptually lossless, it seems. This is a case where analogue clearly beats digital, surely? (Link.)
The JBIG2 Primer actually states "First: do no harm" too. And recognises the risk of character mismatches. Crikey.
Meanwhile, I can only sincerely hope both Big Bro (an appropriate name, for once) and young Brack are taking part in the protests described rather a long way away, here.
Too late, as usual
Last night's "Late Junction" featured a track of Nigel Kennedy with Kroke doing a storming live version of "Time 4 Time" from what (she claims, and the BBC website this morning asserts) is (more precisely, was) a triple CD of WOMAD material. It was a limited edition, and (of course) the single copy I've tracked down is an equally storming $99. Not a trace of it left at RealWorld which is where the WOMAD shop now lives. Dagnabbit.
I cannot, for a single instant, believe that a UK Home Secretary — even a Tory — could ever be quite stupid enough to hide "her own failings". Others disagree, it seems. Speaking of witless politicians (is there any other kind?) I wish one of them could tell me where Bongo Bongo land is.
As I said on Monday: I'm not...
... paranoid. Not to say that others aren't, or weren't, or won't ever be. Consider Michael Kaplan's essay on MK Ultra. Clickable visual snippet:
But — as Eric Frank Russell asked, in his 1953 novel "Dreadful Sanctuary" — How do you know you're sane? I think I'd ask Doc Daneeka, personally.
Meanwhile, that bastion of good sense for all right-thinking folk (that is, 99% of North American psychiatrists) has subtly changed the definition of delusion in the latest edition of the big, fat, Big-Pharma-friendly Bible, aka Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. I realise there's always a danger — when picking holes in such stuff, or such people — of being labelled delusional (or worse)2 but, hey, it's only a hobby.
I think that's rather sweet, somehow. There's plenty more excellent stuff here, and here, and here.
Being unaware of...
... the verb "to Hackintosh", I was tickled pink when a chum sent me a screenshot of his Windows PC running a copy of my OS X Snow Leopard in his VirtualBox within less than 24 hours of my lending him the DVDs from my last round of upgrade battles with my iMac (before I donated the unblessed thing to Junior). My chum tells me he simply "followed the instructions" that I've just been reading here. I trust he's not delusional.
I wonder if running an OS X system on a decent performance system (like, say, oh, I don't know, a quad core i7 BlackBeast perhaps?) is any more fun than struggling with it on vastly slower hardware (which my 2007 Core2Duo iMac certainly was). Interesting delusion, perhaps.
Before the next person...
... confidently sneers that "fonts don't matter", I submit this evidence...
... to show just how badly a graphic designer can screw up on a front cover, no matter how attractive the interior content.
Having recently...
... quite enjoyed "Argo" I thought it might be timely to revisit Affleck's directorial début. Thanks, Mr Postie:
I still haven't read anything by Dennis Lehane though.
Later
I have been — essentially — ordered to watch the Beethoven Piano Concerto performance.