2013 — 12 September: Thursday
A distinctly moist start to the day1 and, for a change, I kicked it off with the main BBC Radio 4 UK news. That didn't last. And the cuppa was a lot more entertaining, too.
Knowing where things are
Meanwhile, judging by the busyness of the just-updated-after-only-two-days Copernic desktop search tool, it's fair to say there may still be one or two bugs malingering in the system. Given that I've allowed it to use "full throttle" in terms of CPU — for now, until I've finished waking up — it's taken just over half an hour to reassure itself of the indexing status of 184,865 "documents" in its "All" category. This breaks down into 11,287 files of my sort of document, 27,245 emails, 23,624 image files of one sort or another, 54,706 audio items, and 853 video items.
Since that lot adds up to 90,000 bits of reasonably useful (or at least comprehensible) stuff, give or take, and the web browser history weighs in with another 67,067 items (and only goes back in time to 4th January last year) I'm unable to assess or account for the other 27,000 or so bits and bobs it's decided to index. Time may yet tell, of course. I did notice quite a few "Failure to extract..." such and such error notifications flashing past on the program's status line, but I refuse to worry about that sort of stuff, preferring to assume it knows what it's doing.
Last night's...
... video entertainment was the 2008 Andrew Davies three-part BBC adaptation of "Sense & Sensibility" which I've decided makes an interesting contrast with the Ang Lee film variant that I watched on Monday evening. Must be time to re-read the original novel :-)
Time for breakfast and the assembly of a little packed lunch. Meanwhile, Copernic seems completely unable to tell me where in the real world my waterproof jacket is. The car's boot, I hope.
Several hours and...
... quite a few miles later (six of them on foot) I'm now relaxing back at Technology Towers wondering, not for the first time, why Uncle ERNIE seems to prefer not to send out his little cheques in batches. Wondering, too, where's the easiest place to pay the things in now that I've walked away from Santander. Eastleigh, I guess. That would give me a chance to pop into the book shop, at least. Meanwhile, the following title was sitting on my front door step. I admit it's a complete unknown, but it seemed to have a reasonable premise:
Remains to be seen, of course.
Having mentioned Charles Babbage...
... yesterday, I was reminded that — as 2012 was juddering towards the buffers at the end of its line — I'd indulged myself (come on: who else am I going to indulge these days?) by linking to a couple of items I'd written in Times Past. The one with the Babbage connection had been commissioned for the Xmas 1995 edition of the IBM Hursley in-house staff magazine. (Link.)
The other was the tale of how I came to win a Polaroid camera as a prize in a Penthouse magazine competition. And, several years later, came to write my first piece of creative fiction for IBM: an expenses claim for a trip to Germany in 1981. (Link.) Funnily enough, last month I had an email from the very photographer (Johnny Thornton) whose picture I'd been given for use as a subject in that competition. I was pleased to hear he'd enjoyed my little tale.
However, I'd forgotten that I wrote another IBM piece for Xmas 1996, too. Copernic dug it out for me. (Link.)
"Suburgatory" is turning out (at five episodes in) to be rather delightful.