2013 — 29 September: Sunday

Having exchanged views on Life, the Universe, and Everything with my distant sibling¹ down in NZ — he's coming over here in three weeks having (I assume) run out of patience waiting for me to post the results of his recent postage stamps auction over to him — it was time to turn my single-threaded neural processing unit to gentle contemplation of the question of the annual decision: do I upgrade (with healthy discount, of course) to the latest product in the range of graphics software that began life in 1990 as "Artworks" on the Acorn Archimedes RISC OS platform?

Of course I do. [Longish pause] And I must admit, the newest 64-bit variant (now named "Xara Designer Pro X9") does, indeed, feel faster than ever.

Crikey! It's already nearly time for Cerys and here I am, still unbreakfasted. Meanwhile, I hope the tentative (and extremely long-overdue) proposals on the decriminalisation (and taxation?) of "Class A" drugs (and suggestions that cocaine and heroin could be supplied by the NHS) doesn't mean that one day their consumption will become manda-TORY policy. Humour, ark, ark. (Link.)

I mentioned...

... my dislike for the film criticism of Peter Bradshaw. I have a completely different opinion of Mark Kermode — and not just because he likes Twiglet. (Reasons.)

I regret...

... the demise of "Word" magazine. I was tidying up some emails and stumbled across one of my exchanges with the editor:

I won't attempt your 10 questions, but I want to thank you for making me spray my PC screen with a mouthful of tea while reading that Tilda Swinton was capable of looking like a tortoise in a very bad mood.
Cheers.
D

Date: 5 September 2011

Now, don't blame me...

... for this one:

Because it was all the fault of Tall Thomas, who called round with #1 daughter while my resistance was lowered due to not then having eaten any lunch an hour or so ago. He was returning a set of CDs and a little discography of Neil Young and — as usually happens — we got to playing a sequence of musical snippets from the 54,996 or so items currently cluttering up my main data drive. "But", asks he, "where's your Eric Dolphy collection?"

Oh, the mortification! But the music compensates for any transient embarrassment.

I was catching up...

... with the SlowMo guys (on YouTube) with their underwater bullets but took a fascinating detour into some very weird group caterpillar motion. (Link.)

I always enjoyed assembling this sort of thing as a kid. Where's my glue? And scissors?

Footnote

¹ Including, in this case, my opinion that it's about time for him to do what's needed to activate his own Power of Attorney over dear Mama's affairs lest I get hit by the proverbial bus before she does. And the chance of that happening is, of course, beyond all but Lensman-style Arisian computation.