2013 — 23 December: Monday
The foolish chap who lives here thought,1 seeing that it wasn't currently raining and that it wasn't quite 08:00, that it would be a clever wheeze to nip out to Waitrose (safely ahead of the hordes, that is) to pick up enough fresh stuff to tide me him over the worst of the imminent festive spasm. People driving towards my destination seemed to prefer a more sedate 20 mph, and the carpark was very nearly full. People with trolleys were actually queuing just to get in. People with trolleys are, frankly, a bloody menace to people who prefer to scoot quickly round with one bag and a self-scan gadget.
Now, what about...
... that cuppa and maybe a bite of breakfast? Xmas. Bah, humbug. [Pause] As I munch, I've just been reading the assessment of Schlesinger's Letters — I think I shall rest content, as it were, with the fat volume of his Journals from a while back. I've lost interest in "Camelot" and its historian, I guess.
How much more...
... Xmas cheer could one chap possibly request?
Just askin'. And I'm guessing those aren't striped Xmas stockings dangling in the gentle zephrys forecast for hereabouts, either.
I quite enjoyed...
... the (complete) Dvorak Symphony #6, but I have to say it was Victor Borge's sublime "A Mozart Opera" that reduced me to tears of laughter. It wasn't the variant I already know, so I've therefore just snaffled this...
... for that track and rather more besides. My original version, from 1948, was only just over 3 minutes. This newer, live, performance is three times as operatic in girth.
I keep an...
... eye, from time to time,2 on Eric Raymond's "Jargon File". There's a useful table of glyphs, for example, and some useful definitions, too. One can't visit the File without some browsing; that would be disrespectful. Today, I popped my virtual head around the alcove with a Bibliography in it, reminding myself of two personal favourites — Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" and Stan Kelly-Bootle's "The Computer Contradictionary" (which, oddly, hasn't previously shown up in my ¬blog):
Two (typical) snippets:
Kidder: During one period, when the microcode and logic were glitching at the nanosecond level, one of the overworked engineers departed the company, leaving behind a note on his terminal as his letter of resignation: "I am going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
Kelly-Bootle: [it] defines computer science as "a study akin to numerology and astrology, but lacking the precision of the former and the success of the latter" and implementation as "The fruitless struggle by the talented and underpaid to fulfill promises made by the rich and ignorant"; flowchart becomes "to obfuscate a problem with esoteric cartoons".
That daffynition of "implementation" sounds like a cousin to Bertrand Russell's remark about the two kinds of work.
Topped up...
... right to the Bream! Entrancing, though it leaves me wondering wistfully what Stravinsky would have written for him.
I hesitated,...
... though only for a moment, this morning, over the decision to buy (or, in my case, not to buy) the doubtless splendid Xmas edition of the "Radio Times". Instead, here's what Christa bought me for Xmas in 1981 — it was our first Xmas in this house:
Again, the faint horizontal discontinuity (clipping the top of the cushion) gives some clue as to the physical size of this sumptuous volume.