2014 — 27 February: Thursday

A day of rain dodging coming up, it seems.1 I expect I shall eke out a little entertaining enjoyment nonetheless. I usually do.

There may be...

... some light in which news that computer-generated gibberish has been accepted and published looks like progress towards passing the Turing test. I doubt it. But Autonomous Quadcopters using the three rules of bird flocking — alignment, attraction, repulsion — now there's a story. Publishers should maybe pay more attention to the third rule?

I also found...

... this amusing comment glowing gently at the bottom of the smelly heap in an El Reg piece on Fukushima radiation.

Fukushima

I have, I think, now...

... managed to wean myself off my weekly binge that is the Simon Mayo and Mark Kermode BBC Radio 5 Live review of films and things filmic. It had stopped making me laugh, but was continuing to eat up Time. I find I have less Time available for use by things that do that. Time that may be needed, in fact, to help my friend Chris with his latest disk woes and a non-booting laptop.

I'm fully aware...

... that John Cocke was by no means the only person involved in the development of RISC machines, but when I learned that Fran(ces) Allen had produced a celebratory piece on the topic back in 1990, I had to take a quick peek. (Link.)

The middle of the afternoon has ushered in dark clouds to the north, and a distant rumble of what I assume was thunder. How lovely! [Pause] And now a large mug of coffee has just had to be re-heated. It had been, as it were, cooling its heels while I updated my AMD Radeon graphics card driver. [Pause] Which, in turn, led me to take out my Secunia Personal Software Inspector for another snoop around BlackBeast. It's just suggested that my "System Score" is only 99%, let down by the level of the Foxit PDF reader. Easily fixed.

I note that Win8.1 Pro is not very keen on giving up its preferred PDF reader. Again. To no avail.

Having that...

... instrumental track "A dream within a dream" (from the first, utterly brilliant, Alan Parsons Project 1976 album Tales of Mystery and Imagination) in my head, what possible film choice can I make this evening but "Inception"? [Longish Pause] Just as good as I remember from December 2010. Though it's now slipped from #6 to #13 on the IMDB Top 250.

  

Footnote

1  I trust our guvmint Minister for Drought is gainfully employed...