2014 — 18 May: Sunday

I shall be emulating Kate Bush1 over in Winchester in an hour or so, so I'd better make some breakfast. Man cannot ascend hills on Red Bush tea alone these days, I fear.

While I was...

... grabbing a live performance of Terry Riley's "In C" (I reckoned I could just about afford the 79p) I also downloaded a couple of pieces by John Adams that will merit closer audition in days to come. "Naive and sentimental music" and "The Dharma at Big Sur". Both new to me, I confess. But there's just not enough time this morning.

There rarely is, these days... I've been told, by the way, that if I paid more attention to billboards I would certainly recognise a Wonderbra :-)

This didn't happen...

... when I was a student! Surely the only trigger likely to inspire fear and trauma is the one on a handgun? (Link.)

This is a hopeful sign, however. Not that one should regard Interweb responses2 as necessarily more truthful :-)

Back, after a...

... very pleasant 4.2 mile stroll around the water meadows in glorious sunshine. Right! There's the matter of lunch to be thought about as I listen to the second part of Charles Hazlewood's "musical exploriums". Silly title, I agree. To see how a ground bassline of Purcell morphs into Massive Attack. Come on, you already know I like Massive Attack.

Though there...

... is much — well, OK, some — to admire in Win8.1Pro, the continuing foibles of its Explorer's reluctance to allow me to delete that which I decide to delete (on the tenuous grounds that items are open in another window when they all too clearly are not3) is irritating, to put it mildly. Needless to say, there's no wisdom on this in Raymond Chen's book. Though when I was also checking Chen's blog I was led astray to this delightful letter.

Oops!

One of my readers was led even further astray by a changed link he found on this very ¬blog from "Day 101". What's the statute of limitations on web link rot, I wonder? He'd been following the link to what was (at one time) the web site set up to accompany Platt's book "Why software sucks"...

It's been...

... pleasantly warm today. Indeed, at 20:32 it's still a balmy 23.8C here in the living room. Since I removed all traces of spinning rust technology from BlackBeast, however, I no longer blanch when reviewing the temperatures of components inside the case:

Getting warmer

The SSDs are all rated OK up to 70C, which would be most unhealthy for more conventional hard drives. I've no present plans to re-instate either of the two case fans, either. By comparison, the four hard drives in the NAS boxes are varying between 28C and 31C. The newer, higher-capacity, unit is running slightly cooler than Good Old Faithful.

Oops! (2)

Peter and his g/f made the mistake of leaving behind a box of 80 "Redbush" (or Rooibos) tea bags. I'm finding these surprisingly enjoyable, taken without milk or sugar. There is (of course) a Wikipedia piece on the stuff, full of interesting snippets. Who knew fermenting tea in barrels, covered in wet hessian sacking, would replicate the effects of the bamboo baskets used during the making of very fine Keemun? Not I.

I was reminded...

... of this chap I spotted, in my neighbour's water-butt, back in June 2007...

Water boatman

... when I read this rumination on quantum mechanics. You will have to read quite far down it to see why!

  

Footnotes

1  "Running up that hill".
2  If a Catholic lies about her church attendance, how will she confess that sin?
3  Nor is it a "hidden files" issue, though it may yet turn out to be a "hidden system files" issue, I expect.