2014 — 12 June: Thursday
I've just been listening — courtesy of a Dropbox exchange — to a track by Sharon van Etten snaffled from (I assume) a recent Jools Holland TV show. I doubt I shall be seeking out anything else by the lady, but it was a kindly thought. Thanks 'Topher. (He likes to keep me current on the music of today.)
If I venture out...
... again this week before tomorrow's lunch date, it will be earlyish to dodge the pollen. It's become apparent that high-enough levels can still1 give me a problem.
Silly me
I didn't realise that a new series of the — I thought, hilarious — "Episodes" is already half way through transmission. A chum passed me the Grauniad's printed weekend "Guide" for me to read its feature on "Orange is the new black" and I spotted "Episodes" on BBC2 HD in time to grab last night's transmission. Of course, had I had my wits about me, I would have recorded the SD2 rather than the HD.
It's 09:16 and I think breakfast had better be the next item on my unwritten agenda.
It's already been...
... a little over six years since I noted the memristor story. Where are they? (Link.)
And in what weird universe...
... was currency market rigging not already a criminal offence? The City of London, of course. Golly, I'm so naïve. (Link.)
16 years ago...
... I was telling dear Mama some of my news :-)
Said lad is presently just stirring after last night's cinema/pub/PC game session from which he eventually rolled in at about 01:15. He's about two-thirds through his exams, and seems reasonably confident so far. Meanwhile, one of the universities has just dropped an information pack on us about fees and accommodation options in this post-Thatcher era of the fee — £68 per week for a simple room, for example :-(
Still, since I sold all my IBM shares they've dropped by over $10 and stayed there so I seem to have picked the right moment for that transaction, at least. Whereas there probably actually isn't a cheap moment to educate an offspring!
I'm currently sporting a fetching bruise along my forehead at the moment having banged into the speaker stands I've been putting up at the back of the living room for my rear channel speakers. However, this didn't stop me taking last Friday off to visit the BP oil storage terminal at Hamble and clambering up a set of 60 foot see-through steps (just like the ones in the Orkney lighthouse) glued to the side of a crude oil tank to see the view from the rim across Solent Water. Nor yesterday watching the 155 minute new Clint Eastwood film Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, from the extraordinary fiction/fact "novel" by John Berendt. And I still have over four week's holiday to go.
Those IBM shares financed a worthwhile round of home cinema improvements, including the Yamaha A/V amplifier3 that was to keep me entertained for the next 11 years until that sad evening when it popped its clogs.
The danger / opportunity...
... posed by having all my minidiscs back within easy reach rather than tucked awkwardly away behind a luxurious armchair up in the reading room is, of course, that I can now start listening to them. Magazine's 1978 album "Real Life" being but the most recent example. Crikey, I used to buy some odd music!
Without a minidisc player up in the reading room, I've further simplified the corresponding audio system up there.