2014 — 14 November: Friday
"Heavy rain and strong winds".1 Ain't life grand?
Actually, it's...
... precisely on mornings like these that my pleasure in being retired is maximised. No more walking down to wet, windy bus-stops for a dreary little commute... Bite me.
It seems "Grumpy wizards" have replaced "The quick brown fox". The Android font Roboto has a remarkably ugly "Euro" currency symbol. It's to become the default font in Chrome OS. A chum thought I should know :-)
Meanwhile, a rather superficial safety discussion on NPR (prompted by the massive airbag recall issue that some contend is nowhere near massive enough) has moved on to autonomous vehicles and suggested in passing that a Strike airfighter has 7,000,000 lines of code versus a car's 100,000,000 — a point (on the essentially untestable nature of such a large code base) either not understood or simply ignored by the other participants.
Jon Stewart's...
... interview with Terry Gross is much more to my taste, though also amusing. (Link.)
The 2,546th title...
... in my little collection of videos (as I continue to crawl my stock-checking way through them) is the 2001 Cannes winner "Mulholland Drive" by David Lynch:
As was quite usual for us, Christa and I had had an animated 'discussion' about this film on our drive home from the cinema. Precisely as we had, in fact, on our very first date2 in early 1974. She thought "Mulholland" was brilliant. I had my doubts. She converted me. (Often the case, I freely admit. She was in many ways a lot more perceptive than I am.) I'd also emailed Carol, who had just returned to the States after attending an IBM course here, and then spending a packed weekend with us. I was replying to her email "Try this" that had suggested we give BS Bingo a try in our IBM Java meetings:
====================== 29 January 2002, 09:54 From: David Mounce/UK/IBM Subject: Re: (h) Try This... Saw your note had arrived at home last night after getting in, late, dazed, and confused, from the new David Lynch film "Mulholland Drive". Glad you made it, but could have done with your running transatlantic commentary to assist our understanding of this strange film. Yesterday's meeting finally showed up my prophetic powers in their proper light. Some 18 months ago I had asked, at the all-hands meeting wherein yet another major re-org was announced, whether the new management team had had time to give any thought (I may have said "intelligent thought") to their proposed use of the Web as a distribution mechanism. It was fairly clear from the answer that they still had not at that point. Now we have less than a week to go until the first of a batch of external product releases via the Web and there is more than a week of preparation to undergo. Turns out I am a critical resource right at the end of their critical path and, despite the fact that they now realise this, there is not a whole lot they can now do about it! My colleague posts an apposite sign above her cubicle space that I am considering renting for the duration: "NOTICE: Lack of planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part." As for BS Bingo; no use over here, we'd all be hoarse within minutes. Love, D. ======================
I shall have to pop "Mulholland" into my schedule for re-watching, perhaps even as soon as this evening. I hope it won't once again leave me dazed and confused, though that's getting harder to detect these days.
Oops. Time to make a bite or two of lunch. I'm starving. It's all-too-easy to lose track of time when the Mozart is so sublime.
Rather later
Thanks, Mr Postie. The last time I saw a film based on a Michael Chabon novel, it was Curtis Hanson's "The Wonder Boys". Here's hoping. "My Blue Heaven" was a favourite I first owned on LaserDisc in 1991. But I've never seen "The Lonely Guy".
00:44? Blimey, when did that happen? G'night!