2014 — 18 December: Thursday
I have no reason to run Microsoft's flagship IE11 web browser1 so I'm not really bothered to spot a sneaky little update for it to correct (or, perhaps, attempt to correct) a problem with data not being returned from modal dialog (sic) boxes in the wake of the recent Cumulative security update.
You'll wonder where the yellow data went, when you brush your teeth system with Pepsodent. (I wonder if they still make that particular brand? I recall cinema adverts for it showing a horse brushing its teeth in the 1950s. Though I wasn't induced to pester my parents for it.)
I just hope it hasn't rebroken anything else. And I idly wonder at what point an Operating System loses the right to call itself an "operating" system.
No matter
I have a lunch date at a previously-untried pub/restaurant ("The Plough") in Itchen Abbas. Should be fun.
Another early hop to the foodie shop done, and I can now read a nice pre-breakfast summary of where we're at with graphene. In the "New Yorker", of course. (Link.)
For mid-breakfast reading, while navigating the coagulated Oatibix, how about a nice look at how a few historians are starting to take climate change into account in their oh-so-neat explanations of events distant in time and place? (Link.)
My post-breakfast...
... reading, though only very briefly, was the festive issue of the MSDN Flash. Feeling masochistic, I looked at "How to Debug a Website with Internet Explorer F12 Tools..." and sneaked a peek at the source code of its front page. All it summoned up was the desire to exit, stage left, pursued by a bear. If 'molehole' has a philosophy, it would be "keep it simple". (Some might say "primitive", of course.)
Right. Time I wasn't here if I'm to be there in time.
[Pause]
And here I am, safely back in Technology Towers, clutching a nice hot cuppa to stem the effects of the shivery drizzle. Nice lunch. Good chat. Exchange of cultural views. And I stayed off the motorway; it seems to be quite busy out there.
Good to see...
... Mr Postie leaving what he can to help me fill in the remaining gaps in my collection of films written and directed by Edward Burns:
There's a letter to me in "Looking for Kitty" in which Burns explains how it was shot digitally in 15 days for an extraordinarily low budget in the winter of 2003/4.
Hearing "Andrew Preview"...
... chatting on Donald Macleod's reliably enjoyable "Composer of the Week" prompted me to seek out and play Dory Previn's "Mythical Kings and Iguanas" — a track I was introduced to by Derek Jewell on his music programme in the early 1970s. I suppose I have to admit that the early 1970s was now quite some time ago...
À la recherche du temps perdu, and all that...
... there's just a week to go before my eighth Xmas without Christa. Amazing, though not in a good way.
I wonder if it's too late to do my Xmas shopping. I quite fancy a madeleine :-)