2015 — 26 January: Monday
It's been an eye-opening exercise1 reverting (I very much hope, temporarily) to just the one PC monitor screen. As I tidy up, de-clutter, and dust2 in gentle preparation for the delivery of the current object of desire — a Philips 40" 4K screen — it struck me I've evolved my display quite a lot over the years in size and resolution. Of course, at 60" diagonal, the Kuro plasma display still overshadows the other screens physically, but its "Full HD" resolution looks almost pitiful now:
How I ever managed to do quite as much DTP work as I did on my original Acorn RISC-OS machine with its multisync VGA screen (a 13" monitor with an odd 50 Hz refresh rate) I will never now understand. And I shall draw a veil entirely over the even earlier Amstrad CP/M system. <Shudder> (Though it did me well at the time, and I earned quite a lot of freelance income with it. Don't tell IBM.)
The (automated)...
... phone call I got just as I arrived back after a spot of fresh foody shopping (and filling up the Yaris for the first time since Xmas with some amazingly cheap petrol) was from my bank. They wanted me to confirm the legitimacy of the payment I'd made (thought and hoped I'd made) yesterday in attempt #3 to buy this wretched screen. Not that they had made the payment. Oh, no, that would have been far too simple. "But" the robot reassured me, in a series of jerky, stitched-together, phrases "Now that we know it was a genuine transaction you can simply go ahead and make it again." There's not much point trying to explain to a brain-dead robot that the offer might by now have timed out and become unavailable, is there?
In the meantime, the supplier emailed me. Having received payment (from attempt #2, I deduce) he had now gone ahead with the first order (despite my webmail contact suggesting it be cancelled), but "to validate my account" now needed to see (within the next seven days) both a photocopy of my driving licence and other recent proof on headed notepaper of my name and address, failing which he would regretfully be forced to cancel my order. And refund my money. Which he shouldn't really have taken yet, should he? I couldn't help but recall Gerard Hoffnung's wonderful story about a bricklayer, a pulley system, and a barrel of bricks.
My next phone call? To the supplier. Talking him through the three payment attempts, and explaining the two separate failures and the third (but 'wrong') success enabled us to hack our way through the tangled web. And avoided farting around with proofs of name and address since his clogged-up ordering system had three independent bits of evidence of this already. The parcel should arrive tomorrow.
That merits a cup of tea. Then I shall relax and enjoy the Bartok performance that was declared "the winner" on Saturday's "Building a (CD) library".
For a mere £12-15, I found...
... this trio of Blu-rays, just arrived from Florida, good value. I already have "Seven" on Blu-ray (via another such trio, oddly); but expect I can find someone to take the duplicate off my hands.
I have no idea what made Hackford's "Devil's Advocate" an unrated Director's cut, but I gather one of the pieces of artwork has been digitally altered because a sculptor complained about it. And Nolan's "Insomnia" is an excellent film, for a re-make.
I glossed over yesterday's...
... mysterious case of the unbootable BlackBeast. Its "Black Screen of Death" told me to insert a system disc. As an external USB drive was flashing perhaps the BIOS was just looking on the wrong drive for the OS? A weak CMOS battery could have lobotomised it (shades of HAL 9000). I disconnected the three data SSDs to make damn' sure the only one left visible to the boot process had the OS on it and pressed Power. BlackBeast sprang happily back into life. So the 'cure' was to go into the BIOS and force a "save and exit" to refresh it. When I reconnected the three data SSDs Win8.1 maliciously swapped two of the drive letters, but that was just Windows being mean and hoping I wouldn't notice.
Two chums have experienced the same "non boot" phenomenon. But it was my first time, and it frazzled me. My initial thought was "reload a saved image" followed by a second thought along the lines of "Erm, how exactly do I drive that process?" Still, just because the BIOS is away with the fairies doesn't mean the OS has actually vanished. Virtual, Case 3!
My new favourite...
... parcel delivery service has just (shortly after midnight [happy birthday, Big Bro!]) demonstrated the correct use of the apostrophe:
"We have your parcel, and it's on its way to your nearest depot in Southampton"
It only sounds a tiny bit like a ransom demand.