2015 — 20 February: Friday
Judging by the time1 my subconscious was putting in some overtime, and needed access to some higher cerebral functions.
I hope it can find some :-)
A cuppa and...
... a couple of "Daddy biscuits" should keep me going until Jeeves brings in the breakfast tray, surely? Meanwhile, last night I was enjoying one of the Eastleigh purchases I made earlier (Monday? that seems like last year already) from WH Smug. Namely, "Raspberry Pi: beyond the manual", which opens with an enlightening overview of the structure and philosophy of Linux.2 And, with luck, I shall once again have access to a flatbed scanner I can use later today. Then I can finally examine the OCR options available to me.
Emails from Slysoft and Nero remind me I've left behind the worlds of AnyDVD and Nero's gargantuan media packages respectively. However, I'm content to keep the PC end of my living room for PC things and let the A/V stuff at the other end do its (I hope, hardware and firmware optimised) A/V things. I haven't even tried driving the 60" Kuro plasma from BlackBeast since changing to the 40" 4K monitor, let alone since being forcibly ejected from the wacky world of Win8.1 — I suspect it might be a pixel or two too much to ask of my spiffy fanless graphics card.
I expect the motherboard's baked-in graphics can still cope. But why go through all the hassle of finding my glasses with the varifocus lenses and then twisting my head round to squint at a Full HD screen fifteen feet away when I've already got four virtual 4K screens just fifteen inches away? [Pause] Well, that was a very pleasant surprise. Firing up FileZilla to squirt this over to my web servers I suddenly realised that Pluma re-opens each file with the cursor already at whatever part of it I was editing last time I was "in" it. Neat!
NoScript, Sherlock!
Out of habit more than anything else, I added the NoScript plugin to my Firefox web browser yesterday.
Today, I pop over to check the BBC weather forecast — without first remembering to enable any scripts on their pages, of course — and Auntie Beeb promptly presents me with a subset home page suggesting I follow the "mobile devices" link more suitable "for my device". So I guess everybody else uses these new-fangled smart phones I see them clutching. Not me. I prefer my boringly old-fashioned stay-at-home decent-sized desktop PC. I drop ever further behind the curve...
What can one say...
... in reaction to news like this? Source and snippet:
With these stolen encryption keys, intelligence agencies can monitor mobile communications without seeking or receiving approval from telecom companies and foreign governments. Possessing the keys also sidesteps the need to get a warrant or a wiretap, while leaving no trace on the wireless provider's network that the communications were intercepted. Bulk key theft additionally enables the intelligence agencies to unlock any previously encrypted communications they had already intercepted, but did not yet have the ability to decrypt.
What a Good Thing our intelligence agencies are simply full of Splendid Chaps.
But one shouldn't read too much of Chomsky, either. Not before breakfast, at least. Snippet:
Jeeves! Get a move on, man!
I enjoyed watching "The Kids are all right". Now (following one of yesterday's deliveries) I'm looking forward to watching "Olive Kitteridge" (also directed by Lisa Cholodenko). Who knows? I may even be able to scan its cover...
If I leave it...
... too much longer to decide whether or not to nip down to Soton for a mooch around the shops and maybe a bite of lunch in West Quay it will be too late. Seems quite a while since I was last there. Sounds like a plan; but let me just finish my cuppa :-)
A mooch...
... having been mooched, and a lunch lunched (though not until I was safely back at Technology Towers) I have to say that normal traffic patterns around Soton are also disturbed. Plus 'they' are doing the groundwork for some "exciting" new "destination" (whether amusement-based or purely commercial I couldn't say) at the M&S end of West Quay, so one of my normal walking routes is closed off. "Forbidden Planet" yielded nothing but an over-priced title to put on my "watch" list, as did "Waterstone's". But I struck luckier in HMV.3 And dodged most of the traffic home by beating a somewhat circuitous retreat within 90 minutes of arrival.
I'm heading back out across my little village now in search of a scanner exchange. And to facilitate a couple of disk speed experiments. Fingers crossed.
While grappling...
... largely successfully with my new Canon Canoscan LIDE110 scanner — evidence here, in the shape of my first-ever colour scan on BlackBeast as a Linux PC...
... I've also been skimming the excellent writeup of the legal judgement against IBM in the UK for the various bits of, erm, unwise behaviour exhibited by my former employer as it played (too) fast and (too) loose with the early retirement Ts and Cs. It doesn't affect me, of course, as I left with all the right Corporate permissions after all the proper amounts of notice of my desire to do so and permissions and sign-offs received from up the management chain. (Indeed, I still have the letter [signed in the green ink that is traditionally the mark of a madman] from the then-CEO thanking me for my 25 years of dedication and hard work.)
One of my chums (quite correctly) describes the Judge as having "well and truly given IBM the shafting it deserves". Of course, IBM has plenty of smart lawyers, but there really doesn't seem to be much wriggle-room.
Confucius say "Relax, and enjoy it!"