2015 — 3 March: Tuesday
My post-dental 'treat' this morning1 is to munch my somewhat-delayed breakfast while browsing (with my newly-installed SQLite Data Base browser) the Books SQLite DB I created (with Brian's magic Python spell) from my raw Books data ASCII text file a couple of days ago.2 My system needs hauling into full compliance with the wonderful world of i18n if it's to stand a chance of handling and correctly sorting some of the more weirdly-accented authorial names in the data.
Meanwhile...
... there's a morning food supplies run to fit in before my lunch date. And two new dental dates later this month, dagnabbit. The dentist finds work for idle drill bits to do. <Sigh>
The nearest we...
... ever got to "alternative" therapy during Christa's three rounds of 'chemo' was a mild suggestion that cannabis might assist any nausea (though the oncologist apologised for being unable to prescribe it):
Does the natural therapist, coffee enema prescriber or wave therapy expert ever discuss patient care with an oncologist? Not in my experience. There is never written correspondence or a phone call, not even when a patient is desperately ill and it might help to know if some unconventional
treatment has led to reversible toxicity. On the other hand, I occasionally receive requests for tests that the alternative provided [sic] can't sign for. The last one was: "I need a scan to show which natural therapy will best penetrate the tumour."
I politely declined.
I first recall...
... hearing about pension scams in the early 1970s. Not that pensions were anywhere near the top of my list of things to worry or wonder about back then. However, the (fun and) games continue, it seems:
Pension freedom day could have been a genuine liberation from the clutches of a finance industry that has built its fortune for hundreds of years from milking savers. Until now the law backed the City by forcing people to take out annuities that have been shamelessly bad value due to sky-high but opaque charges. Almost all the £48.5bn the state spends on pension tax reliefs vanishes into the pockets of City firms' charges.
I'm unshocked, I tell you, unshocked.
Just installed the Tech Preview of the Vivaldi web browser. It seems fast. Gotta dash. TTFN.
Some hours later
Lunch? Lunched, and Android smartphone lollipopped, too.
Python tutorial? Done, judging by the spinning head.
How about a cuppa? Good idea. It's already nearly time for the evening meal, after all. How does that keep happening? And three new books to be scanned and enjoyed.
Now it's 22:36 already
What's going on? A fistful of exchanges as the Python gets fine-tuned, and then the bright idea of using HTML table tags to, erm, define a table. Necessitating a tiny addition to that CSS file last touched in 2010 (or thereabouts).
The three books...
... feature some of my favourite 'underground comix' artists:
Colwell's work reminds me, in places, of the wonderful "Filipino Food". Powerful ju-ju.
It's been a while since I last mentioned / acquired any of Mr Wilson's gloriously scabrous work!
A chance to read interviews with the various artists in "Zap"? A no-brainer. I have 15 issues of the magazine, after all. Plus a separate volume dealing with just Robert Crumb's material from the first ten or so issues. I must say, the sumptuous treatment these talented artists get from publishers nowadays is in marked contrast to what they received more than four decades ago!