2015 — 19 April: Sunday
Further overnight emails from Big Bro in NZ with attached scans of ancient family photos prompt a thought: although Linux (as implemented locally in Technology Towers, at least) has no ability to scan slides and negatives1 thanks to the non-availability of the proprietary binary drivers from either of my previous scanners' manufacturers... there's actually no law against having a little system2 dedicated purely to such a mundane back-room task, is there?
The "purer"...
... ideological solution might be to run a Windows partition safely inside a virtualised box or container of some sort. But why go to all that potential pain for an ideology I've never actually bought into? I faced an exactly analogous decision late in 2002 when, after enjoying 13 years of non-standard but incredibly productive3 'work' in the RISC OS world, I decided that the Wonderful World of Windows had finally matured almost to the point where its by then far-cheaper hardware and software made some sort of vague sense. So I equipped myself with that XP Shuttle PC and a piece of "Virtual Acorn" emulation software for as long as it took me to transmogrify4 the data I wished to keep into Windows-based equivalents.
After dividing the few pence left over from mother's care-home fund with Big Bro I suspect I might still just about be able to come up with a satisfactory solution. Research will now commence. But not before breakfast.
The snippet...
... from the interview here...
... prompts recall of a matched pair of Ron Cobb and Robert Crumb cartoons. So how's this for an illustration of the way great minds think alike?
Young Mr Cobb got there first — his powerful drawing appeared in the Los Angeles Free Press on 17 June 1966. What was I up to then, I wonder?
I've found two...
... interesting mentions of "crossover" in two separate domains. The first in our election campaigning, and the second in hi-tech financing. Where's the third, I wonder?
My "research" has yet to come to any particular conclusion, save that things seem to cost a lot of money. Ironic that Jarvis Cocker is now playing "Poor people" by Alan Price (from the soundtrack to that wonderful Lindsay Anderson film "O! Lucky Man.") Price was born on this day in 1942, it seems.
My, how things change...
... in the strange world of giant corporations. Here, for example, are the annual sales figures for the Top 25 back in 1968:
General Motors £9,500m Ford £5,900m General Electric £3,500m Chrysler £3,100m IBM £2,900m Western Electric £1,600m Du Pont £1,500m McDonnell Douglas £1,500m Westinghouse £1,400m Boeing £1,400m RCA £1,300m General Telephone £1,200m ICI £1,200m Volkswagenwerke £1,200m Union Carbide £1,100m General Dynamics £1,100m Philips £1,100m United Aircraft £1,000m Montecantini Edison £960m Hitachi £950m Lockheed £920m British Leyland £910m GE and EEC Ltd £900m Fiat £890m Siemens £870m
My "research" has concluded. I shall continue to unspend my money :-)