2015 — 20 April: Monday
Another sunny morning1 to kick off my new week. Better get some fresh food in soonerish rather than laterish. I will keep eating the stuff, after all. And a recent cucumber in my fridge is reverting to its watery state even as I type.
With any luck...
... and a following wind I may also receive my grant of Probate this week. Won't that be fun? Big Bro and Mrs BB are coming over in July, so I shall warn him to bring along his empty wallet. In truth, I currently have no idea how to arrange international transfers of funds without losing chunks to all the splendid banking chaps involved for all their splendid hard work along the doubtless cyberspatial route. It always looks so much easier in Hollywood movies, moving criminal ransom payments or whatnot to or from the Caymans with laptop displays helpfully showing real time progress bars and money totals going up (or down) in that lovely clear font — the one that only leaves room for about six lines of data — reserved for use in, erm, Hollywood movies.
I don't think the Caymans are on the way to NZ, but I could be wrong.
The graphic is from a Grauniad piece on this useful service. [Pause] And Brian, currently enjoying a pre-bed beer and frog chorus in the middle (more or less) of the Pacific, points out that even the Caymans are somewhere on some Antipodean route.
I've been browsing...
... the bits of Python that seem likeliest to have any bearing on the bug I spotted on Saturday (in a piece of currency formatting). Since it only manifests itself on web lists I generate for viewing inside my firewall, I'm not too bothered. Besides, it's a lovely day out there as we wobble on the edge of the afternoon. There's a piece from a suite by Rameau, an overdue cuppa to make, the shopping to stow away, and the "Pru" have just returned one of mother's death certificates "for safe keeping". (Even though I haven't got a safe.)
I gather the latest...
... Linux kernel (which I 'ave not got) contains support for the GM204 Maxwell GPUs. These are used in the nVIDIA GTX970 (which I also 'ave not got [any more], given my recent unhappy memory of the problems I was having). But if and when Len finally decides he can afford the matched pair of Titans he's secretly lusting after, and if and when my kernel trundles along in due course to the requisite level, perhaps I can persuade him to discard the nVIDIA back in my direction for further Frankensteinian tinkering? After all, as the divine Jane puts it: for what do we exist if not to give amusement to our neighbours?
I've also spent probably more time than it's worth trying to unravel the 'systemd' controversy. As I had cause to remark in a recent email "Linux is not for the faint of heart" no matter how much fun it can be.
It's been...
... far too long since I last watched this excellent film, newly available on Blu-ray:
Martin Brest didn't deserve to have his career truncated so brutally in the wake of "Gigli" (though I admit that film was rather poor).
Meanwhile Brian (working, recall, from his Hawaiian hotel bedroom either half a day ago or tomorrow morning [who can fathom the workings of the International Date Line?]) has just sent me the precise hint I needed to add ".0" to an integer (100) value to make the result of a division 'real' (and thus preserve the "pence" amount) in a price field converted from all pence to pounds and pence instead of setting both digits after the decimal point to zero — excellent.