2015 — 3 June: Wednesday
The barometer's risen — nearly as early as I have — and the sun will no doubt do its bit to keep my CH boiler under control. It's a steamy 20.4C hereabouts at 06:45 and a still-a-bit-chilly 11C on my front porch (facing North, that is). Like I said: flaming June.
My new...
... kitchen sink appears to have bedded in nicely, and the smell of vinegar as the silicone sealant cured has now dissipated. It's still shiny. That won't last. I've been gently warned about keeping tea leaves away from my new kitchen Nemesis,1 too. That may last; we shall see. Perhaps as early as my second cuppa, due any minute now.
Just back...
... from a leisurely examination of the unbusy aisles between the shelves of my local grocer. Mrs Hubbard should be quiescent for a bit longer. How about another cuppa, David? BTW, for a film that the director described as "low budget" at an estimated €11,000,000, last night's Ex-Machina looked splendid. Its ideas were still oozing through the jelly inside my defiantly non-AI skull this morning when I woke up (re-booted? came back online?)
Following...
... yesterday's post-lunch chat and some entirely sensible suggestions I've decided to see how I get on with using the VLC media player for audio files. Wonder of wonders, Linux today has remembered where it often hides its knowledge of the existence of my Creative X-Fi audio componentry without prompting (though I did actually reboot BlackBeast first thing this morning about two minutes after first switching it on, just in case there are any timing issues at play in the fields of wherever):
Until now, I'd mentally classed VLC as being "just" a video player. Wrongly, of course. It's also been a while since I listened to Snakefarm's excellent, though long-overdue, second album. Result? Stone 1, Birds 2.
Mindful of the...
... coming weekend's visit by Junior and Ms Junior, I've been casting a wary eye over the level of "boy cleanliness" of the house and reluctantly concede it's necessary to attend to some of the more egregious areas to try to get ahead of the curve. One's kitchen sink shouldn't be the only domestic object that gleams, should it? The musical accompaniment to this latest unaccustomed burst of domestic activity is an instrumental album of Hindustani classical music from 1967, "Call of the Valley". To be honest, it's not the sort of music Christa or Peter much cared for. I have no idea why it appeals to me so much, but it does.
Mr Wikipedia has even helpfully identified the tracks for me, which is more than I managed when adding it into my little stash of MP3s.
Ahir Bhairav/Nat Bhairav Rag Piloo Bhoop Rag Des Rag Pahadi Ghara-Dadra (Bonus Track 1) Dhun-Mishra Kirwani (Bonus Track 2) Bageshwari (Bonus Track 3)
I may have been over-hasty in expelling into the garden a large Boris who was whizzing up the living room wall last night. Today, a ghastly fly has found its way in and is buzzing around. And, no, I shan't be getting a cat!
Not just Linux?
I mentioned yesterday's failure to be able to access the CF card on which I'd taken a picture of the plumber's progress.
Today? No problemo...
It's a game...
... of constant catch-up. I was able to retrieve yesterday evening's BBC Radio 3 "Late Junction" earlier today, using the PPA-derived get_iplayer version 2.92. Changes the BBC made to their "system" yesterday affected TV schedule info, and have made 2.93 necessary. It's just appeared, and I've upgraded to it.
Given last night's film...
... I think this extract (I spotted at the end of 2012) from a review of a book by George Dyson bears repeating:
... Dyson worries that humanity could be in danger of being reconstituted by Turing machines: "Are we using digital computers to ... better replicate our own genetic code, thereby optimizing human beings, or are digital computers optimizing our genetic code — and our way of thinking — so that we can better assist in replicating them? ... No genuinely intelligent artificial intelligence would reveal itself to us"
My emphasis. And if you cast your mind back to 23rd July 1981... Clive Sinclair, opening a 4-day Mensa symposium at Queen's College, Cambridge, predicted machines of economic size exceeding the complexity of the human brain somewhere between 2010 and 2020. He said "Perhaps they will be kind enough to keep us as pets." I doubt it, somehow.
I love attempts...
... to improve on Harry Beck's famous "diagram" of the London Underground system. There's a fascinating article here.