2015 — 14 June: Sunday
Most of yesterday disappeared.1 I shall now enjoy another of my delicious pre-breakfast cinnamon buns although as it's already (well) after 09:00 can breakfast be far away? I shall see if I can find a more recent build of Banshee in hopes that it may be subject to fewer, erm, infelicities of programmatic misbehaviour. On balance, and putting aside all-too-frequent freezes, I think I could find myself enjoying it.
The level of...
... Banshee currently in the Linux Mint 17.1 distro is at 2.6.2, which is the stable build. However, the list of bug fixes in the release notes for 2.9.1 give me some hope. The next stable release is set to be version 3 but I can find no date. I was also amused to note that SQLite is in the mix — that software came up in passing as one possibility for the sort of "re-purposing" that a chum is tinkering with.
Julia Edelman...
... is a name to watch for, it seems. A graphic novel on the life of Leonard Cohen, and these amusing paragraphs.
It occurs to me...
... on occasion, when grazing and nibbling at the edges of the Info Superhighway, or simply browsing the odd autobiography, that some people do lead the most extraordinary of lives. Example #1:
I'm still debating "Example #2" though I was rather taken by Djerassi's rediscovery of Viennese dumplings :-)
I'm told "Britain's got talent"
It's not a show I would ever choose to watch, thus putting me firmly in the camp skewered here:
Mr Lee nearly made me spill my cuppa into the Abyss, dagnabbit.
Musings on entropy
Mere moments later — or so it seems — it's time to break off from my current self-imposed (and probably lunatic, probably doomed) attempt to bring order to chaos. Time, indeed, to stop to admire (briefly) the audible demonstration2 of the incredible lung-power of the younger of the two little girls next door (I suspect). Then time to get on with the assembly and consumption of a quick and cheerful chicken salad late lunch. Today's combination included a reduced-sugar orange marmalade sandwich — having first scanned for, and then cunningly removed, a couple of spots of tell-tale blue mould. This was the Pane Pugliese loaf I bought on Friday, and hadn't even removed from its air-tight new packaging.
While seeking to convince myself that Jon Hiseman had indeed been a major part of "Colosseum" I somehow stumbled across a Country Joe McDonald album I'd missed, that claims also to feature Neil Ardley. I realise that, since it's on the Interweb it must be true, but I still have my doubts.
I was a member...
... of the SF Book Club for five or six years, though four decades later I see I've only kept 15 of their books on my shelves — and several of those actually came from secondhand bookshops. It's fair to say the SFBC didn't spend much money on their cover artwork, but it tickles me to note the two books that chronologically bracket this Philip K Dick title in my spiffy new DB listing. Click the pic to see them:
The earlier of them ("ICL 2904: Message Router") actually helped persuade IBM to employ me when I brought a copy along to my day of interviews and tests in March 1981. Meanwhile, my chum Val in Stockholm tells me just today that she re-read the Philip Dick book within the last month or so, and both she and Len have now mentioned it's been turned into an apparently highly-rated TV series. It's quite funny. I first met Val at IBM Hursley in July 1981; she worked there as a writer on a non-permanent contract — yes, she was a member of that underclass of "the wrong sort3 of people" that one of my more cretinous first-line managers ticked me off for lunching with. I happened to sit with a genial bunch of contractors in the cafeteria since several of them had started work (as writers) the same day I did.
There's a new...
... all-time favourite quick snack meal in town. A couple of pancakes with a generous layer of "Opies Luxury Summer Berry Compote" smeared between them. Zapped in the microwave. Very yummy. Helps offset the effect of all my salads.
Linux note to self
Next time you copy a file from a USB drive over to the NAS and it ends up locked against any useful access...
Navigate to the NAS folder containing the Black Sheep file Open a terminal there sudo chmod 666 filename Supply password
Though why this only happens to files on NAS #1 and not to those on NAS #2 remains a mystery.