2015 — 25 June: Thursday
One of 500(?) new words1 just accepted into the OED has prompted my first use of it in my first email of the day. It's "Meh!" (And I used it in response to news of a Kermodian cinematic rant — though I hope that wasn't the usage quoted.)
Further promising weather...
... though I suspect were I to look up the pollen count or air quality index I might well find an explanation for my itchy eyes. But I shall not be deterred from another little expotition after breakfast.
Somehow...
... I think the nasty story "behind" the Grauniad's little synopsis of it here...
... may not be quite what was conveyed. And that's without my even reading it. (Or feeling any need to.) The simple insertion of an "is" (rather than the gross insertion of a decidedly non-PC penis) might help. I'd rather hear Gabriel Fauré's "Sicilienne" in the version for flute and harp for preference, any day. Much more soothing.
Our modern world
I thought the boy Dave was re-elected on a 36% share of the votes of those actually bothering to vote. So how come he now swans off to "Europe" to outline his plans for its reform? Not terribly democratic, surely? Meanwhile, I noted this amusing anecdote quite some while ago (17 years, in fact):
On a visit to the Vice and Club Unit, I was shown the computer that the police use for monitoring the internet. They said they do very little of this. On the rare occasion a member of the public complained about something they saw online, then officers would log on and check it out. Not that they felt they could really do that much.
Gotta love that "the computer". It was in Laurence O'Toole's book Pornocopia: porn, sex, technology and desire. Fast forward into the brave new world of 2015, wherein the BBC takes a look at the folk keeping a watchful eye on us all. (Link.)
In search of lost bits
It's time to unsubscribe from the badly proofread MSDN Flash, methinks. Windows 10? I don't think so, thanks all the same.
Looking back over my inglorious 30-year history of home PCs, I first used CP/M for 4 years after buying an Amstrad PCW. Next came RISC OS for 13 years, initially on my Acorn Archimedes A440 in mid-1989, latterly (late 1996) on a StrongARM in a RiscPC. That was a very sweet system. But in late 2002 I finally gave in and moved to my first "industry standard" PC and Windows XP Pro. By 2014 I was running Win8.1 Pro. (I regard my dalliance in early 2007 with the all-too-crashable OS X as the merest blip.)
My unrecoverable meltdown four months ago was the final straw, frankly. So for a change I've been running Linux Mint 17.1 which, although by no means perfect, has been fine so far.
Two expotitions...
... later, lunch lunched, a spare part now on order for the frames of my "computer screen" glasses, and having correctly parsed the two conditions...
£4-99 with any purchase, or £9-99 each and 2 for £10 or £5-99 each
... on two, separate labels, I escaped from HMV in the midday heat clutching both a DVD and a Blu-ray for £10-98 total. The item in the middle being the book on which Jenji Kohan based her fabulous TV successor to "Weeds":
I lost a couple of minutes scanning for it in "Biography" when (as eny fule kno) I should have been looking in "True Crime". "The Double" is based on a short story by Dostoevsky. Soderbergh's film (the bargain BD) turns much darker at the midpoint.