2015 — 4 July: Saturday
Wise words from an older chum helped disperse yesterday's annual twinges of existential angst.1 Thanks, Roger! Also helping are today's sunshine, the near-term prospect of a couple of hours of Sixties pop2 from Brian Matthew, and calm contemplation of the simple fact that many aspects of life on this planet are neither my fault nor my responsibility. Yesterday's Garret Hardin essay repays the occasional re-read. The paragraphs on the failure of guilt as a control measure, for example.
Now, where's my cuppa? What? Drunk it already? Blimey :-)
My research into a...
... future PC is officially over. I had no trouble identifying several potential contenders here. However, as my spiffy new (Linux Mint 17.2 MATE) system beds down, I think I've already got my "target" system. BlackBeast Mark III — while undeniably capable of being an absolute pig during some of my unwiser tinkering — now sits silently on the floor behind my desk just being what I always hoped it would be: a blindingly fast, cool-running, platform on which I can (as always) do everything I want, most of the time, without too much angst.
Time to focus my transient enthusiasms somewhere else, methinks. Not least on Big Bro's impending presence here (on Monday, I believe).
As I listen to...
... one of my recently downloaded trio of Goldfrapp albums I calmly observe I know only two of these "new giants"...
Sites created by volunteers or non-profits have mostly been replaced with the new giants of Silicon Valley: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Most of these apps use proprietary formats, don't play well with others, make it difficult for users to port their content from one to another, and are resolutely closed-source.
... and use none of them. Face it: I'm a child of the last millennium!
Nor is my smartphone in any danger of replacing my browser as "my platform of choice" regardless of what someone I've never heard of (Jonathan Zittrain; who he?) "warned us". But then I was blissfully unaware of the "withering" of Flickr, del.icio.us, LiveJournal, Digg, of which I've only ever used the first, and that only rarely, to view a couple of chums' photos when invited to.
For all that it's been...
... just over 50 years since I read the paragraph that opens "Triplanetary" (as mentioned yesterday) this would have brought it back:
Because Sapiens summarily dispatches over 13 billion years of cosmic and terrestrial history in its opening paragraphs, focusing instead on our species' trials and tribulations during the past 70,000 years...
I find it hard to disagree with "the historical record makes Homo sapiens look like an ecological serial killer" too. (Link.)
Having just downloaded...
... a fresh "trial" copy of UltraEdit, and re-installed it via the DEB package installer, as offered, I was delighted when (on firing it up) it immediately opened up the set of files I was last working on and knew it was a registered copy, too. Smooth.
With much easier editing now once more available to me, I was inspired to write a new set of notes all about setting up my Linux Mint 17.2 MATE system. Sooner or later I will doubtless manage to do something stupid to knock it over.
Meanwhile, somehow, it's snuck round to 18:45 which is a bit of a puzzler. I wonder if Big Bro will be able to persuade his brother-in-law to let him send me an email announcing his safe arrival in the UK? It would be quite nice to know, after all.
Diminishes that existential angst. Somewhat :-)