2015 — 25 July: Saturday
Today's first little treat? A cuppa1 while I get myself sorted out for the day ahead. I shall put off that damn' letter to Barclays no longer :-)
I shall not be in any hurry to use...
... the entertainment options2 of the Mazda after hearing and reading all about the nefarious possibilities of hacking into modern cars' control systems via smartphones, things like built-in DAB radios, and a suitable set of sociopathic software. Peoples' (nasty) ingenuity never fails to bemuse me. I shall be perfectly happy to rely on my own supply of CDs and MP3s I have carved (now, once again, illegally) from them. Quite what mischief I can manage with the Mazda's two USB ports remains to be seen, and/or heard. For all I know at present, the sat-nav touch screen may be able to act as a video monitor...
Speaking of which, Roger has brought a little flatscreen PC monitor down from his den and hooked it up as a TV display from his Humax PVR (and possibly from the Oppo DVD player I passed along to him), much improving the crispness of things like EPG text (and, I assume, subtitles). I still think he could do with a bigger screen, however.
Are you...
... looking at me? :-)
The same applies to our habit of predicting stereotypical outcomes at the expense of what's known about the world. When told of a student, Tom, who has a preference for neat and tidy systems and a penchant for sci-fi, most of us guess that he's studying computer sciences and not a humanities subject. This is despite the fact that the group studying the latter is far larger.
I still remember receiving my "apprenticeship" prize in 1972 when I was pretending to be an aeronautical engineer. My fellow apprentices generally opted for toolboxes, which I thought frankly unimaginative. I chose a book on Dali, and had to buy it myself since the apprentice officer (whom I remember clearly was an idiot) had never even heard of this artist. (Or books, I suspect.) I bought Robert Descharne's then-new edition of an excellent early study3 of his...
... for a mind-boggling £6-50. As for why I chose it, well, erm, it's Dali. What can I say? I mean, come on! Just take a closer look at that eye (click the pic).
Today, we have naming of parts cars
I mentioned the Mazda to my half-aunt Sue, and she asked me "What's her name to be?" My reply:
I talk to my Yaris (obviously). On first getting in, it's usually "Hello, car. Good to see you." On returning unscathed into the garage it's usually "Thanks, brilljant!" (A family joke pronunciation of "Brilliant"). And I always pat its flanks, twice, as I leave the garage. But I've never called it other than "Car", and perhaps even more strange, never spoken to, or named, any of its predecessors.
Christa's Skoda, seen here in June 1974...
The picnic en route to Oxford, June 1974
... three months before she and I played our idiots' duel was the first of seven predecessors.
It's taken just a...
... few minutes to write, print, and stuff into an envelope — whose gummed strip perished nearly as long ago as Christa did — my last letter for dear Mama. It closes the accounts and severs all my ties to her bank. I shall drop it in on Monday, since I also have to see Mr Hendy to sign some paperwork before I can collect my Mazda. Whatever I decide to call it.
I was unaware...
... of this new film from Pixar. The NYT critic seemed to like it:
I had to chortle when I saw...
... what my mathematician and artist friend Ian over in Bordon — whom I met within a month or so of meeting Christa, and who shared my office for a while in ICL Beaumont — says in his piece on being a member of Mensa:
Now that I have retired from the computer industry and don't regularly meet other pretty clever people through work...
The rat scored three IQ points higher than I did. Still, I owe him another visit.4 I shall take the Mazda, and try not to get stranded in his drive. Two visits ago, my poor little Yaris spun its front wheels on the wet grass and mud in a dip across the entrance, to a smell of hot rubber. Next time, I left my car parked on the side of his road and legged it.