2015 — 3 August: Monday
My attempt, yesterday evening, to do some OCRing of some pretty venerable "New Statesman" pieces I'd cut out well over a decade ago crashed and burned.1 The gscan2pdf package I used four months ago has still failed to get picked up by Linux Mint 17.2 with all its, erm, bits intact. To be more precise, the separate package that as part of the output stage writes a PDF file — a vital precursor to getting my hands on the scanned text in manipulable form — is still AWOL.
The last time I used it, which was during my initial experiments, I'd ended up installing the latest and greatest version from a PPA. I lazily assumed that version would by now have found its way into the base distro so I simply put on the package from the Minty distro. Still, that's easily fixed. If nothing else, it does show how rarely I need OCR.
For my own benefit...
... the three command line spells are, in order:
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:jeffreyratcliffe/ppa sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install gscan2pdf
Job done. And I've even updated my own checklist in advance of my next Linux disaster. Is it time for breakfast yet? Well, not really. It's only just time for the 7 o'clock news bulletin, after all.
Good grief!
Well, this will make all the difference, won't it?
I have a lunch date, and could also do with a bit of a foody top-up. But first comes the ceremony of the Stewing of the Fruit for my cereal topping.
A phone call...
... an hour ago tells me Big Bro's brother-in-law (my NZ nieces' other "Uncle David") died today. I may thus be representing that side of the family at the funeral. I dislike funerals.
A mere five months...
... after the delivery of Vol. #1 (and eight years since the one before that) along comes Vol. #2:
Probably better not served to a maiden aunt, if any such still exist. I'm pretty sure mine have all fallen off their perches by now.
As I listened...
... with about half an ear — and (I don't mind confessing) an increasingly sleepy mind — to the first half of an excellent new radio version of Goethe's "Faust" on Sunday evening, I couldn't help thinking it was now a very long time ago that Christa and I attended a performance of Christopher Marlowe's version ("Dr Faustus") of basically the same story at the South Hill Park Centre in Bracknell. To pinch a play title from Alan Bennett, in fact, it's now "40 years on". Blimey.
I have no idea where / when Time leaks away, but leak it most assuredly does. All the time. At a rate of knots. I met Big Bro's brother-in-law in January 1972 on the day he actually became John's brother-in-law. Blimey again. Here's a photo I took of them in early 1975:
Also 40 years ago...
Continuing the (long) timely theme...
... I drew to Len's post-prandial attention (in his copy of Littlewood's miscellany) that lovely anecdote from an essay on "Large Numbers":
There is a stone, a cubic mile in size, a million times harder than diamond. Every million years a very holy man visits it to give it the lightest possible touch. The stone is in the end worn away.2 This works out at something like 1035 years; poor value for so much trouble, and an instance of the 'debunking' of popular immensities.
Tonight's rather ponderous 5th Symphony of Mahler is conveying much the same feeling. Sorry, Ian! :-)