2015 — 21 August: Friday
I forgot to capture the "magic spell" by which Kodi can be installed from its handy PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install kodi
sudo apt-get install kodi-audioencoder-* kodi-pvr-*
I didn't use...
... the fourth line of the incantation. It adds both a mechanism for creating MP3s and some set of PVR functions. I need neither for my current audio-only use of Kodi. However, Kodi can also search out audio streams of material from providers such as NPR1 so it may be that a PVR capability will have its occasional uses.
Kodi is well-documented, here. It was unfazed by my full collection of digital music files, though would have been no use had they not all been meta-tagged already. That said, running Kodi in a desktop window on BlackBeast doesn't really "buy" me anything I don't already have. However, running it on, say, another Raspberry Pi directly hooked up to the Kuro plasma screen and fed from my NAS boxes could well be useful in due course. Though my Oppo Blu-ray player is itself a more than competent media player for both audio and video material.
The lives of...
... poets (Eliot) and philosophers (Russell) differ from mine, I deduce. I long ago ruled out teaching and banking as career options, and have read too many campus novels to trust philosophers to be of loftier morals than mere mortals:
So, as is well-known, he married the unbalanced Vivienne Haigh-Wood and attempted to make a career in London, first as a teacher and then as a banker.
The English literati sensed brilliance behind his cold demeanor. Virginia Woolf feared him. His fellow American poet Ezra Pound envied, admired, and promoted him. Russell respected him, though not enough to let it
stand in the way of his bedding Vivienne.
Recall Colin Wilson's "Russell anecdote" recounted in a letter from poet Kenneth Rexroth to Wilson's wife Joy:
[Rexroth] was at a party when a pretty but naïve girl approached him and said: "Who is that fascinating man who looks like the Mad Hatter?" Rexroth said: "There is only one man in the world who looks like the Mad Hatter — Bertie Russell. I didn't know he was here." She said: "Oh, won't you introduce me — I admire him so much." Rexroth replied: "I'll introduce you if you like, but first I ought to utter a word of warning. Russell is incapable of talking to a girl without trying to get his hand inside her panties. And he doesn't just fondle..."
Peerless behaviour. (The girl subsequently told Rexroth he was "quite right".)
Mazda's opinion...
... on the rôle of a steering wheel diverges from mine. You see, as I go gently pootling along Life's Highway I tend to use the steering wheel (if at all) just as a means of changing my direction. Unlike me, Multi-tasking Mazda Maestros, having first noted the graphic on page 4-24 of their Multi-tasking Mazda Maestro's User Manual...
... and then gone on to inspect the section on page 4-28 titled "Trip Computer and INFO Switch" know they can toggle through the following useful information inter alia to help distract2 them from the mundane business of survival-related lane discipline:
- Distance-to-empty
- Average fuel economy
- Current fuel economy
- Average vehicle speed
I got back from the fitting of the spare tyre just in time to miss a package from Mr Postie that requires my signature. If it's the replacement hat from NZ I suppose I'd better parcel up Big Bro's book for him in return and send it off. After all, it will soon be Xmas!
[Pause]
No such luck! It was just the last of dear Mama's Death Certificates coming home, as it were, to roost. I'm sure I can find somewhere suitable to file it. But first, my next cuppa.