2015 — 3 October: Saturday
I've been enjoying yesterday's "How to pass as human" as it's full of surprisingly useful tips and insights into human foibles and behavioural1 quirks. Android Zero's advice on not tidying-up too much, or clearing out the fridge too often, is easy to follow. Though I'm starting to wonder if assimilation into human society is quite all it's cracked up to be.
Meanwhile, I've just...
... read two years of 'secure' messages from my android Uncle ERNIE. Not sure exactly what the benefit is to logging into his convoluted website, drilling through it, and seeing messages telling me nothing the "Have I won a prize?" checker doesn't reveal. But, en passant, I was pleasantly surprised to learn I have more ERNIEs than I thought. And to be reminded that the maximum holding has gone up2 by £10,000.
I blame dear Mama for my surprise. It was impossible to convince her of any possible benefits of computers, or of "going online". She flatly (and scornfully) refused all my offers (over many years) to equip her with a PC and a modem. Instead, I was shown a regular trail of paper associated with all her finances, including her Premium Bonds, and must have confused her total with mine. I topped up Christa's and my totals with the tax-free cash "commutated" from IBM's pension fund, and then gave them no further thought. Christa was still working then, and while she subsidised Peter's extortionate London flat rent, we scraped by on my pensioner's monthly mite.
It's what parents do, android or not :-)
Having enjoyed...
... the piece on (so-called) creative disruption recently, I had to chuckle at a comment attached to this similar El Reg story:
TNT = Turtle-Necked Twit
Martin Van Maele
My only book of his work is the 1970 Cythera Press edition of The Satyrical Drawings (note well the spelling). I rescued it for £3 from the basement of Maxim Jakubowski's now sadly long-defunct "Murder One" bookshop in the Charing Cross road over 23 years ago.3 Compare and contrast "I Modi"!
I've made no real effort to pursue Van Maele's work, since he lacks the awesome technique of Franz von Bayros, say, or the simple clarity of line of Mario Tauzin. However, Steve Perry has now produced an illustrated bibliographic checklist that is on its way to Technology Towers. Chaps do need hobbies, after all.
I've yet to decide...
... which of these is going to take the crown as the weirder variant of my original classic "Who" albums. Listening trials are taking place.
Bluegrass "Tommy" and orchestral "Quadrophenia" are both several sigma along the curve, I suspect. [Pause] "Tommy" wins, by a fair margin. In fact, I think my (LSO) version of it also tops this (Royal Philharmonic) "Quadrophenia", too.
I made the mistake...
... of listening to nearly 15 minutes of the BBC Radio 4 play "Look who's back" (about Hitler turning up in modern Berlin) before giving up. I can only wonder what Christa's reaction would have been.