2015 — 28 October: Wednesday
I've been given my next "to do" item1 though, given some of the file sizes involved, I shall have to spread it across a number of separate emails, and (probably) several days. Big Bro would like some high-resolution scans of various family photos having seen my little investigation into dear Mama's habitual scowl yesterday. By which, incidentally, he was equally puzzled. Strangely good to know.
A cup of tea was topping the list. Then there's the matter of my next crockpot, the possibility of a walk, the desirability of a bite of breakfast. That's quite enough to be going on with...
Crikey!
That senior Catholic priest? bishop? (basher?) who announced his sexual orientation last month now says (if I heard correctly, in his [inevitable?] letter of resignation to the Big Boss) that his church is "full of thousands of violently-homophobic homosexuals" who (unsurprisingly, I assume) "make life a living hell" for millions of gay members (sorry!) of that bizarre cult. This item from the BBC Radio 3 news has yet to appear on their main web pages. It awaits blessing, no doubt.
The world is a very strange place.
I wonder...
... who's managed to hack Ikea to 'bombard' me with two spam fake order receipts within five minutes? [Pause, for some very welcome fresh air'n'exercise and a running tutorial on things that can be done with Kodi via Python.] Make that three spams, now that I'm back in Technology Towers wondering what to make for lunch. Don't have any spam in the house...
The drizzle stayed up in the clouds, and we even had some bits of UV (one of the 116 things that can cause cancer). Odd to see the Grauniad crossing over into what is more often the Daily Mail's usual 'beat'. I preferred David Nutt's sane piece on drugs.
The psychoactive substances bill is the most oppressive law in terms of controlling moral behaviour since the Act of Supremacy in 1558 that banned the practice of the Catholic faith. Both are based on a moral superiority that specifies the state will decide on acceptable actions and beliefs even if they don't affect other people.
Recall that wonderful line from "Star Bridge" about civilisation and freedom?
I could wish...
... strongly-accented callers from the Indian subcontinent would stop ringing me up, struggling with mangled variants of my name (which I don't bother to correct), and then launching into some scripted attempt to discuss the "solicitors' reports" they have about a mythical "accident" or "accident claim" of mine, too. First rule of fishing: bait your hook properly.
My unfamiliarity...
... with the meaning of the phrase "snail-picking Adamites" (while following a trail that had begun here) required but a moment's dalliance with Mrs Google to land me surprisingly quickly on page 329 of "The Works of Mr Thomas Brown" and the entertainments (in 1720 or so) to be derived therein from his description of a trip on the river Thames — very different, I should add, from JKJ's later "Three Men in a Boat"!
After first showing their ferryman the official Printed Rates for their trip, and then threatening to bring him up before the Bench (in this case, the Lord Mayor of London) for his having demanded a higher fee, our intrepid duo of travellers provoked this parting tirade:
You're a couple of niggardly Sons of Whores; I care not a fart for my Lord Mayor; damn the rogue that printed that book; a Pox take you for a Book-learn'd Blockhead; and a Plague confound him that you learnt to read.
A tiny bit...
... of long-overdue maintenance is now finally being applied to my Videos DB to finish the cleaning up that last was taking place when I still had access to my DVD Profiler in the bad old days of Windows. It's needed to stop some Python having to be written far more defensively than would otherwise be the case. Besides, I should have done it years ago. If not from Day One. Just don't ask me how long ago Day One was.
Clue: I started buying DVDs in 1998.
In between...
... nibbling away at various other things (not least tonight's tasty crockpot) I've been fairly steadily nibbling away — on my Kindle — at that biography of fighter pilot John Boyd. I've just reached the first worthwhile equation in the detail behind the work he was doing at Eglin in the very early 1960s on his Energy-Manoeuverability Theory. It's a way of understanding the full performance envelope of any aircraft. Very elegant it is, too.
(T — D)
Ps = ——————— x V
W
Where Ps is Specific energy, T is thrust, D is drag, W is weight, and V is velocity.
Neat. So much easier to understand than my liking for Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring", which is just about to start. (Link.) I wonder if I can still lay my hands on my copy of the orchestral score? As for quantifying its Specific energy... let's not even go there.