2015 — 15 November: Sunday
Well, the rest of Saturday whizzed by1 fitting in some chit-chat, a nice meal at a relatively new Italian place in Oxford Street, and a couple of films in the evening that were new to the youngsters. A piece of maladroit navigation on my part ensured we also saw a chunk of Soton previously new to all of us, too, on the return journey from lunch.
I'm unclear...
... on exactly why an upcoming G7 summit in Shima needs an official mascot, but apparently this young lady is deemed too offensive and has been dropped:
Personally, I would hope there are more pressing issues on a G7 agenda.
Alan Bennett...
... has been amusing me since I first heard Dad's lp of "Beyond the Fringe", almost too many years ago to contemplate. I don't suppose you need to know it was played on a Decca stereogram (rented from Radio Rentals for five shillings per week) that wouldn't have looked too modern for Noah's Ark? They did things differently back then!
I shall definitely make a point of catching the film of "The Lady in the Van" as I much enjoyed reading his diaries from quarter of a century ago. He's now written a diary of the film-making itself. Source and snippet:
"It wasn't a marriage. She wasn't my life," AB says in one exchange, later cut, though the van always came in handy as a conversation piece. I don't have much small talk so, for anyone landed with me at a party, "How's your old lady?" was a good standby...
Miss Shepherd's presence in the garden didn't, of course, stop me jotting things down, making notes on her activities and chronicling her comic encounters. Indeed, in my bleaker moments it sometimes seemed that this was all there was to note down
since nothing else was happening to me.
Pre-infected...
... police cameras? Whatever next? There's a neat comment on this El Reg story:
4. You cannot add any extra protection as an afterthought because the app built by the person suffering from Realtime Embedditis takes on the CPU in single handed combat and owns it. It is proudly realtime though.
This is the type of people who build SCADA, smart metering and industrial automation today. These will be the people who will build the brave new world of connected everything and IOT tomorrow.
My demonstration...
... of Kodi seemed to leave a favourable impression. [Pause] My visitors departed quite early, Peter's g/f taking with her the awkwardly-shaped corner cushion of the dining room set for use as a sewing template. All the others are nicely rectilinear and present her far less of a challenge, I gather. Since both of them are far busier2 than Ring Lardner's famed one-armed paper-hanger I await developments with both interest and needful patience.
A pleasant trio...
... of listening items showed up while I was out yesterday...
... although, thanks to the busy Auto-Ripping Elves of Amazon, I'd actually already heard all this fine music.
Also delivered was this...
... one-volume compilation of three late 1960s novels that have somehow entirely escaped my notice for 45 years:
I currently lack the background in Norse mythology for full "grokking" if Gaiman's introduction can be believed. We shall have to see. David John James certainly sounds to have had an interesting career.
Having just enjoyed...
... listening to the chat, and musical choices, in "Private Passions" I took myself off to inspect Henrietta Bowden-Jones's blog, and thus from there have now learned of the whimsically-named "Beatwoven" :-)
Diceware...
... was a new concept for me, though I many years ago read Luke Rhinehart's 1971 novel3 (didn't everyone?). And I can certainly see the merit of memorable, but unguessable, pass phrases. There's a good, clear, and eminently readable article here. Perhaps I should dig out and use one of Peter's gaming dice?
For maximum security make sure you are alone and close the curtains. Write on a hard surface -- not on a pad of paper. After you memorize your passphrase, burn your notes, pulverize the ashes and flush them down the toilet...
:-)
The last time I ran VirtualBox...
... was just after I'd been trying out a Linux Mint 15 system on BlackBeast Mk II before I reverted to Windows. Having spent five minutes reloading Mint 15 — running it as a Guest in a Windows VirtualBox — I couldn't help noticing there was a one-hour discrepancy between the Win8 and the Linux system clocks! Today I thought it might be fun to take a new Ubuntu 15.10 system out for a test drive as the Guest on the more recent level of VirtualBox now available on my Mint 17.2 system...
But first, another cuppa. [Pause] I've just heard Allen Toussaint died last week so I'm playing his version of "Saint James Infirmary" from the album "The Bright Mississippi".