2015 — 20 November: Friday
I keep being promised torrential rain.1 But then, I keep being promised the Tories have no intention of wrecking the NHS. That nice Mr Hunt hasn't gone out of his way to publicise the "public input" survey that closes in two days. (I got my responses in courtesy of membership of some form of patients consultation group at my local GP practice that I signed up to a few years ago. [More recently, in fact, than my last actual visit to the place.])
The latest...
... piece I read about human bug reports ("Deadly drug combinations") in the October "Scientific American" suggested — I would have thought predictably — that, as soon as you were 'on' more than four medications at a time "the potential for adverse reactions increases exponentially". Blame that pesky liver. 40% of North Americans of UK State Pension age or above are 'on' more than five prescription medications. Inevitably, computer models are now in use. Inevitably, Big Pharma doesn't like revealing what it knows about metabolic pathways and effective dosages into these models.
As for those grapefruit2 I like from time to time... I think I shall stick to my cup(s) of tea. Though I could do with something reasonably astringent to help clear my head after reading all about PulseAudio and Kodi, here.
Attempting (unsuccessfully) to catalogue...
... a TV profile of Eric Gill I recorded off Channel 4 back in 1988 — all to the musical accompaniment of a "Vocoder special"...
... "Late Junction" show curated by the gorgeous Anne Hilde Neset 20 months ago — had led me gently up the commercial garden path almost straight to a 2005 DVD overview of his life and work that is still available. How irresistible is that? I've just ordered a copy direct from the producers, in fact.
A little longer ago Daedalus had also been toying with vocodal thoughts:
Daedalus is often the victim of incredibly boring telephonic monologues, and has set DREADCO psychologists to cracking the "uhuh" code so as to imitate it on a computer. Verbal signals, like the rise in voice-tone at the end of a question will be spotted by electronic filters, and used to trigger appropriate recordings of "yes, yes", "really?" etc., to keep the talker happy. The unwilling listener will be able to walk away and leave him at it. Conversational demands beyond the computer's smalltalk will either request human aid, or produce recordings of bacon-frying noises, metallic tappings and other Post-Office specialities to confuse the issue.
For younger readers, the UK's telephone system was at one time a State monopoly under the wing of Brenda's Post Office. Those were the days!
Wonder of wonders
The Jodrell Bank radio telescope was the first large-scale piece of high-tech that impinged on me as a youngster. It was, after all, just a few miles down the road from where I lived in Wilmslow. Bernard Lovell was an early hero of mine, though I don't recall his toy ever looking quite this clean!
Thank goodness I remembered — before its window of download opportunity was slammed rudely shut in my BBC Licence Fee payer's face — to snaffle the recent "Timeshift" programme, in high-def,3 by cunningly extracting its PID number from the BBC iPlayer's URL and inserting it into the magic spell at the right point...
get_iplayer --modes=best --pid=b06pm5vf
1.1GB of viewing pleasure!
As I bounce my way...
... reasonably methodically4 through the series of matches being offered to me by Brian's Python Kodi stub generator — title by title — which he's now also got running as a 43MB Windows executable under Win 10 in a VirtualBox under Mint 17.2 "just to see if he could"... I finally begin to appreciate the sheer, well, "wealth" isn't exactly le mot juste, of "stuff" that has been turned into video material...
We are a strange species.
Speaking of which, surely...
... this is just a little disingenuous?
Disguising a reversal of a guvmint policy of unhelpful cuts behind an increase in local council taxation is a true-blue Tory policy. I just don't understand why people continue to vote for that party.