2015 — 21 November: Saturday
The promised rain showed up.1 Perfect weather, in fact, for the resumption (tonight, with a welcome double dose) of the saga of Saga and that magnificent "Bridge" of Nordic Noir fame. I trust I recall how to fire up the Humax PVR. (I'm kidding, it's on more or less permanently, but I mostly just leave it pointing at BBC Radio 3...
... and not driving the Kuro plasma screen unless I also switch on the Oppo and select its rear HDMI input.)
Despite...
... the plentiful forensic evidence here, I somehow overlooked a new album from Pete Atkin with Clive James supplying the lyrics. Rectified.
Who said...
... Canadians lack a sense of humour?
With the newly published English translation of Lars Mytting's bestselling Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking, and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way, a tipping point has been reached. Indeed, the title alone constitutes a capsular satire of our hushed reverence for the arboreal Zen supposedly suffusing Scandinavian civilization. (For comparison, imagine the hypothetical Appalachian Noir: Blasting, Shovelling, and Processing Coal in the West Virginian Style.)
Who said...
... Republicans were sensible and sane?
... the party is being led by a group of people with politics so extreme and explanations so silly — and often transparently dishonest — that one cannot help but question their sanity...
In the hopes of appealing to angry, ill-informed, and xenophobic primary voters, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and Carly Fiorina are all adopting positions that are not only beyond the boundaries of the beliefs of the vast majority of Americans, but also contrary to the laws of
physics, economics, and, of course, common sense.
Hang on a minute. Didn't Carly used to run a large computer multinational?! [Pause] In more local (and vital) news, it's 10 o'clock and my next crockpot concoction is launched on its thermal journey to (I hope) culinary perfection later today.
My neighbour has...
... just very kindly nailed down a bit of the felt on Shed #1 that was flapping in the balmy breeze out there. "It will stop," he said, "the Gardens looking like quite such a shanty town!" He's absolutely right, of course. It's jolly cold out there, too, I notice. Definitely time for a spot of breakfast before I unpack the morning's post.
It's taken just a...
... few hours for that Eric Gill DVD to show up. Accompanied by some interesting details of other similarly-themed "Arts" DVDs. "Road House", on the other hand, long a guilty pleasure, has also been long — several months — on its journey and (despite being a 25th anniversary edition) is still stupidly zone-locked to American Blu-ray players (such as my Chinese Oppo).
I don't know "Danny Collins" but, since it was written by the chap who did "Crazy stupid love" (which I found hilarious) and has a good cast, I'm optimistic.
That "rain, sleet, and gales" I was...
... promised — as time for my late lunch lurches into view — is currently manifesting itself as a clear and cloudless blue sky and a few bits of quite strong breeze. Still cold, though, so I'm really appreciating the nice warm jumper my Birmingham cousins gave me several Xmas-times back rather than simply winding up the wick on the central heating. (I must admit, too, it's nice to have a modern2 boiler.)
Playing...
... last Thursday's "Late Junction", and specifically listening in awe to the track "A Hill of Little Shoes" — lyrics by Clive James, song by Pete Atkin, written about "the feeling of growing old when the children of the Holocaust never had that chance" — as performed by Coope, Boyes & Simpson, should be enough to give any modern warmonger pause. Worse still, it's not one of the songs in my (supposedly) reasonably complete collection, dagnabbit.
I shall ponder what to do about that serious deficiency while making the snack lunch I now need lest I actually faint from hunger. [Pause] Problem fixed. Four errant CDs now inbound. Semi-direct from Mr Atkin.
As I was waiting for...
... my 'tum' to start demanding a bowl of my latest splendiferous crockpottery — late lunch, remember — I set Brian a little Python challenge exposed by an episode of "Battlestar Galactica" with the naked digits 33 (not safely ring-fenced by quotes) as its title. His code took umbrage at finding an unexpected integer, and walked off the set in protest. Here's his reply:
So I now have to take the EpisodeName which is naturally a string in every other case and explicitly make it a string in EVERY case which is a huge waste of cpu cycles (probably several pico-seconds). There is no problem with Names being numbers, take the file '10' for example. But names should always be returned by the API as strings e.g. '10' or '33' not as integers. A whole 5 extra characters to type - twice as List will fail similarly. Grrr!!!
Still, if he wants to put this function out as Open Source to the Wide World, it's a good job I probably have enough bizarrely-named video material to expose the bulk of such "edge" cases for his debugging.