2016 — 26 January: Tuesday
An overnight email from Canada reassures me that what may very well be the only surviving analogue cassette tape copy of a late 1970s BBC drama called Garrison Halibut has made it safely across a chunk of the planet to its new permanent home. A digital copy I made on minidisc now sits equally safely and patiently on my desk waiting for me to find a sufficiently fine-tipped pen with which to label1 the thing.
As a break from data Kodification...
... and because it's Big Bro's 70th birthday tomorrow (or in just a few hours depending on your geo-location) I shall now dig out and scan a suitably youthful portrait of his Little Bro for him.2 [Pause] Et voilà!
Have a suitably splendid birthday bash, dear boy. I can't help but note the eternal parental injunction ("feet off the furniture, if you don't mind") must have been temporarily in abeyance. But, inspecting the soles suggests the footwear was probably unsullied by any ground contact at that fairly early stage in the neonate's development (which is still an ongoing process, I might add).
Meanwhile, I've just heard...
... of the guvmint's foolish plans to merge police, fire and ambulance emergency service control rooms. Now what could possibly go wrong with that, I wonder?
I always find it amazing that people "in charge" cling so firmly to the comforting illusion that they are ever "in control". This doomed but eternal quest for centralisation is well-documented in Parkinson's "The Law", of course. And it always (always) ends in tears before bedtime. Not to mention the waste of large lumps of time and (my) money. "This has all happened before, and it will all happen again."
I think this...
... helps clarify one compelling reason why we're all being urged to fit "smart meters" (with their built-in ability to disconnect us at will)...
... with little or no focus on reducing electricity demand, the retirement of the majority of the country's ageing nuclear fleet, recent proposals to phase out coal-fired power by 2025 and the cut in renewable energy subsidies, the UK is on course to produce even less electricity than it does at the moment ... we have neither the time, resources nor enough people with the right skills to build sufficient power plants.
I wonder what our deregulated financial services-oriented post-engineering modern miracle economy will do. Cold fusion to the rescue, perhaps?
My early studies...
... in the area of chocolate-coated Californian raisins were clearly way ahead of their time!
The rain...
... may derail tomorrow's tentative plan for a walk, so I have made an alternative suggestion. Now I need to make lunch before I collapse in a heap. Having read this piece I've been trying (and so far failing) to find the fifth (and last) of the titles I have by Lewis Thomas — Fragile Species. I know it's there somewhere, dagnabbit! And it was a relatively costly hardback.
News of Marvin Minsky's death...
... prompted me to revisit, and may yet cause me to revise my opinion of, the only book I have by him. Who, after all, could fail to be charmed by the phrase "stochastic caprice"? It's my modus vivendi these days, after all. (Link.)
The round tuit needed to watch the German Blu-ray of "Disconnect" finally turned up. Great music by Max Richter, but the three interwoven stories are less great. Can't win 'em all. [Pause] But my film title Kodification is now basically complete. The details of 2,700 shiny DVDs and BDs are now tucked away inside its SQLite DB and can be dragged out and sprayed on to this 'molehole' web page whenever I want.
Next data challenge?
The various TV series and odd off-air video recordings I've got. I wonder just how many of those have their details in online DBs for Kodi to scrape. For example, this lovely book — (click the pic) — includes a bonus DVD of a 60-year-old half hour US TV show...
... called "Confidential File" (all about the "evils" of comic books) featuring the now discredited Fredric Wertham himself! Are the details of that still knocking around, do you reckon? I mean, I know the Internet is all about "the long (re)tail", but this may be pushing it a bit.