2016 — 1 February: Monday — rabbits!

I don't imagine February will be all that different from January, but I approve of the change (in general) and I look forward to ever-brighter mornings and evenings. Not to mention a decreased chance of wintry ghastliness.

Having been...

... just slightly disappointed — mostly by a combination of the extent of my ignorance in my brave new Linux world, and a few hardware and motherboard idiosyncracies¹ — with my latest BlackBeast PC (which is now coming up to a year old, unbelievably) I hadn't actually yet looked once more at the latest batch of bare-bones PC bundles available from my "customary" supplier, Novatech. Still, I've learned rather more about what to look for (and to look out for) by asking questions at a lower level than ever before:

is there actually enough physical room for this spiffy graphics card?
has anyone written a working Linux driver for it?
does it deliver sufficient resolution at sufficient refresh rate without tearing and lag?
has anyone written a working Linux driver for digital audio output on this fancy sound card?
does the fancy scanner part of this fancy printer/scanner actually, you know, scan under Linux?

Simple enough stuff, of course, though the answers can take some research. Anyway, I surfed off for the first time yesterday to see what Novatech had to offer. I was pleasantly surprised to see both their flexible customisation options and the perfectly reasonable pricing.

Early days. I shall let the next little wodge or two of pension settle in first, methinks! That should give time for some new Intel chippery magic to materialise. In the meantime (given that I do actually have a perfectly working system) if I want amusement in that line, I can always nip over to monitor my chum's system for leaks in its cooling system :-)

On my short-term...

... horizon, I have to remind myself how to get to that "Greyhound" Thai food place in/near Broughton Stockbridge² before 13:00 tomorrow for my next rendezvous with Gill & Chris. Yum! I could do with some breakfast, too, I suppose. And another cuppa. Still, at least there's a nice bit of Philip Glass hammering away.

I'm glad...

... I keep an occasional eye on the Linux Mint news pages as I've just seen a very worthy-looking candidate for the pending position of BlackBeast Mk IV.

Since I continue to inspect...

... the small print (after pressing Ctrl/+ a couple of times), I continue to discard this sh1t without a qualm:

They label it "Important", too. But I already know their fine industry's term for people like me.

"Deadbeat" :-)

OMG!

From the latest issue of David Langford's ever-reliable "Ansible":

It may not help that I have no idea what "Made in Chelsea" is, nor any idea who this lady is.

I've been sent...

... an amusing update on my chum's monster PC. He ends it:

PS: Great Cthulhu is currently squatting on my desk eating the 
brains of the Kent University Update Mirror server.  Waste of 
effort, really, as this particular avatar of Linux will not be 
around for long.

I hope the pentangle remains unbroken! Or, perhaps, pentacle. My knowledge of these Black Arts is clearly miniscule.

Footnotes

¹ Starting with the hit-or-miss approach to breaking into the BIOS setup immediately after power-on or reset, which can sour one's day. I have a "Revision 0" motherboard and have noted many later revisions, but am not over-anxious to start flashing away. Better a system that works. The fact that I even have to think about such things is a breaking of the "fourth wall" into the black box that I have never so far had to contemplate. Looking behind the curtain? No thanks. Not really my thing.
² Thank you, Google Maps (or "goggle" as Big Bro recently put it) though I don't recall having to sign in last time I used it.