2016 — 9 February: Tuesday
I was vindicated1 in my decision to ignore the gentle burp from my SHIELD Tablet PC as it was only the latest Ubuntu weekly newsletter. And I'd already inspected the not very exciting specs of the forthcoming Ubuntu "desktop" Tablet.
The comparison may have been unfairly prejudiced. I'd only just finished pricing up an i5 Skylake-equipped Intel NUC with some stonkingly-fast dual channel DDR4 RAM and a couple of SSDs, the boot drive using a 4-lane PCI interface to fling around more megabytes per second than can easily be grasped, as it were :-)
I very nearly...
... clicked on "Buy now". But I shall continue to resist until we can be sure that North Korea isn't about to take us out in the first strike that the neurally-challenged boy Dave seems to believe is a good reason for our renewing Trident missiles rather than the National Health Service.
Besides, I suspect my somewhat-greater current need (alas) is for a more mundane batch of fresh supplies in the tasty food line...
[Pause]
An overnight email...
... from Big Bro's wife in NZ warns me he's "off the air" for about a week awaiting a new keyboard for his laptop. He must have been typing up a storm, I guess.
And rather nearer, I've heard a sad tale of the Great Cthulhu's loss (within a mere 24 hours) of its ability to "discover" any lesser acolytes on the same network, which is making data exchanges trickier than I gather they usually are on that wondrous bucket of bits computing platform. I therefore selfishly hope to be able to offload on to the priest Windows 10 novice2 concerned a couple of thick tomes I have that are full of spells in that arcane area.
There are some...
... deeply unedifying tales linked from here. Don't say I didn't warn you.
We live...
... in surreal times:
Mind you, giving him any form of honour would be, erm, the last straw! Recall a little anecdote from a while ago?
Dave Taylor wrote an informatively entertaining piece called "Jacking off the Censor" in Flesh and Blood Book One. In it we learned that (then) Home Secretary "Jack Straw is at least consistent in his policy of banning every pleasure known to man." Straw's choice for president of our then rather charmless censors at the BBFC, ex-Editor of The Independent, Andreas Whittam-Smith revealed during an interview on BBC2's Newsnight that he never watches violent or erotic movies and believes that any video more restrictive than a PG should not be available for home viewing. (How cool is that?)
I shall now pack my cardboard suitcase, and await the arrival of the secret police. TTFN.
At long last...
... I am (it seems) to find out exactly what Morpheus was up to in that "distant galaxy" from which he returned, exhausted, to immediate captivity by the summoning spell of the unwise Roderick Burgess (a thinly-disguised Aleister Crowley, I assume). It's the "origin" story...
... Gaiman had in mind but could find no way to fit into the original Sandman saga. Of which I was (and remain) a loyal, and captivated, follower:
Christa and I...
... enjoyed playing a variety of games and puzzles.3 The plastic peg game "Mastermind" was one such, so I was delighted to discover a cross-platform version — "ColorCode" — and will probably try it out. Though it will be less fun without her.
Much stuff...
... on 'molehole' is on my private network, inside my firewall.4 Thinking about "Mastermind" reminded me of an email I sent to Carol 30 years ago...
A typical example of what lurks in some of the depths :-)
Speaking of "depths"...
... I was intrigued to read this, after making no mention of Luria for the last nine years:
When Dr. Sacks first read one of these book-length cases, Dr. Luria's The Mind of a Mnemonist, in 1968 (about a Russian with an almost perfect memory who made his living performing feats on stage, but who was also deeply tormented because he could not, like most people, automatically forget5 unimportant events), Dr. Sacks thought it must have been a novel, Dr. Luria had so well described the man's unusual subjective experience.