2016 — 4 April: Monday
As I understand it1 "insomnia" describes an inability to sleep rather than my present inability to get back to sleep. A-pottering I will go, therefore. It's what I do best, after all.
I need to look at...
... some of Brian's Python HTML-generating scripts to assure myself all is optimised in this brave new world of purely static HTML simplicity. And no shortage, yet, of stacked-up episodes of BBC Radio 3's sublime "Late Junction" to listen to as I do that. I've subdivided these episodes into folders by presenter, and each of these sub-folders has its own folder named "Heard" into which items are now going, one by one.
Colour me shocked
Rich, powerful chaps in positions of political or other power around the planet spend as much time and effort as it takes doing what they think will ensure they stay in power and get ever-richer. I wonder if any of these splendid chaps has even heard of Ozymandias? (Link.) And more here. 4.8 million emails? 2 million PDFs? Blimey. Those pesky computers, heh?
Colour me puzzled
A perfesser of physics in Munich asserts that black holes (aka "puddles of condensed gravity"? I love it!) are quantum computers. Has he not read Asimov's "The Last Question"? (Link.)
FOMO?
I shall just have to stop browsing the web :-)
Nowadays, the erosion of humanity's capacity for attention is portrayed as an existential problem, linked with the allegedly corrosive effects of digitally driven streams of information relentlessly flowing our way.
Now that I've got...
... my "external" subset of 'molehole' safely bedded down in its spiffy new AWS quarters I'll have to modify the personal sitemap I use to reflect this. It just means changing many of its pointers so instead of "going" to the localhost mirror of 'molehole' they go instead to the Raspberry Pi2 that purrs contentedly on a smidgin of bookshelf up in Peter's room. It's good to have a spare webserver knocking around.
Basically, I'm fed up of seeing 404 - Not Found messages all the time. Most unprofessional! [Pause] Of course, it helps if I can remember how to set up a new FileZilla connection from the non-public chunk of my 'molehole' filespace to said Pi2 webserver.
Hard to disagree...
... though I had to change away from his (apparently preferred) eye-searing "neon" theme to read it comfortably:
We also have to consider how the influx of a large number of novice users into what was traditionally a very technically-minded community has affected the forums and mailing lists previously used for discussion of technical subjects. Asking a question of a programming or system administrative nature on a general purpose UNIX mailing list or forum nowadays will often result in a flurry of replies suggesting to, "just install this program", where the program in question is either a binary blob, bloated, unattractively licensed, poorly documented, full of security vulnerabilities, or possibly all of these things together.
A good read, in fact. Elsewhere he makes the point that "[desktop environments] also replaced the simple 'window manager on top of X' concept with increasingly complex, increasingly bloated and increasingly bug-ridden graphical shells that were designed to hide the UNIX command line interface from the novice user".
Jeeves! A dry martini, please!
Lest the shock of my pension "increase" overwhelms me:
Hic. [Pause] Better make that a double:
And this after my son was telling me all about what a lousy investment2 Uncle ERNIE is, too. Tee-hee.
Thanks again, Mr Logistics
"GoT #5"? No-brainer. Westeros here I come.
"Unashamed Artists"? Having very much enjoyed "Art for the Ear" last Friday, I ordered several of her earlier books.