2016 — 6 April: Wednesday
A greyer start1 and a pint-sized reminder that the miniscule NUC also (my bad) needs to wake up with the Rotel pre-amp "pointing" at it if I'm to get anything above that silly 1024x768 screen in the NoMachine session on my main PC. Still, at least I've just confirmed that the command line incantation:
DISPLAY=:0 xrandr --output HDMI1 --auto
works, immediately restoring the more useful 1920x1080 screen that's more than adequate for simple driving of the audio playback I want from the little blighter.
The NUC is back...
... in close proximity to the A/V stack, by the way, and thus no longer (literally) in a position to offer me the full 3440x1440 on the Dell. A retrograde step, I agree, but made in the wake of yet another irritating "failure to communicate" between Skylark and the 34" Dell using DisplayPort. Those two clearly only really get on when visually chatting via HDMI — which the NUC had been using — whereas BlackBeast has continued to be perfectly stable talking to the Dell via DisplayPort.
Yes, I suppose I could simply have switched back to using the NUC's mini-DisplayPort2 into the Dell, but why bother? Besides, its new (old) position removes the need for two sets of cabling draped across the living room carpet.
Speaking of pint-sized trouble-makers...
... I've been giving some serious thought to the acquisition of a new toy. Despite treating the thing to a new £50 battery a couple of years ago, my cute little sucker — now, unbelievably, over nine years old! — has been defeated by the sheer quantity of dust hereabouts, and simply lost its ability to suck for more than bursts of a few seconds at a time. Either that, or I've lost so much strength in my afflicted trigger-finger joint that I simply can't exert enough pressure to keep the electrons flowing.
On our walk yesterday Iris mentioned some sort of trade-in discount she'd seen on offer from Dyson, so I shall now look into it... Boring, but probably necessary!
A spot of...
... Mother Hubbard placating is on the cards this morning. Boring, but sadly necessary!
Google...
... has just noticed (that is, one of their Googlebots has just reported) "an increase in '404' pages on http://molehole.org" and they suggest I review and fix them. Otherwise, they will drop these URLs from their search results.
I'd been wondering when I'd hear from them. The missing pages are, of course, all the ones of type SHTML and have all been replaced by ones of type HTML. Furthermore, all the links "inside" molehole have all been updated to correctly point to the new HTML pages. However, it neatly reveals the eternal dilemma facing a hapless webmaster... what to do about folk who will insist on hosting links into a site rather than just to its Home page. (And, of course, I do precisely this myself, too.)
If I were a great big e-commerce website I suppose 439 "Page not found" errors would worry me. As a laidback personal hobbyist webmaster, the fact that loads of Russian spam sites have been hosting spurious links to molehole pages worries me not one whit. I have left in place the SHTML variant of my Home page, though I have "expanded" all its SSIs and "corrected" all its links. So anyone who bookmarked molehole's former Home page will now see a polite reminder there that "things have changed".
Oh, good grief!
Why am I not surprised? About eugenics, that is:
In the United States, it found some of its earliest support among the same group that Harvard had: the wealthy old families of Boston. The Boston Brahmins were strong believers in the power of their own bloodlines, and it was an easy leap for many of them to believe that society should work to make the nation's gene pool as exalted as their own.
Oh, good grief! (2)
Why am I not surprised? About education, that is. (Link.)
Being a picker-up...
... of unconsidered trifles, I lugged home from yesterday's walk a surprisingly-shapely piece of wood. This afternoon's expotition to B&Q snaffled a set of three toothbrush-sized and shaped brushes, one nylon, one steel, and one stainless steel. Clean-up has now begun.
I also excavated a long-untouched Dremel tool but alas, so far, not its power supply. (I have a nasty suspicion I may have melted that in an earlier, erm, incident artistic endeavour. Well over a decade ago.) Now, if only I still took a broadsheet newspaper, I might have managed to contain some of the mess a bit more effectively.
I've put it aside while I focus on an evening meal out of sheer hunger.
Filling in...
... a couple of gaps:
Both these authors have been impressing me.