2016 — 4 May: Wednesday

For the time being1 I have better things to do than worry about a "broken" PC. Particularly as the wound was an annoyingly self-inflicted one. It's a bracing 4C out there, the sky is clear, the sun is shining, I've just popped my oiled artwork back outside as the smell of not-quite-dry Danish Oil isn't too attractive, and the tea is nice and fresh.

I really must nip out for a fresh batch of foodstuff at some point today; the echo in my fridge is now every bit as impressive as the one in Mother Hubbard's cupboard.

I'm not sorry...

... to be missing out on all the fun of Gmail Chrome plug-ins like this:

Gmail assistance

It seems "words or phrases like 'sorry', 'just' and 'I'm not an expert' are basically upholding the patriarchy while making you sound like a moron". (Link.)

I need little or no help to sound like a moron. It comes perfectly naturally to one of my talent. Mind you, I noticed (over many years, and many thousands of emails) that few people are prepared to contend with more than one question or idea at a time. It can be a dreadful waste of effort to refine the things. In the example above, I'd simply say "Here's my plan" and attach the thing.

Little wonder my career progress was a downwards spiral :-)

Turing's objections...

... to people who denied the eventual possibility of AI are worth revisiting:

  1. Theological
  2. "Heads in the sand"
  3. Mathematical
  4. From consciousness
  5. From various disabilities
  6. Lady Lovelace's objection
  7. From continuity in the nervous system
  8. From informality of behaviour
  9. From ESP

They are contained in a beautifully-written paper though, alas, with rather more than one idea in it.

That splendid AI...

... aka Uncle ERNIE has just promised me a further £25 which I shall happily use to top up the car with go-juice.

It was in my more...

... metaphysical days that I first encountered the dolphin scientist John Lilly. And it was his experiments with flotation tanks that inspired Paddy Chayevsky to write the novel "Altered States". Quite how the film of that ended up being made by Ken Russell remains a mystery, but William Hurt's performance in it was the first of several that long ago convinced me he's a great actor. So to today's DVD delivery...

William Hurt DVD

... which I gather is now more or less mandatory viewing as part of medical training in some places. As it should be. [Pause] Given Christa's history, the film wasn't an easy "watch" for us, but we thought it was excellent.

Faced with a...

... shockingly difficult post-Pistachio-Chicken-and-rice-prandial choice between (a) working on bashing my Skylark PC back into some semblance of its former functional normality, or (b) driving over to Carlo's on the far side of Romsey for an ice-cream in the glorious sunshine. I got back about 90 seconds before Mr Amazon Logistics handed me some further entertainment options:

More choices

As for Skylark, it's on the back-burner. My first priority is now to bring the Intel NUC up to full speed as a standby device. So it now sits, once again, on my desk here resplendently displaying a full 34" Dell screen's worth of data in a NoMachine Remote Desktop session. And Skylark is powered down, and off my network until I have time to deal with it. Brian has lent me his PS/2 keyboard2 in case part of the problem turns out to have been my USB switch and/or USB keyboard.

Season #2...

... of "House of Cards" is coming nicely to the boil, but it's also getting a bit late.

  

Footnotes

1  The time being shortly before 07:00 at the moment :-)
2  As he told me: "Many times after boot problems I found the USB keyboard wouldn't work, no BIOS access, no ability to select in grub. In my case Linux would boot and then, and only then, would my keyboard become recognised. A PS/2 keyboard always worked and I always had one plugged in sitting atop the machine for such cases."