2016 — 8 June: Wednesday
Even a night's sleep has failed to unravel last night's Sorrentino film.1 It took the Oscar for best foreign language film last year but I'm left wondering what the Academy actually made of it.
The BBC (which, of course, famously eschews advertising in any shape or form) has just squeezed the phrase "digital radio" into an advert more than enough times to qualify as bloody annoying. On their classical music channel, too. Still, at least not once did the shamefully obsolete "DAB" actually get named. Though when you leave their archived "Digital" page for the supposedly more informative "digitaluk" it's conspicuously quiet on radio options.
This is from the BBC's radio blog:
I suspect this means my wonderful get_iplayer tool remains on the "take it out and shoot it" list. Any mention of Linux? Don't be silly!
It's already...
... 23.3C in here, with the patio door open wide but full cloud cover. We're promised heavy showers later, just as we have been all week so far. I hope my partially newly-cleaned gullies are up for it, up there on the roof. The felt lining actually inside the loft is still mostly in good condition though I wasn't pleased to learn that the pre-fabricated roof timbers are not as hefty as they should have been — hence the large number of extra bits nailed on to brace them. Little wonder our builder went bust, I suspect.
This was the chap who managed to avoid the use of an RSJ in one place, have an overlong horizontal pipe run at the highest point, just perfect for trapping air, and a drain point for the CH system that was actually further above sea level than any of the downstairs radiators. His crowning achievement provided me with brick steps to my back door cemented beautifully in place exactly half over a drain inspection cover.
Somehow this all got rubber-stamped by the council's in-depth inspection2 process.
I'm getting old, Christa!
Yesterday's celebration — I now have two of my four NZ nieces through the age 40 'barrier' — doesn't make me feel younger.
Ooh, how I hate it when a (sort of) typo goes unnoticed for exactly one year. But then, who knew that a simple hyphen on a New York Times magazine web article would end up as "Â" after crossing the Pond and getting mangled by me? Not me.
Cross-lingual arbitrage, indeed.
It's been...
... over nine years since I first photographed this chap — I tend to pay little heed to what goes on in the front jungle. Here he is mere minutes ago:
I fear he lacks the scent of the similarly large rose in the back jungle.
I was pleasantly surprised...
... on getting the DVLA's reminder about my Mazda's vehicle tax to see that — despite it having a whole 200cc more "oomph" in its engine gubbins than the Toyota3 did — I only have to find £30 down the back of the sofa. Of course, JLP's insurance renewal is also about to pop up. I generally go a year without giving either of these bills a thought. Hendy will doubtless start suggesting a service any minute now, too. I've clocked up 3,223 miles so far.
We have RW Johnson to thank...
... for giving Tom Sharpe an evening dinner at High Table in Magdalen College, Oxford and, in so doing, giving that fine satirist both the cure for his writers' block and all the material he needed to write "Porterhouse Blue" over 40 years ago. Just one of the many delights to be found in Johnson's memoirs "Look back in Laughter" — if not yet in Wikipedia. Excellent entertainment, including stories of the uninvestigated Oxford spies who seem to have rivalled those of Cambridge...