2016 — 19 June: Sunday
I was delighted to receive an email1 this morning from my brain-the-size-of-a-planet ex-ICL chum Ian. It contained proof that he has successfully followed my external web-serving hints ("blimey!", thinks I) in combination with an, erm, elegant clever one-page solution of his own invention. He is thus now back on the air (as it were) with his former web site visible to the external world.
But, let me add, with No Thanks to his newest ISP (a little outfit calling itself "BT").
He's created a...
... single "front page" on a free web-serving host called WIX.com, pointed all his personal domains at it, and put a clickable button on it labelled "Click Here To Enter". Using, if I'm not mistaken, the Open Caslon font. (Now, where could he have got that idea from, I wonder?)
This button routes visitors to his Apache server on the Ubuntu system that's been running on the little Novatech bare-bones system on his desk at his home since I put it on there for him. (I did suggest he explore the web-serving capabilities of the Synology NAS box that he also bought at my recommendation, but he's happy with this solution2 for now, at least. )
I've updated the 'molehole' page that links to one of his. And, yes, I've already told him it's regarded as terribly bad form to use all-numeric web addresses.
I remain appalled...
... by the bigoted irrationality swirling around the EU "debate". This captures it well:
I'm voting for "remain in".
Just back...
... from a minor-league supplies top-up over in Badger Farm. I accompany Len; he gets any extra discount 'benefits' from my purchases and I get a free ride. Works well.
The barometer has shot right back up. The cloud cover remains ten/tenths. I retain three layers of clothing. Could it be mid-summer, do you think?
The wisdom of (Andrew) Solomon?
I'm glad to have caught "Private Passions" even though the musical choices made by guest Andrew Solomon3 tended somewhat towards the melancholic. He was very interesting to listen to, so much so that I went off to scour my digital archives for more. In earlier times, I would simply have scoured my memory. Now that I have powerful desktop PCs, a certain amount of leisure, and efficient indexing and searching tools, I have become rather lazier. (I have long had a habit of salting away pieces I find in print [or, these days, on the web] for a "rainy" day read. To describe my collection of real and virtual clippings as "mildly disorganised" would not be wholly inaccurate.)
In between several cups of tea, the cleaning up of a sticky mouse with an old electric toothbrush, and the making and eating of a tasty late lunch, I found only three "hits". Furthermore, all three initially turned out to be little more than accidental, fleeting references.
For example, I found an entertaining review of the Jonathan Meades memoir I'd picked up (though I could find no trace of who Meades was actually talking to in this Grauniad piece). Worse, it gave no obvious clue as to why "Recoll" had picked it out for me. But I've long since learned to trust Recoll, so I next did my usual "Ctrl/F" on the page in my web browser, and thereby found a link well-buried in the "wrappings". Following that took me to a fascinating piece by Hadley Freeman interviewing Solomon.
And inside that were hypertext pointers yet further afield, both to a long New Yorker essay (wherein Solomon had, in turn, interviewed the father of the Sandy Hook killer). And to a review, by Emma Brockes (yielding this typical Temple Grandin quote from the Solomon book she was examining)...
If you got rid of all the autism genetics, you'd get rid of scientists, musicians, mathematicians and all you'd have left is dried-up bureaucrats.
Solomon notes (adds Brockes) that "campaigners for autistic pride suffer somewhat in their advocacy, since they are, by definition, autistic, and lack the charm that campaigns of that nature tend to run on...".
My remaining search hit was from February 2008, in a review, by Sally Satel, of the book "The Loss of Sadness" by Allan V Horwitz. That would have been back when I was trying very hard both to come to terms with my emotions in the immediate wake of Christa's death, and to "monitor" myself for any signs of incipient depression. The review noted — en passant only, alas — Solomon's expressed "dismay" over the DSM's definition of depression. (Now, as it happens, I have for a long time had a high regard for anyone [particularly anyone working in the "bonkers business"] who is prepared to come out and openly despise the DSM. Such people strike me as likely to be very sound eggs, in my jaundiced opinion.)
Long story short: This is just one of the reasons why two of Solomon's books are, even now, wending their way to me.
I've just updated...
... the "probate" saga. It's been a further eight months with no contact from the DWP. [Pause] I enjoyed "Electra". Powerful stuff. Music by PJ Harvey, too.