2016 — 28 June: Tuesday
The cement mixer is off to an early start as, I gather, the weather for the rest of this week is forecast to be entirely typical for a tennis tournament. I estimate the brickwork repointing is now about two-thirds complete. It's been the largest work component by far (not to mention the most costly). Good job it's only money, though I suppose we can shortly expect that to turn into monopoly money.
The thought that the world's "credit rating agencies" now regard the UK as a poorer bet for future "investments" leaves me curiously unmoved. After all, they did such an undeniably excellent job of turning a collective blind eye to the work of all those "quants" with their clever derivatives-based investment packages that applied supposedly plausible wrappers around all those U.S. junk bonds, toxic mortgages, and "securities" in the greedy whirl of financial stupidity leading up to the 2008 "crisis".
After the string of inevitable collapses, why are these agencies even still in existence? Let's not think about the quality of the "auditing" that went on... Or perhaps that verb is only used in the Scientology sense these days?
Goodbye to all that...
... as Robert Graves put it. Today's a day — while I can still just about afford to put petrol in the tank — for getting behind the steering wheel and heading off for my lunch date in those Hampshire hills. "Toot, toot", as Mr Toad says. After some breakfast, and reading the latest "Full Circle" magazine.1
This just in, from NZ...
Big Bro (aka "Luddite in the south") has kindly shared his own view2 of the UK's EU-related lack of wisdom, and the global knock-on effects. I've decided I shall not bother asking his UK sister-in-law whether she now regrets her "Leave" vote. (Sir Humphrey would have characterised it as a "brave" decision, no doubt, using his impeccable code.) I contented myself by saying last week:
41 years ago we confirmed that we'd signed up to what still sounded like a Free Trade "Common Market", not all this ghastly drift towards central bureaucratic control. I fear the UK risks damage by leaving, but EU reform will have to occur sooner or later...
The vote clearly exposed numerous fault lines within the UK, not to mention within the Tory party itself, of course. What an unlovely set of blighters politicians reveal themselves to be whenever they jostle for power! Now the aftermath shows us blindly heading for levels of internal division and strife that will rival anything produced by a 'victory' for the Trump of Doom across the Pond. Both interesting and sickening.
Clonezilla and VirtualBox
There's a very interesting "How to" by Alan Ward in "Full Circle" this month describing the combination of Clonezilla and VirtualBox to first clone an installed virtual machine and then transfer it as a working entity across to a target PC. Personally, I'd just repeat the installation directly (granted, after trying the VM to be sure I'm happy with it). But clearly Clonezilla occupies the same ecological niche in Linux that Acronis "True Image" does in the Windows world. That's good to know.
Victor victorious!
Happy to see this arrive today:
And it squeaked under the limit that would have triggered Customs intervention.
Compare and contrast:
:-)
Nice (and impressive?)...
... to learn that the UK's Chancellor now says it wasn't his job to have a plan for "Brexit". I gather the Farage chap has been lecturing the MEPs in Brussels, too: "Most of you have never done a proper job." Crikey!
I think, perhaps, the problem I have with politicians, of all stripes — leaving aside the question of whether "professional politician" is actually even a job in the first place — is that they have a tendency to believe the tripe that comes out of their own mouths. Whether they do from Day 1 is neither here nor there. By the time they crawl up the pole to dangerous heights of power and influence they often seem to have a touch of the self-deluding lunatic about them.
Sensible candidates for these jobs3 are the sort of people who would either refuse them (except, possibly, at gunpoint) or would have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into office. But what do I know?
Oh my!
This is just so depressing. Though, in the absence of a science called psychology, we may just have to find another word! (Link.)