2016 — 15 July: Friday
Having successfully snaffled the week's trio of "Late Junction" programmes1 and made my initial cuppa I can, perhaps, now turn to the testing needed to verify that Brian's latest batch of Python code still enables me to generate the video and book lists that I want in fully-compliant 'molehole' web page style.
Or, perhaps...
... I should stop and smell the roses first? A trio of the things are out at the moment. With half a dozen buddleias behind them. So where are all my butterflies?
Maintain your own domain and back everything up
Sounds like good advice to me. I once tried a Dennis Cooper book, but recall nothing of it except that I got absolutely nowhere with it. However, this all sounds a bit worrying:
Two weeks ago, writer and artist Dennis Cooper was checking his Gmail when something peculiar happened: the page was refreshed and he was notified that his account had been deactivated — along with the blog that he'd maintained for 14 years...
"As long as you back everything up. I don't see really the danger," [Cooper] said. "But if you're at the mercy of Google or some place like Google, obviously I'm a living example of not to be blind like that and think that everything is hunky dory."
I use Gmail behind the scenes (as it were) but my Thunderbird email client on my PC keeps a full local backup (of 31,870 emails when I peeked a few seconds ago). The nearest I get to hosting a blog is this diary. It's not a blog, though that doesn't stop people from trying to hack into it to leave comments or get up to mischief. It's hosted as a chunk of simple flat HTML files uploaded to an AWS storage bucket (but also backed up locally and, indeed, served locally on my PC, and also from my trusty Raspberry Pi2's spare copy of it too).
Belt and braces, me
The only people who don't do some form of data backup are those lucky folk who have yet to experience the frustration and pain of either or both their clumsiness or the occasional (but inevitable) hoof kick during visits from the Four Horsemen: hardware, software, network, and power failures.
Last November...
... I read an essay by Philip Ball in "Aeon" that mentioned Kurt Vonnegut's (rejected) masters thesis in anthropology in 1947 plotting literary narratives as a graph of the hero's fortunes against Time2 on a happy-sad axis. Now Adrienne Lafrance in "The Atlantic" is detailing some further classifications of fiction fed through a computer. But I find this competition a bit depressing.
Charlie Stross tackles BoJo head on. Passing familiarity with the excellent "Laundry Files" series would be useful. (Link.)
R.I.P. cute little sucker
The last item of domestic "kit" I bought under Christa's personal guidance back in January 2007 has lately been showing its age. Despite a new battery a couple of years ago it now runs for as little as 10 seconds at a time, which is of no use. So on my trip into Soton this morning I replaced it with a newer model.
I also replaced my 20-year-old BBC paperback of Neil Gaiman's first solo novel "Neverwhere" ...
... by the new "Author's preferred text" edition that also has wonderful illustrations by Chris Riddell.
As midnight approaches...
... I've now checked out the book lists. I just need to add in the last four acquisitions — including, I'm delighted to say, that "unique" copy of Ron Cobb's first fanzine (see yesterday) which is on its Special Delivery way here as I type. (I got a 20% discount, too, as I happened to order it during an annual sale period.) Cool! I also need to delete the 100 or so titles that I've culled in the last couple of weeks. They're all sitting on the dining room table. Well, all except the three I've already passed over to Brian.