2016 — 2 August: Tuesday

Every now and again1 Linux says to itself "It's time to run a chkdsk-like process over the mess that this user seems pleased to call his File System. When I've finished, if I ever do, I shall once again tease him by asking first for his user name instead of his password — I so enjoy seeing him type his password visibly into the user name window." But I have caught on to this little trick (which, in some circles, I've even seen referred to as a bug).

Meanwhile...

... if I had been given a tenner every time I read a story about Britain's housing crisis and the need for the guvmint to "build more homes" I still wouldn't be able to afford one, but at least I would have confirmation that La Thatcher's flock of smelly chickens are still coming home to roost (and finding a foxy landlord in the chicken coop).

And ain't this...

... (as people used to say) the truth?

Here we are with the freest (sic) access to knowledge in history, troves of data and facts at our fingertips and HG Wells's dream of a world brain a reality, yet a tide of truthiness, propaganda and nonsense surges ever higher. Bogus claims about Barack Obama's citizenship, say, or Britain's payments to the European Union, are exposed, yet the claim-pedlars breeze on, unimpeded — they win.

Rory Carroll in Grauniad


Mind you, I first read a profile of Snopes courtesy of NPR six years ago (Link) on the same day I learned of the theoretical possibility of an anti-antimacassar.

This sounds...

... like an urban myth, but isn't! They clearly approach things differently in Belgium.

Perhaps, however, the research shouldn't stop (well, except the study I stumbled across which begins: "Women with known histories of either vaginal orgasm or vaginal anorgasmia were videotaped walking on the street, and their orgasmic status was judged by sexologists blind to their history," which doesn't sound like a study so much as something that carries a two- to four-year custodial sentence).

Hannah Jane Parkinson in Grauniad


Breakfast, methinks.

Followed by a status check on the increasingly-deplorable state of Mother Hubbard's ever-diminishing cupboard. And a cheery greeting from Mr Postie, proffering the following:

Babylon DVD set

It gained some good reviews, and I find Brit Marling easy on the eyes. I first saw her in "Another Earth" a couple of years ago.

From the...

... latest Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter,
it's but a short hop to the latest Full Circle PDF magazine,
from which one is easily led via a Techworm piece,
to the latest build of ChaletOS, based on Xubuntu 16.04 LTS.

I have downloaded the ISO, and will pop it into a VirtualBox to take out for a test drive this afternoon — after a lunchtime hospital taxi run errand.

I'm awfully glad...

... I never managed to get sucked into the world of music typesetting!

Lilypond

Billionaire vampires

Reading this El Reg story reminds me of Spinrad's "Bug Jack Barron" and the dire effect WH Smith2 had on the magazine "New Worlds" back in the late 1960s.

Just before I set off on my taxi run Mr Speedy Hen dropped off the book I mentioned here. It's a hefty tome.

This glimpse...

... of the ChaletOS file manager (Thunar) running in a VirtualBox session on my Mint 17.3 desktop...

ChaletOS desktop

... should be more than enough to evoke a curious sense of déjà-vu!

The DistroWatch chap...

... has written an interesting review of life with the Meizu Pro 5 Ubuntu phone. Very promising, if you ask me, though nobody does.

Best laugh...

... so far today: to a pre-release Blu-ray of a film called "Cosmos" (directed by the late Andrzej Zulawski) has been attached a quote from Professor Brian Cox calling it "Carl Sagan's masterpiece, probably the most important reason I got interested in astronomy". Oops! Shome Mishtake, shurely?


Footnotes

1  Today exemplifying both a "now" and an "again".
2  They took exception to the extracts published from Bug Jack Barron. Wikipedia puts it very neatly: "With its explicit language and cynical attitude to politicians, it roused one British Member of Parliament's ire at the magazine's partial funding by the British Arts Council." (Source.) Between WH Smug's decision to take it off their not-exactly-spotless shelves, and the Arts Council getting the wind up their collective petticoats, that was that.