2016 — 11 August: Thursday
I was happily playing some music last night when Cinnamon crashed1 on my i5 NUC. I only found out this had happened when I flipped back to the NUC to skip a particularly nasty music track. There was a pop-up waiting for me, saying:
Cinnamon has crashed. You are currently running in Fallback mode. Would you like to reload it?
A click on "Yes" and within a second the desktop was repaired, without interruption to the flow of music. Nor any change in appearance. That's pretty impressive, given the number of times in the past where the display manager going AWOL has left me uncomfortably facing a very uninviting black screen and the mandatory terminal session struggle needed to reload it. Much better, Mint. Well done!
Today's treats?
Include lunch'n'a chat somewhere. And watching a squirrel clambering adroitly around my decorative Japanese cherry tree. Before that, I fear there's a supplies run to make good the growing list of deficiencies in Mother Hubbard's ever-emptying cupboard.
If this is supposed to be a satire on Rilke, I fear it left me almost completely un-satired. (Link.)
This piece on the propaganda art of Jacques Louis-David was much more interesting. (Link.)
I trust...
... the SupaGlue industry has already researched the bonding properties of avian reptile deposits on my nice clean2 car's paintwork. Brian pointed out a patch that was festering, unnoticed, on the Far Side of the roof yesterday. It took nearly as long to clean off as the morning's Waitrose shopping run.
I haven't read...
... Aristotle's Poetics, but I must say he sounds like quite a sensible chap. Wonder what else he thought about? :-)
In the first sense of purgation, the horror movie is a kind of medicine that does its work and leaves the soul healthier, while in the second sense it is a potentially addictive drug. Either explanation may account for the popularity of these movies among teenagers, since fear is so much a fact of that time of life. For those of us who are older, the tear-jerker may have more appeal, offering a way to purge the regrets of our lives in a sentimental outpouring of pity. As with fear, this purgation too may be either medicinal or drug-like.
Actually, I rather thought he pre-dates horror movies.
I've been skimming...
... the rather less poetic £2,381,807 Report of the Litvinenko Inquiry. It's amazing stuff, with amazing detail. Good for several post-Cold War thrillers at least, I suspect. (Link.)
I enjoy...
... this lady's sense of humour:
It's taken me...
... until now to discover where Cinnamon had tucked away its System Information.
I've yet to discover how to refresh a folder display.
As 10cc put it:
"I got a letter from my broker,
He say he broker than me."
My ISA savings rate is dropping to a not very exciting 0.95% — there's an interesting phrase in their letter:
We've made sure that no interest rates will fall below 0.10% gross p.a. on this occasion.
Time to resume...
... using one of my PCs instead of simply playing with it. Kodi data stub verification is calling to me. "Haven't you finished that yet?" Nice lunch, by the way. And the sun is pleasantly warm.
Automated...
... phone calls that start "Now that winter is here..." get very short shrift. They do seem to imply a basic lack of market research for this location at this time of year.
The trouble...
... with listening to lots of nice music, from what are essentially sampler CDs, is that you want to rush out and buy too much good stuff. I've restrained myself to the soundtrack music for the film "Moon" by Clint Mansell. So far.
Cinnamon has crashed, and recovered, about four more times so far today. If it crashes this often, I'm not surprised the developers also wrote a "recover" routine!
[Pause]
Having physically touched nearly 2,300 silver disks during this latest tedious "stock check", I've just failed to stumble across "Nathan Barley" — in the sense that my DB suggests it occupies the CaseLogic slot that is actually currently occupied by Peter Kosminsky's play "The Government Inspector". This is annoying, but I'm now too tired to sort it out.