2016 — 12 November: Saturday
Each year1 seems just that bit marginally easier to contemplate once I've hurdled the horror-show anniversary of Christa's death. Crazy? Maybe, but that's the way it is. "It is what it is!"
Music continues to help
Indeed, speaking of which, I left the Humax PVR running last night to capture the 1972 BBC "Omnibus" documentary about Leonard Cohen, and a 1973 film by Tony Palmer: "Bird on a wire" about Cohen's 1972 European tour (long feared lost, I gather). I must admit I was not very keen on Cohen's "music to slit your wrists by" back in the day, but it's steadily grown on me (as it were) over the last 40+ years.
Even cover versions of it. [Pause] And a tip of the hat to Elizabeth Alker, who played a lovely piece...
... that resulted (after the usual flurry of online delving) in three album downloads from an ongoing recording project I'd been unaware of. Glorious stuff.
Six years ago...
... I had just finished building BlackBeast Mk I. This was the six-core AMD PC that still lives on — albeit with a newer motherboard and an Intel i7 2600K CPU transplant back in December 2011 — underneath Brian's desk these days.
Having started...
... from an El Reg piece on undisclosed software vulnerabilities leading to a rapid "takeover" of a Google Pixel device, and a large cash prize, I hopped from it to a further series of interesting reads, suggested by various comments being made.
- The one here, for example, purported to explain how to crash Systemd with a command short enough to fit in a Tweet. (Not unlike the killing thought 'doom' met by Greco in Ted Chiang's story "Understand"!)
- This next piece was partly about innate software problems that can be avoided by (for example) formal verification. When I recall (with something of a shudder) my own limited exposure to the Zed specification language I moved hastily along.
- And here's a dissection of the piece (or was it a "tantrum"?) about Systemd
Now, where's that job ad for a trainer of performing elephants? And — more importantly — what about some (late) lunch?
To my mild horror...
... I've realised that I'm a couple of seasons "behind" with my watching of "Bones". Since I've just ordered the latest set, I've got some catching-up to do. It's a hard life...