2011 — 22 June: Wednesday
Having just checked my car insurance, bearing in mind the ungracious 'white van man' chap who has just chosen as his morning parking space one third of the entry to my little front driveway, I shall squeeze out past him and refill my emptying larder before what looks like a batch of rain heading this way actually gets here.
It may be uncharitably unfair of me1 but I've long tended to regard the Insurance industry as being peddlars of what used to be called, in the computing industry, FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). It's certainly the case that I've made precisely one insurance claim during what it may be uncharitably unfair of me to term my "adult life". And that was for four roof tiles damaged during that nasty storm that wasn't quite a hurricane in 1987.
Waterbed disasters? No chance. Leaking radiators? Forget it. As for even contemplating insuring the 50" plasma screen TV back in 2002? Only if you nominate two key holders available 24/7 to drive to the house at 20 minutes notice... and only if you also agree to fit infrared motion detectors connected by a dedicated phone line to the local copper shop (or some such nonsense).
As I said to Carol at the time:
This morning I was delayed on the way in by the necessity of enjoying a visit from yet another security firm as we are currently in mild disagreement with our house contents insurance company ... over what further steps of an expensive technological remote signalling intrusion detection nature we should now be taking to deter and/or detect intruders. I drafted a very rude note to the young lady concerned in the certain knowledge that Christa wouldn't let me send it, but she came very close to letting me, which will give you some idea of our present level of frustration.
The same Insurance company (no longer the one I use nowadays, by the way) had no problem with a collection of books of far higher value than the TV "because nobody breaks into a suburban house on a little housing estate and steals books, sir". Why do I mention this? Well, last night I learned that:
From 20th June 2011, failing to renew motor insurance could mean a fine of up to £1,000 and the car going to the crusher — and that can apply even if the vehicle is locked away in a garage with its wheels removed.
Google maps...
... draws an impressive blank when I ask it to zoom in on the place pictured in the story here:
I happen to know, however, that it's about four miles (as the glowing crow flies) upstream from my friend Carol's little village on the banks of the Hudson. As for the weakening of safety standards; don't think for a minute that that trick hasn't already been used in our own green and peasant gland. Here's an example from the 1950s:
To our dismay, this showed that the site did not comply with the safety distances specified by the health physicists. That was easily put right; with the assumption of a 99% containment the site was unsatisfactory, so we assumed, more realistically, a 99.9% containment, and by doing this we established the fact that the site [Dounreay] was perfect...
My chum Ian...
... yesterday was noticing, and remarking on, occasional pauses as he tried to find le mot juste. Not exactly aphasia; more a combination of his current meds and his more-or-less inverted day/night cycle — I mustn't forget he'd made a special effort to get up in time to greet me 24 hours ago. Recall the amusing complaint in a recent "Ansible" from Geoff Ryman? :-)
I wonder if I'm the only person who sees the Google Chrome 'logo'...
... and is forever reminded of the "Simon" electronic toy I bought on a trip to Hamleys in London to numb the pain of Thatcher's General Election victory in 1979?
While cruising through my music collection...
... with Michelle last Saturday2, we noted the original cast 'concept album' recording of "Evita" that I mentioned here. I just tried playing it a few minutes ago but had to stop if I still wanted to be able to use my eyes. Amazingly powerful stuff. So it was over to the remastered Alan Parsons "I Robot" therefore. Positronic brains are much less emotional. (The lack of a comma was to avoid legal problems with the Asimov title while it was under a 10-year film studio option.)
I finally saw my chance, and have just nipped out to put the car back in the garage while the assorted vans and trucks cluttering up the space hereabouts were being moved around to make room for a rubbish collecting van. There are occasional hints of blue sky now that it's stopped raining.
I had been a little disheartened with the results of my initial cheap and cheerful OCR experiment on Monday afternoon, and equally put off by the high cost of, and the indifferent user comments made about, various of the "professional" packages. So I decided why not give the facilities built-in to my latest Canon scanner software one last proper "go"? I used the same fragment of printed text, scanned at 300dpi in colour and, almost before I'd pressed the 'save' button, I was looking at a temporary text file in my accustomed editor. Click the pic to see:
Still a few bugs in the system
It seems to have a hard time differentiating between 'letter' and 'space', but did somewhat better than the "Simple OCR" program. Time (15:23) for my next cuppa, I think.
Jonathan Corum
Who he? He devised the CSS behind the web page layout that I adapted to use with 'molehole'. I note, with some amusement, this amazing graphic by him that accompanies a surprisingly interesting article about tiny worms. (Link.)
Much later
When Christa and I last watched "House" we watched the broadcasts (though I went on to buy the boxed sets as they became available). I was thus blissfully unaware until I started my recent round of catching up (Seasons #4 to #6) and re-watching (Seasons #1 to #3) of the existence of extras on these DVDs of several hilarious "Valley Girl" dialogue versions of key scenes. I may be slow, but I get there in the end (it seems). Like totally bitchin'.
I regret to say I'm old enough to remember when you were both lucky and grateful to have just the one working CPU to contend with. With rather less than 64-bit addressing, too!
"Goodbye to all that" as Robert Graves might have said, back in 1929.