2014 — 23 July: Wednesday
In an attempt to ignore the news1 I've been taking a refreshing dip this morning into the world of Fantagraphics, whose library could all too easily see off what's left of my pension. And time remaining on Earth. Still, having polished off the last of the Charles Stross "Laundry Files" (apart from a handful of short stories) what's a chap to do? I'm bereft, I tell you. It's all Len's fault.
I await the delivery of that pair of Stefan Zweig books with interest to find out what happens next, too. I'm still a bit puzzled by how I knew his name yet can find no trace evidence of why I should in any of BlackBeast's more usual hiding places.
There's a tad...
... of scheduled hi-tech hi-jinks after lunch today. Aforementioned Len will be attempting to bend my Ubuntu 14.04LTS laptop PC into a Mint 17 shape. Something I have now twice failed to manage. Report to follow. Perhaps.
Politics of envy?
My modest mite looks ever more so.
Blair clearly regards £20m as modest. On the day when the boss of Tesco is ousted for failure and could walk away with close to £10m plus £11m in pension, ordinary people must wonder at the world these people inhabit. As Robert Maxwell once said when asked about his riches, making the first million is easy because you can spend it. When there is nothing left to buy you have to just want money.
Has he finished bringing peace to the Middle East yet, I wonder? Just askin'. I actually met Maxwell once. Never met Bliar. Not absolutely sure I want to, either.
Is nothing sacred?
Again, just askin'.
I couldn't...
... have put it better myself:
Unfortunately for the streaming providers, quality isn't all in their hands. When it comes to discs, a flaky broadband connection or buggy BT Homehub can't derail the experience — something that can't be said for streaming.
There's little worse than settling down for an evening movie and watching it buffer for five minutes, before playing 30 seconds then buffering again. And in a world where everything but the kitchen sink is essentially a very
expensive paperweight when the internet connection fails, it's nice to know that at least the option of a film night is available.
As well as the option of a film night, of course, it's also nice to have a choice of films you actually want to watch.
Zombie Ivy Leaguers?
Beautifully written, and very depressing reading. You have been warned. It's written by the Ivy League author of "A Jane Austen Education" (fabulous book, needless to say). (Article link.)
Lucky me
Microsoft endowed me with an important "OneDrive reliability update" this morning. And offered me an optional driver update for a previous graphics card, too. What's it all about, Alfie?
Meanwhile, my recalcitrant Laptop PC is now stuffed simply full of Minty 17 freshness, 64-bit, and even knows how to talk over a wired Ethernet connection. The BIOS setting needed to persuade it to treat the built-in hard drive as a USB device, and thus trick / persuade it into then rebooting from a 'Live' USB stick distro temporarily took some while to stumble across. But it all installed, in record time. Thanks, Len!
[Pause]
Of course, as soon as I'd made a bite to eat for my evening hunger-depressed-by-heat snack, and then got the round tuit needed to haul it out of the carrier bag, plug it in, dig out a spare network cable, yada, yada, and let it loose within the confines of Technology Towers, what does it do? That's right; it promptly demands feeding with 268MB of "good, new stuff".
Once upon a time...
... there was briefly2 in Soton a nice shop called "Borders", from whose DVD shelves I snaffled "In Bruges" (an excellent little film) just over five years ago. But until this morning, in Asda, I had somehow managed to overlook the fact that its director, Martin McDonagh, having started with an award-winning short film "Six Shooter" went on to make "Seven Psychopaths". (Funnily enough, he'd also been a producer for "The Guard" — directed by his brother — that I'd also picked up [also in Asda], and also unknown to me when I bought it.)
Anyway, bang goes another fiver.