Breaking...

Last weekend paid a visit to my daughter at university in Manchester because her computer (built by me) had broken down (home weblog for part of the grisly story), couldn't get it going, brought it home and thought that the new disk had gone - but I've now tried moving the cd onto a different IDE connection and things appear to be working. Unfortunately because of all the errors reported by fsck it looks as if a lot of the installation is munged.

See for changing attitude's response to the Primate's Communique.

10 books by the same author

This meme comes from Chasing Daisy.
I suppose like people of my age I must have read more than 10 Enid Blyton and probably Anthony Buckeridge (Jennings). W E Johns of course.

Maybe one gets to be more discriminatory when older - or I just have less time! There's Iris Murdoch still have most of these and I must revisit some as I've not read many for years except the Bell - I'm trying to recall the Abbess' remark about love from that novel but am currently failing..

I guess I must have read more than 10 J G Ballard's - or am I confusing short stories with books?

Somerset Maugham - I think but it was back at school.

Oh and there's the books I've read to children - do these count? - Awrdy's Thomas the Tank Engine books - shudder! Beatrix Potter - though I expect I read - or had read to me - these when I was young.

Are there really more than 10 George Orwell books?

ECDL idiocy

My wife has just started the ECDL courses. When signing up, the staff member had to enter the same details seven times - once for each course segment. This morning she receives seven identical letters - separate envelopes!

well it's best that I find out now!

Just discovered that the examiner I was going to have for Grade 8 is someone I've known since the 1970's - could have been red faces all round - urgent attempts to make things more honest!
.. four weeks to go ..

Keeping busy..

.. which is all to the good!

Getting into the rhythm of Grade VIII practice - all those scales. The teacher on the ABRSM forum obviously has a sense of humour - 'handful of scales', hmmmmm. Also finding an enthousiasm for trying other adventurous pieces - in addition to the list - calm down Kelvin! - not done that for years but the fingers seem to be a lot freer and there's all that time to be filled - but I hope - it won't be like that for long.

Then there's a newsletter which should have been produced in January gradually emerging - nothing long or complicated it is just getting around to it.

And then there's tracking down and fixing bugs in blackbox before the next release. Maybe I need to post a screenshot here, but go and have a look at lonely machines collection. I posted one at home here, it felt Ash Wednesday-ish and I've already moved on.

fishy screen saver

Hecate again enjoying a little computing


-
click on the pictures for larger versions!

And if you have a compliant cat the necessary command is:

xlock -mode atlantis

but you probably need Linux

Lost and now found!

I was beginning to wonder - but I've now found my Grade V Music theory certificate - dating from 1967 - that means my Grade 8 piano exams can go ahead - the ABRSM have that theory exam as a pre-requisite and I was beginning to think it was lost after nearly 40 years, though I gather - for a fee - they'll dig through their archives! Just need a little work on the Scales and the Aural!

Contracting is beginning to look a little more likely, just need some good estimates. If you want a Microsoft project look alike for Linux (or even Windows!) ganttproject looks pretty good, uses Java...