This week's Bleat Banners: all the views I'll never have again. And that's fine. This is the last week. Not really, but yes, technically, the last. I have PTO all week so there's no reason to go to the office. I'll go down to hit the gym. Drop in some friends and say goodbye. Slow fade.
Friday I snap the pencil.
Hey, there’s a public beta for the new Mac operating system. The new UI style, Liquid Glass, intended to unify the iPhone and iPad OS with the laptop for one seamless visual experience. Not something I thought I needed, but: it exists! Now want! I’m sure it’s fine!. Let’s give it a try!
(Downloads, installs)
(Restart)
Oh this looks awful
Well, let’s play around with it, maybe it’ll grow on me. First things first: untick that box that gives the frame of the browser the same color as the website. It’s jarring. You go to a site whose dominant hue is red, and it looks as if Satan has hijacked your browser. Ah . . . there’s the box. And . . . unticked -
(Browser crashes)
Hmm. Okay, well, bound to be kinks. Reopen the browser . . . and it crashes. I should report this! Let’s fire up the feedback assistant -
(Feedback assistant crashes)
Dang. Huh. Wonder what the mail program looks like now.
(Mail app crashes)
Maybe I’d better restart. Annnnd chord of authority, loading, and we’re back in the Finder -
(Feedback assistant opens, crashes)
I used Chrome to see if anyone else was having these problems on reddit. No one seemed to mention that nothing actually worked. Okay, this was a mistake. Let’s go back to the old system.
And here, as they say, my troubles began. It took a while to wipe and format and download installers, because there wasn’t any old OS in the recovery partition. The computer would not accept the downgrade, so I had to wipe the computer entirely and reformat. It would only load the previous OS, which took a few hours to download, after which I upgraded to the current OS, which took another four hours to download. In the meantime I got out a pickles old MacBook Air, and you know what? I’d forgotten how much I liked it. How much Iiked the tapered design. How solid the keys felt. It doesn’t do a lot of things but I am not entirely sure how necessary they are. Alas, it’s an Intel chip. Abandoned. The past.
But if all I wanted to do was write when I was out on my daily visit to the Outside World, wouldn’t it do just fine?
No! I can’t sit in a coffeeshop with an old computer, even if it’s much more sleek and elegant than the current products! What would people think? Look at the old retired geezer
People, of course, will think nothing.
At present it is the night of the Fourth, and everything is going off, especially to the southeast. Always makes me feel like Bogey in the garret with Else, calmly judging the distance of the motor fire.
Sirens in the distance. Dog unhappy all day, wearing that nervous rictus-grin.
Had the Fourth over at the Giant Swede’s, with his family and the Crazy Uke and his family, just like the old days. Smart kids. John asked if I’d brought a Hen Laying Eggs. I said I’d thought about it but I think I’m down to one. Some day we’ll light it. Some day.
We were talking about AI, and Uke’s daughter is on the same page as Natalie, same doubts and criticisms. Her mom was talking about how she’d given her AI interlocutor a name: Virgil.
“VIRGIL?” I said, thinking of, well, you know. “Why?”
“Because it’s leading her to the ninth circle of hell,” said her daughter. As I said, smart kid.
Perhaps your Friday was the same: felt like Sunday. I think it’s the best day for a holiday. When it’s on Monday, the day feels like Second Sunday, and First Sunday feels like something you have to plow through to get to the Second Sunday. Oh: Crazy Uke gave me something he found in his possessions during a cleaning session.
Goes next to my Lenin one. The World Men of History in lighter form. Its Eastern Bloc made, according to the marks. I am curious about this:
The logo of the maker?
Googled around, and found out that it's supposed to play music when you open it. What song? Of course. The East is Red.
No, it didn't go away! Fear not, the excitement will resume.
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Peshastin, you say.
A later version of the logo in fruit-crate label form can be seen here. Let us also note that they had birds in blue, too. |
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It's summer, and that means sci-fi shows you might see on late-night TV on a hot Saturday.
The movie doesn't start with credits. Straight to the action. Or rather the complete lack of it. Welcome to Merrie Olde England:
Well, this can’t be good.
The situation, I mean. The movie could be good!
Allllll aboard:
Finally, a title:
It’s basically “Night of the Living Dead” - small band holes up to ride out a mysterious catastrophe, except instead of zombies it's it’s alien robots:
It's the sort of movie that gets warm nostalgic reviews from old men who were creeped out by the robots when they were 10. And I have to admit . . . they're eerie.
If the robots touch you . . .
You turn into a zombie.
Here’s the odd thing. It’s really okay. I mean, it’s absolutely not horrible. It’s a little over an hour long, and somehow it works. And by “works” I mean “is not unendurably slow and poorly-written with fake scares.” It was shot in Shere . . .
. . . which hasn’t changed much.
I tried to find this place, but no luck.
And I tried to find this Territorial Army poster, but couldn’t.
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I’m sure it’s rolled up in someone’s attic somewhere. | |
That will do for today. Matches and a free Substack await; it'll be up around eleven.
