Foot

My ankle seems nearly better. At the moment I am planning on starting to run again next week.

Viv bought me an ankle brace, something like a foot girdle, yesterday and it has felt great all day today.

On my dog walk today I ran into a homeless guy I have seen around on and off since November. He smells of formaldehyde but seems harmless, kind of sweet, and horribly, terminally lost. He seems to be moving to to the underbrush of a greensward in the neighborhood.

He told me it has been a very cold winter for him and that he was excited about this new toy he’d just bought, a small plastic model of an airplane.

Future

Not counting iOS devices, I have around seven conventional computers I use daily around the house for this and that. Two are media-oriented, three are utility machines, one’s a spare, and maybe I actually only have six machines I use daily.

I have at least ten retired or non-functional machines, going back to a Power Computing Mac clone circa 1992. I may have an older PPC tower as well, but nothing prior to the PPC event horizon, although I do have a no-HD pre-486 laptop.

Not too long ago, sometime around 2002, I jettisoned some pre-PPC Macs and monochrome silver-and-blue LCD display 8086 laptop built by Zenith, apparently from the Senate or the Congress or something. I have no idea how it came to me.

Including nonconventional computers in the house (iOS, dedicated media, and programmable networking) the total potential IP count for roughly current devices adds six iOS devices, two media devices (yes,in addition to the other media units) and eight networking devices.

I’m pretty sure this is overkill.

A step back

The Mini in the basement is faltering under the latest prerelease version of XBMC, and it looks like I’m gonna have to pull the unit in favor of an equally decrepit MacBook (wait, it is so old it might actually be a PowerBook) with a more powerful GPU and more RAM.

However, doing so crosses the C-note boundary, and I will be looking into other options for configurable playback devices. The jailbroken Apple TV 2, running XBMC, is a clear contender.

I am pleased to report I was able to access live EyeTV streams via Beenje’s XBMC add on, EyeTV Parser. The add-on only features live streams under the Eden prerelease, though.

By god, I think I am beginning to grok this vast space of useless knowledge. For fuxache, it should not require an experienced computer person to tax the sum of their networking and hardware knowledge to accomplish this stuff, which amounts to watching TV.

Squint

Goddammit, I have mislaid my glasses and am now wearing backups. This may be a new record. I have had the black bifocals for less than six months.

Valerian

The Roman emperor Valerian was apparently kept in chains and, according to scuttlebutt, used as a stepping stool by is Sassanid captor. After dying (“from shame,” later sources say) his skin was apparently taxidermied for continued celebratory display. Scholars dispute much of the narrative.

Still, who wouldn’t want to trot out your local emperor or oligarch for abuse?