h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

OK I've pulled an all-nighter and shall try to sleep later this afternoon if I can, because Sethu and I are going out tonight and I want to dress up moderately smartly. Not in my linen suit - it's still being mended - but in my Trenery trousers and shirt from Mnandi. I'll have another bath or a shower today. Better put the water on.

I did some good techie stuff tonight but I've got a major undertaking still to do: I need to reload an OS onto my Netbook. I am going to try looking for a slimmer version of Linux for it. I would ask at Peet's but it isn't playing ball at the moment.

I need one that will detect the non-standard screen size of the Netbook. Ubuntu does this out of the box and I hope Mint does too. Of course any Linux I eventually install will have to be MATE-compatible. I cannot operate a computer with anything other than GNOME 2.

I'm pleased with the work I've done on my den. The only downer is my Indian brass anglepoise has completely died. I'll have to take it to an electrician for mending. I know who might be able to do that for me. I would do it myself but I can't seem to get it undone to get at the innards. Perhaps I'll have another go when I'm more compos mentis.

Been chatting with S. on Facebook which is always nice. She's a lovely woman. Very fond of her.

Sethu is just discovering how wicked the world is. I feel sorry for her, having to discover all this bad stuff.

The building work on the downstairs flat is driving me up the wall. I literally couldn't have a telephone conversation with the collaborator on my book because of it. I am actually really pessed off now.

OK I am downloading Precise Puppy and the Gnome 2 desktop for it. I shall have to do a bit of research and also battle with making a bootable USB stick. I've done that once before and it worked, so I hope to be able to do it again. I am going to try to load Puppy onto my Lenovo netbook. I don't know whether it will be able to manage the webcam -- or whatever else it cannot do, e.g. wireless printing, but we shall see. I don't actually need the lenovo to do anything more than browse and send emails actually. Because it's basically for emailing in to Revelation TV while I'm watching it on the lounge television. But the wifi might not reach to there.

Come to think of it, will Puppy work with the wifi? Hmm. Peet's is down so I can't ask bokkie.

I am going to procure a turntable and see about adding to my collection of Vinyl, although it is said that vinyl these days is nothing like it was in the old days. I can't for the moment remember what i've done with my box of records but they are somewhere. I shall annoyingly need to purchase a phono preamp kit, which will mean another wait, but I should like the entire amp system to be analogue, no digital parts anywhere, so that the whole thing is analogue, from turntable to brain. That, of course, would be super good. And I shall need a CD player, preferably one with a USB input, possibly the same as the Cambridge Audio one I have in my den. I have a Tivoli Model One radio, which I plan to keep tuned to the transmitter in here, so that I use the radio in here to tune into the station and listen to it in the drawing room. Given that I hope to remain in this flat until my late old age, it seems reasonable to add some decent hifi into the drawing room, so that I can enjoy music in there if or when I accumulate other people in my immediate life. Of course that may not happen, and I could not have Yolock in here because our tastes in music are so different and I couldn't stand the constant loud music. If Beejong were to come here, as I hoped, and as she wanted a couple of years ago, then she should have some nice equipment to play her music on. But I don't know whether I shall ever see Beejong again. It is a delicious feeling, actually, being middle aged and single and completely free. Many, many of my contemporaries would give their eye teeth to be in the position I'm in. So I must praise the Lord my God and bless his holy Name for the privilege he has granted me.

I plan also to work every day now, I am going to make Words from the Word into a multi-volume reference library for Biblical vocabulary. I am also going, immediately, to write a treatise on the renewal of the mind. This is something about which I have thought at great length, having undergone three separate renewals of my mind in my career as a believer in the Lord of Heaven and Earth. I have been thinking for over 20 years about all this stuff. I have developed a philosophy to undergird my work, but what I want to write, without reference to any other hand book, is a practical manual for believers to use in the lifelong task of the renewal of the mind.

You see people like Toojat are fine spiritually, but their minds and souls are all over the place. They forget the balance of the Great Commendment, to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, with all our souls, with all our minds and with all our strength. They concentrate only on the heart, and their minds are left fallow, and grow weeds. Dearest Boojang is the best mind I've encountered and she's only young. But Toojat has an almost entirely unrenewed mind and that causes our Headmaster a lot of grief. Well it's caused me a lot of grief too, for that matter.

So I'm going to set about writing again, only this time all for myself and my readership, and not listenership like it was before. I have Jongle to thank for the break into finding my voice, but it's time I moved on; Suujat certainly has.

So I must buy a phono preamp. Bummer. I must get around to that earlystones. In fact I could do it today, because 6pm our time is 9am their time. OK coolest.

The window people are coming tomorrow after Sethu posed as my wife. Well let's hope they come, anyway.

The Xhosa have this problem of jealousy. It's very, very boring.

The window people are supposed to come tomorrow... 10.30, they said. Let's see if they actually come. They were here the other day for one of the other residents in the block. I just need the window in here secure against the rain, so that I can relax in winter and not be continually worrying about the rain getting in. However I have moved the big PC from the desk in here into the lounge, and I have the cheapoid Gigabyte netbook mainly, it has to be said, as a scanning machine. So anyway. I periodically upgrade the technologies in my flat and the latest upgrade has produced the best configuration EVAH!

I think that five of my machines have SSDs. One of them has an SSD boot drive and a large-capacity physical drive for data. This is the one I am leery of upgrading because it also has an external sound card, which I used to use to record my radio pieces. I'm going to keep this machine running Lucid, mainly because it's so rarely used. There are two Netbooks, one a good quality one, whose power plug has become ill-fitting, and which needs, I think, to be wired permamently in, and one cheap and nasty one, which has a surprisingly large solid state drive! And the nice Netbook also has an SSD! And the Ultrabook has an SSD! And I think even the Music Machine has an SSD! The other two machines, the Lounge Television Engine and the Entz Machine, are both cheapo PCs with only the very basics. But they both do their job admirably well. I think both of them are running Ubuntu Precise. As is the Gigabyte, with Mate I think, and the Lenovo will soon be running Mint with Mate, as does the Ultrabook. I have to burn a DVD with Mint/MATE and load it into the Lenovo. It would be quicker if I loaded the ISO onto a bootable USB stick - AND I think I know how to do that... for has not Ubuntu got an utility which creates such bootable sticks and all you need is an ISO? If so I can create the stick on the Ultrabook and I don't need to burn any DVDs at all. First I must check the checksum.

Right, I have loaded a USB stick with Linux Mint Petra (MATE edition).

This means that all I have to do now, to rescue my Lenovo Netbook, is plug the USB stick into a hole in the side and boot up.

I hope the boot mechanism will boot from a USB stick without my having to go into BIOS but if I do it is a matter of seconds to make it happen. How exciting! I'm going to have a new Netbook!

The only thing is that the power plug is loose and I need to have that either mended or the power supply hardwired into the machine. But that would be an extreme measure, because I may in the future desire to use the Netbook on battery power. Well. For the time being I use Presstick to hold the power plug in position.

Arcadia has fallen, eh? This is one of the most moving episodes I've ever seen. The worst one was when Clara was a Dalek. That was heartbreaking and terrifying at the same time.

I watched an old Who with the Daleks and there was a lot of continuity with H2G2 - Tom Baker was reading "On the Origins of the Universe" by Oolon Coluphid. I mean to say. That was wonderful; the continuity with H2G2 made me smile and happy as a happy man on National Happy Day in Happytown, Happy County, Happyland.

Oolon Coluphid. That made me laugh and smile, even though my laughter was a snarl of isolation and my smile unwarming to any heart other than my own.

Did I know I should have to suffer such suffering? Is that why I weep and weep?

I have to finish handing out my book. Then I have to finish the book proper. Then I have to start on Volume 2. Then I have to write more, more.

I ought to finish the work to transform the Elegy for Solo Cello into the Threnody for Piano Quartet. With a keening violin descant, weeping, weeping. The Threnody will be me in music.

I am good at writing sad music aren't I.

The In Memoriam is sad. Does it need revision? "Sustained anguish" said Andrew's Tess. It's funny because the anguished music was actually a setting of Song of Solomon 1:1-4. I tried setting those wonderful words and all I could do was mourn and weep.

And I was speaking my soul to Sethu and my ear unblocked, just for a tiny moment. It unblocked once before, in Johannesburg some years ago. I must open and open and open and yash'a please, and all the evil must slither out of my body into the Presence of Jesus to be judged and sentenced to eternal fire, for making my life a literal hell in time.

And you know what, I have absolutely no mercy at all, for evil spirits. "Have you come to torment us? Have you come to judge us? Is it time?" Yes, the time is coming, and the time is now, for you. Burn! in hell, you evil unclean hating. For I am to judge you, I and my brothers, the Father's sons, we judge you and we find you GUILTY and we sentence you and the angelic host - yeah, even the armies of the LORD will carry out the sentences that we, even we proclaim upon your stinking electricities. For you shall never die, but live in hate eternally tormented in the lake of fire that God's prepared for the Debil and his Angels all, shall all alike be burned in dry hot fire forever and forever more, Death, thou shalt be separated from your earthly hosts and twist in tormentation and regretful noisome toil i' th' flames, and shall forever hate, and I for one shall laugh at you the mockeries with which you have mocked my Brother and his brothers.

I hereby serve you notice that I your worst nightmare am come to judge and the day is coming and the day is NOW when I, yes I shall tweezerpluck you out and throw you burning into burning fire.

And the smoke from your burning shall rise before the Lamb and before his brethren forever; and of the measurement of your torment shall there be no end. I, even I have decreed it.

You have feared in me enough, now fear you th' evil flame, o Stinking one. Fear, fear, O Hate. Hear, hate: fear now your hosts.