CABINET OF CURIOSITIES (NEW CONCEPTS)

[Mick Harper]

I forgot to mention -- I thought you might be getting bored with the saga -- that Virgin did finally resolve the problem

[Mick Harper]

Those of you who live in the good ol' AED can now buy Revisionist Historiography in your own currency!

[Mick Harper]

It’s All So Predictable Dept

Come on, hands up, who remembers Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass? You know, the pop/Latin/jazz instrumentalists who released 13 albums in the sixties, twelve of which went gold. 'Course you do -- in 1966, they outsold the Beatles. But do you remember that

* Herb Alpert emigrated from Eastern Europe; his mother from Hungary, his father from Kiev.
* Although four band members were Italian-Americans, none could properly be called Latino.
* Their great hits (El Presidente, Adios Mi Corazon, El Garbanzo, Lonely Bull, Mexican Road Race, Cantina Blue) were composed by Solomon Lachoff.
* With all that dosh Herb Alpert co-founded A&M Records and could at last begin signing up real Latino artistes. You must remember them: Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Procol Harum, the Police.

Aye, pet, they dinna make 'em like tha' the noo. (Sorry, I can't do a Mexican accent. Or indeed any accent. Unlike my niece, who reports that saying "one hundo" -- see the TV thread -- in a Scottish accent is going down a storm in Bristol. Look out for it where you live.)

[Mick Harper]

An interesting development here https://indubitablyodin.medium.com/an-uncensored-library-created-in-minecraft-defies-authoritarianism-a145cfd08846

Basically they've inserted an uncensored library into the game of Minecraft on the assumption that people living under authoritarian governments might be allowed to play Minecraft even though the state has closed down access to other sources of information. This strikes me as an extremely forlorn hope but cutting its citizens off from playing Minecraft might do some beneficial harm to censorious regimes.

This particular exercise looks to be excessively liberal and excessively small scale but mighty oaks might grow from the idea.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

I promised myself that once the book was successfully on the stocks and we were out of the world cup I'd give the flat a really good tidy. I didn't say which world cup, did I?

[Mick Harper]

Omen Corner

How many sausages are there in a pack of Twelve Tesco Finest Chipolatas? Good, well done, I'm starting you off with an easy one today. Second question: when someone gets thirteen just before Christmas and The Dark One is supposed to reveal himself before a Christmas in the twenty-first century according to an ancient Aztec prophecy, what should he -- it probably will be a he -- do about it?

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

When you're forced to buy a new mouse mat and it comes with one of these trendy foam wrist-rests at one end and you find this a total nuisance since you've become accustomed to not using one for the lifetime of a mouse mat (ten to fifteen years) try doing what I did after several days of vexatious discomfort. Turn the mouse mat through 180 degrees and, presto, the foam wrist-rest becomes an unnecessary but at least not bothersome guard against pushing your mouse too far in that direction. I'll make a YouTube showing you how to do this if asked.

[Mick Harper]

When bringing out a book the normal drill is to send out review copies to media and 'influencers'. In fact it is the only major expense in these days of "print yer book for free, squire?" (The five years writing the wretched thing comes for free as well.) However, when bringing out a book that is aimed solely at the academic market, and aimed squarely at dishing the academic market, there isn't any media to speak of and there aren't many influencers either.

So one is reduced to sending it to the people blackguarded in the book and hoping they over-react. But here's the thing. It's cheaper to send them an Amazon 'present' (of the book with a well-chosen message in less than three hundred characters) than buy copies yourself and start sending them out with wheedling letters.

All was going well until it came time to send a copy to the Institut et Musée Voltaire in Geneva a.k.a. Les Delices, Voltaire's town house in exile during the eighteenth century and where Theodore Besterman pursued his criminal enterprises in the twentieth. I've sent books from France, Germany, Spain, Italy and America to more countries than FIFA can bribe but suddenly nobody would touch a book going to Switzerland. Where, I might remind you, FIFA is headquartered.

[Mick Harper]

What a state the state's in! No trains, no post, nurses piling up in the streets. What this country needs is a national holiday to put a smile back on its face. Make it two days to show it's special. We could all buy presents for one another to give the economy a boost. It's win-win.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I see de Hamel has published a follow up book The Posthumous Papers Of The Manuscripts Club, according to the blurb it's about folks' fascination with collecting manuscripts and touches on a keeper at a British museum as well as a Greek forger. What a great idea, where did he get it from?

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

Dangerous, From Tesco

[Mick Harper]

I decided to change my keyboard on account I couldn't make out which key is which due to a decade of hammering on them and decided, quite unlike me, to treat myself to a top o' the line Logitech Signature. After the usual bafflement of not being told how to install it (e.g. you had to guess there would be a little white strip of paper on the back you had to pull out to get it started) I find they have changed the keyboard layout so I no longer know which letter is which.

Fortunately I am (however theoretically) a touch typist so I ignore what Logitech says is, say, the A key and press the Q key instead. Much as I did before really, using an educated guess. It's an AZERTY keyboard not a QWERTY one. When did it change and why didn't Amazon warn me or offer me a standard layout?