pumpkinstrokemarrow

Gloss wearing off the new computer a little. Had a crash on take-off yesterday. Something about inappropriate media to boot from - maybe some untoward interaction with the flashy screen. But got it going again on the third attempt. And then I noticed that the default fonts in powerpoint are not quite right. Over the centuries people have put a lot of effort into making fonts legible on the printed page in all kinds of circumstances and conditions. But I doubt whether the same investment has been made in screen fonts - they are just photocopies of the old paper fonts. The result in this case being that the pixellation of the screen interferes in an odd way with pixellation of the font, with letters appearing on the screen in what appears to be a slightly random boldness. Not very attractive at all. Presumably one can have the same sort of problem with a laser printer although I have never noticed it. And presumably one does not with paper and type because these are high resolution analogue media. No mutually prime numbers to interfere with each other; or put another way with mapping a pixel box of one size onto a pixel box of a slightly differant size. No known neat way to do this.

Broad beans continue to advance on the allotment and I now have two rows in and the third row well under way. In the course of which I had the second shirt-off event of the year - the first having taken place some time in January. Weather most odd: very warm during the day but sharp frosts at night. At least we had sharp frosts on Sunday and Monday morning. Mist today.

And it was very warm at Hyde Park on Saturday with lots of people pulled out. Not a place we have been to properly for quite a long time so plenty to see. I had forgotten how many sick looking trees (presumably elms being kept alive somehow in the face of Dutch elm disease) there are in the Western part of the park - although one is pleased to see that they are gradually being replaced by new planting. And I had forgotten how big the round pond was. No model boats though. Queensway still there but no tea and cake shops. Had to make do with the artists cafe and an inferior cake with an Italian name starting with a T - which was a pity because they are usually very good and sometimes come in small bowls rather than in cake format. Quite a lot of young ladies in Lycra showing off their exercises - presumably from the US. They go in for that kind of thing there. And quite a lot of young men from various communities showing off on various kinds of skates, complete with a small contingent of groupies. Excellent light for looking at ponds. Tuna fish sandwich picnic in said park so an economical day. Let's hope the tuna were the renewable sort.

Breakfast spoilt today by reading in the DT that one of our newsreaders gets paid £1m or so a year. Good work if you can get it, but it is a mystery to me why the people who broadcast news programs think it is necessary to pay this sort of money for someone to read from an autocue. There must be thousands of more or less presentable people in the country who would do a perfectly reasonable job for far less that said £1m. Perhaps the way forward would be to pay one person for the voice and another person for the face (and possibly a bit of shoulder). No-one need know that the face is miming and one would be getting the best of both worlds.