Four miscellanous rambles

1. Apparently the relationship between my two flatmates has broken down to the extent that one of them is moving out in a few weeks. When she told me, Fede said had I not noticed their excessive reticenza? The state of guerra freda? Well I hadn't; in my British way I thought that this was just civilised interaction between people who have to live very closely together. But apparently they used to spend pretty much all their time together, eating together, partying together, etc. I feel a bit sad about this, but not as much as I should, because I can't quite get past my relief that, if they are going to have irreconcilable differences, they have chosen to express them through quietness. It is a shame though, they're both nice people, and good company.

2. I read Martin Chuzzlewit. I enjoyed it, and it also challenged me by providing the example of Mark Tapley, who seeks out difficult situations so that he can be cheerful in them in a way which is a credit to him; but is always being foiled by things turning out to be not that bad so that his cheerfulness is natural and not creditable at all, a great sorrow to him. I do not live in this style. Do I rejoice at the difficulties of charters as an opportunity to be creditably cheerful? No I do not. I might try for a bit. I doubt it will stick. Still, it's true that by providing opportunities for me to be ignorant in a huge variety of areas charters are probably very good for my character. I am unlikely, for example, to become proud while working on them. I have just given up on a charter that contains the word enarihtmata in the phrase eorum confirmatione quorum inferius enarihtmata liquescunt caraxata (introducing the witness list). Any suggestions gratefully received. Seriously, I'd particularly welcome something which enabled me to emend the word enarihtmata out of existence. It's a silly word, and it offends me. I have a feeling I ought to try writing it in various tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-century scripts, and then squint at it until it resolves into something which the thirteenth-century cartulary scribe might plausibly have misread. Alas, it's more likely that it's the old how-do-you-edit-an-idiot problem again. My guess is that it's the work of a forger who is trying too hard. It's S 799 if you're interested; due to technical difficulties you'd currently have to go here for a text.

3. The podcasts of the Japanese Popstars are helping keep my energy levels up. Their music is good too, although it does reference Only Fools and Horses rather a lot.

4. Firefox 3 keeps crashing. Firefox 2 used to crash on me quite often, but not this much. I assume it's my nice little laptop's fault, because Sony messed about with the software on it. When I get home a friend has offered to reinstall everything for me and put in a new hard drive. But I do like the fact that in Firefox 3 you can have smart bookmarks on your bookmarks toolbar. I have one now for all bookmarks tagged myspace so that I can listen to interesting music that I don't own when I feel the need; I click on the bookmark and up pop all the options.