Trivia: Wednesday edition

Winter approaches. It's only 8:30 but it is already getting dark outside; it was so cold in the apartment today that I had to find a sweater. I shall go for a walk around the Feuersee after writing this, then early to bed (with the window partway open).

Spent the day working in earnest on the database, for the first time in a month, and was pleasantly surprised to see how good it is. One spends months buried up to the armpits in the oily, gritty, stinking mechanics of a project, focussing one's entire attention on a single ball-bearing here or an electric cable there, and quite lose sight of the whole, the complex and beautiful machine of which these are all merely components. Spoke to two customers about problems they were having with the database, one through the effects of an unexpected crash, the other through the consequences of ignorance and her refusal to remedy it. The expression "your own damned fault" rose to my mind but not my lips.

In other news let me recommend to your attention Jean's series of posts about her pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in 1996; insightful and moving, well written as always. My own trip (not a pilgrimage) tapered off inconclusively, as did my reporting on it here; I do have more to say and will say it, at some unspecified future date.

In other, other news this short film is supposedly funny, but I found it actually quite sad. [Updated] I'm not sure it was supposed to be funny. It's one of a series of five films (links on the same page above) and they're all pretty sad. Worth seeing.