There was a frost early this morning, but as I write this (9.18am) the temperature is already up to 5° C, and by 3pm it should reach 8° C - which is still fairly cold. I had hoped the the latest revision of the forecast would show a nicer day, and in one small way it does. A few of the dark clouds have turned to white clouds, but it also shows a slightly worse day with the sunny spells for midday (as shown in the screenshot above) replaced by white cloud. It may not get as cold tonight as it did last night, and so tomorrow should start without any frost, but otherwise it will be similar to today, but maybe with darker clouds.
 
   Yesterday was quite a busy day, but it was also fairly pleasant. Most of the day hinged on the delivery of my "new" £89.99 laptop. I must admit it came far sooner than expected, and a lot earlier than Amazon's prediction. After I finished writing yesterday morning, I only rested for 15 minutes before I started on the laptop.

  By the time I started on the laptop it had had at least half an hour, and maybe a bit more, to warm up after being stored in a freezing cold van for hours (and maybe overnight). I was worried that if I powered it on too early any internal condensation could cause damage. Before I turned it on I took out the hard disk with the Windows 7 installer on it, labelled it, and put it into store for some reason or another. It was a 12 year old hard disk, and could easily have been coming to the end of it's life.

  I replaced the hard disk with the solid state hard drive I had tried on the laptop I had been given, and have now written off as unrepairable. It had MX Linux 21.2 on it, and I expected it would boot OK, but for one reason or another it didn't. It was easy to install the latest version of MX Linux, and this time I didn't make the mistake of letting it look after itself. It only takes about 15 minutes to do a fresh install, and that is not too long to watch it, and give the mouse an occasional wiggle to make sure it doesn't blank the screen.

  The installation worked perfectly, and because I had preserved the home partition with things like a preferred desktop picture, and some icons, it was a few minutes work to configure the desktop to my preferences.  About the only thing I was not happy with was the laptops inbuilt web cam. I didn't think much of the picture, but I can probably blame that on the lighting - it points down onto the keyboard, and not at my face.

  At this point there is little. I installed some of my favourite programs, and played about testing stuff and the like, It was sort of pleasurable, and took me almost up to dinner time. The one other thing I did was to extract my older laptop, and accessories, from my laptop rucksack. The new one will now have that pleasure. The old laptop fits quite well into a rucksack that I once bought for shopping, but found it was smaller than expected. It makes a pretty good laptop rucksack though.

  My dinner was the second portion of Indian takeaway from the previous night. All I had eaten during the day was just 4 rice cakes with spreadable cheese on them, and by 6.30pm I was feeling quite hungry. In theory the Indian main course, small rice, and a small bombay aloo should have been quite sufficient, but somehow it didn't seem to be. I did notice that the main dish did seem to be smaller than usual even though in a large container.

  Maybe that was the reason it seemed to be not satisfying. It was probably only about 15 minutes before I wanted more, and I probably made a bad choice to "top myself up". It was a can of East European (possibly Estonian) baked beans with smoked bacon. European baked beans tend to have far less sugar in than American products, and so I hoped it would be safer, but that assumption probably only worked if eaten at midday, and not in the mid evening. Of course there was another consideration I didn't think of......

  Last night I seemed to sleep even better than the last few nights. One big difference was that I seemed to stay comfortable even when under the duvet for the majority of the night. I may be imagining things, but I think I may have got up less frequently for a pee in the night. Of course so much practice means I can almost do it with my eyes closed, and be back in bed asleep a few minutes after the deed is done. I may not remember every time.

  I had two partly memorable dreams, although I am not sure if one was actually a dream. The definite dream was a medley of dreamlets about buses, and in particular a fault with the bus computer. In the dream the computer controlled where the buses went, and took care of things like fares and printing the ticket. The computer failure meant buses were going out with the driver taking what he thought was the best route.

  This meant I was able to get a bus from Eltham (where it seemed I was) direct to Forest Hill. In fact the bus only got as far as Catford before the driver got off, and was not seen again. My friend, who used to be a bus driver, on a completely different type of bus, many years ago, decided to drive the bus to the Forest Hill depot. His control of the bus was not great to begin with, but he soon got the hang of it.

  When we arrived at the bus depot/garage we got off the bus, and were greeted by a bus inspector. He was moaning that all the tickets had gone haywire. He showed me a ticket that said return to Philadelphia (USA), fare £2.40 - on a BUS !! I'm sure there was more to that dream, but that is about all I can remember of it.

  The next dream may or not have been a dream. I could have been thinking about a possible plot for a book in periods while awake, or maybe some of it was dream, and some not. The idea was sort of comedy/drama. It concerned the idea of supplying terrorists with guns made of "Chinesium" - a strange metal alloy used in cheap Chinese things. It is rather brittle, and appears to be cast with built in cracks. In short, it would make for lethal guns - gun that would blow up the user, and not the target.

  Of course, the thing with "Chinesium" is that it looks fine until put under any stress. To add a bit of comedy, the guns were to be handed over by trained monkeys who were covered in fleas. The terrorists were expected to get covered in fleas, and hopefully have dung flung at that - which is what I believe monkeys are well known for. I seem to recall thinking about all this for some time. I am sure it was probably inspired by some SciFi I had been reading or watched. What I definitely can't tell was how much of it was dream, and how much conscious thought. Maybe it was conscious thought during a dream !

  The probable legacy of having baked beans and smoked bacon for a dessert last night is two fold. The first was that my blood glucose shot right up to 9.7mmol/l, and that ruined my low rolling average. As I said earlier, if I had eaten those beans at lunchtime they have made little difference - except to the second legacy. This morning, thanks to those baked beans, and to the curry, I have grand flatulence !

  Having my guts in turmoil puts me off a potential photo opportunity today. The Track Recording Train, based up upon a 1950s tube train, will be touring the Central Line today. I have the timetable for the train, and I did have plans to take snaps of it at two locations, but if I ever get out to it today, it will have to be a single location in the afternoon.  I will have to get out for a far shorter journey today, and preferably before midday. I need to go to the pharmacy and request my next repeat prescription - hopefully ready for collection on Wednesday. Other than that, I may do some laundry today.