2014 — 5 November: Wednesday

I've just learned1 that if you nip out to make your cuppa after kicking off a software upgrade but before clicking 'Allow' in answer to the ever-vigilant User Access Control the thing (quite sensibly, I suppose) will forcibly decline the upgrade at some point between the kettle boiling and the first blissful sip. You (I) thus arrive back at BlackBeast clutching your brimming mug and expecting to find the new, improved Copernic desktop search quivering with eagerness to start indexing... only to find it dead in the water.

Actually...

... I suppose the glitch could also have been down to a previously-unnoticed item in CCleaner's repertoire — an active monitor of some sort just looking for trouble. Now disallowed. Meanwhile my anti-virus (which I only installed to parallel the setup on Iris's PC so I can better help her) wanted to perform a web tune-up that would have entailed forcing its home page and search interface on me. I don't think so, sunshine. Silly me. Turning my back on software for a moment.

That said, I'm finding Pale Moon (so far) rather better than Firefox.

And whoever is maintaining 'get_iplayer' has done a grand job with re-enabling the programme-indexing that the BBC so unkindly disabled by switching off their feeds. After reading the long list of whinges in the comments on El Reg, plus an email from Len, I refreshed my version (again) yesterday evening. I suspect it now goes off to the set of BBC iPlayer web pages on your behalf and simply scrapes the programme data off them. Whatever it does, the upshot is I can once again download a radio item by partial name rather than having to dig out the URL and its PID manually first. Excellent.

I wonder how much the BBC is going to want to charge me for a Nitro key when they finish locking down all this stuff that my licence fee has already paid for?

I also wonder...

... about the point of "lay theory" if it shows that belief in free will correlates negatively with a full bladder? My ex-neighbours — the Pakistani doctors who urged me to save my soul by reading the Koran in its original language and thus (?) ceasing to be the infidel that they were required to slay — had no belief in free will. Mind you, I don't know how full of urine they were. (Link.)

Three years...

... to the day since catching a trailer for "Project Nim" I've finally found the round tuit I needed to order a copy. Think of the money I've saved :-)

Yet another...

... phone call (this time, lacking an Indian accent) asserting: "We have been informed that someone at this address has been involved in a car accident some time in the last two years. Can you confirm that?"

"You have been mis-informed."

Silence, followed by the sound of a departing caller (for those old enough to remember Victor Borge).

Christa would...

... be proud. I've just safely teleported a spider, unharmed, out into the front garden using nothing but an empty Marmite jar and an empty envelope from the care-home. And it was larger than my personal critical (or should that be "critter"?) mass limit for such terrifying objects.

[Pause]

That nice Uncle ERNIE has smiled gently in my direction this month. Every little helps, as dear ol' Dad used to say. And, not for the first time, I'm finding loud music works well against the blasted fireworks. Noisy perishers.

  

Footnote

1  To be more precise, "deduced".