2014 — 16 December: Tuesday

While I try not to spend too much time and effort looking back at the immutable past1 I note that Christa would have been 69 today. Crikey. And it will be Big Bro's turn next month. Crikey squared.

Looking forward...

... I can clearly see the pressing need to lay in a fresh supply of biscuits to see me through the worst2 of the upcoming festive spasm. Not before breakfast, however. Besides, it's looking both chilly and a touch misty out there at the moment.

Everything lasts for never

Back from the cupboard-refilling exercise, I am tipped off about an upgrade to the Synology NAS software. Point my web browser at one of them. Blank screen. Little word "Done" in the notification area at the foot of the web browser's blank screen. That's going to make logging in to it a bit tricky. OK, let's take a little peek at the source code of the web page it's claiming to have loaded. It should be the NAS login screen. Typical. There's all the HTML and the rich soup of JavaScript. Nothing shows, however. Now the only thing I've changed (famous last words) since the last time I successfully logged on to one of these boxes using this particular web browser is to have upgraded — probably more than once — the NoScript browser add-in that purportedly keeps me (slightly) more secure by disabling scripts unless and until I choose to permit them.

Of course, I permit scripts on my NAS boxes since (a) you have to trust something, (b) the login processing requires them, and (c) they're inside my firewall and don't face out onto the Interweb Swamp Thing out there.

Switch to the Chrome browser. Everything "just works". Upgrade the software on both NAS boxes and resume doing whatever it is I do when I'm not schlepping around buying food or whatever.

[Pause]

In this case, that consisted of nipping out again to inspect the cheap video shelves of Asda and watch youths loading industrial-scale quantities of beer and cider onto shopping trolleys. Times like these, I feel increasingly out of step with my fellow citizens.

Being only on...

... nodding terms with my subconscious, I can only speculate whether my recent decision to equip myself with all six seasons of these was, on some level, a reaction against the even more finite supply of Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom":

Drop the Dead Donkey DVDs

Nor do I know why the first three seasons were so cheap when imported from Switzerland. On the two occasions (admittedly, in the 1960s) I've been in that country I'd found it extraordinarily expensive relative to the UK. Strange are the ways of eCommerce on this planet.

Whether...

... a dead donkey constitutes a "dramedy":

Newlyweds DVD

... remains to be seen.

  

Footnotes

1  "Think only of the past", as Austen's Eliza put it, "as its remembrance gives you pleasure".
2  Having leafed through my cousins' copy of the "Radio Times" I think I shall be sticking to the "Sons of Anarchy" for the duration. I expect I can find a book or two, too.