2016 — 29 March: Tuesday
Today's topic, children? Inspired by my son's latest morning email salvo in his ongoing "Let's drag Dad into the new millennium of web technologies" technical initiative campaign... More secure web browsing.
So, not resting content with...
... forcing my migration "back" to static HTML and an AWS web-hosting setup (terribly fashionable these days, don't you know, in this era of dumbed-down "Markdown" page creation?) Junior clearly thinks it's now time to start his next lobbying. This time, on behalf of the benefits of SSL certification to stop any bad guys injecting unwanted material on to 'molehole' web pages. I suspect he suspects I've never heard of SSL. (I got my first lecture on it in IBM while he was still at school.) I suspect he's forgotten I've been doggedly pursuing my minimalist "keep it simple" modus operandi (and, indeed, latterly modus vivendi) in the Webby World1 since 1994 or so.
I overflow...
... with assistants offering their assistance, it seems. I'm very grateful for this, actually, as it all definitely helps keep the rusty cogs spinning between my ears.
For example, I've got Len sniping righteously at my laughably (might just as well be) non-existent backup (let alone my disaster recovery2) processes. These began with a Slug on the backup front in the bad old days of Windows XP, and have since moved along through a networked Buffalo Terastation, and currently rest on the shoulders of a couple of Synology NAS boxes. None of which constitutes a sensible strategy for, let alone an implementation of, any systematic backup régime. The less said about either my ad-hoc collection of 3TB and 4TB external USB 3 hard drives scattered hither and yon or the completely random manner3 in which I duplicate, triplicate, quadruplicate "stuff" on SSDs within the PCs themselves... the better.
Then there's Brian ensuring some of my backroom web page creation routines (I haven't dared show him all of them yet!) are impeccably driven by Python scripts operating on beautifully normalised SQLite DBs (rather than my former pathetic tab-formatted ASCII data files dating back [quite literally, in a couple of cases] to my 1985 CP/M days).
And I can't ignore Junior now doing his paranoia-inspired thing, nor Big Bro in NZ questioning the need for "changes" whenever I "break" anything I do that he's long been used to.
But nobody makes breakfast for me, do they?
Speaking of...
... "neural overload", I managed to remember to scan the covers of yet another YA book trilogy I bought last week:
In the intervening seven days I've started #1, lent #3 to Peter (who's read #1 and #2) and bought (for a suspiciously low £2-99 in HMV) a DVD of #1 — all without actually managing to remember to note any of this on my ¬blog. Bite me.
Eight months ago...
... I upgraded my perfectly-working HPLIP software suite simply because it popped up an, erm, pop-up saying "Upgrade me now". I was still under the naïve assumption that "newer" equates to "better". (Clearly I had learned nothing from two decades of using Windows software.) Long story short: I ended up having to nuke it, and completely re-install a back-level variant that was nonetheless fresh enough to know how to make my fancy new All-in-one HP printer/scanner behave itself.
I also unselected the little ticky box to stop myself from being led once more unto the briar patch by any further "upgrade me now" suggestions. Today, I idly poked at the icon in the System Tray and saw...
... that things have moved on to a yet-newer build. The question I have to ask myself is "Do I feel lucky?"
Can one use...
... a 3D printer to print a 3D printer, I wonder? And, if you scale down the size of the printout, and then repeat the process, could you eventually end up4 with a nano-scale device? (Link.)
I use so little...
... "real" money these days, I was unaware we're moving over to polymer "paper" currency notes. Big Bro's worrying about the little stash of "real" paper notes he keeps under his mattress for spending money when he pops over here, which resulted in me having to email the Bank of England for help. I got a helpful, well-written, reply within half a day. That was a first!
Do I want...
... to try a Chinese Linux distro, I wonder? With a value proposition like this:
It's not the rain sounding heavy... it's the hail being heavy. Plus it's taken me 36 hours to realise why my bathroom upstairs is now so cold. One of the young people wound down the thermostatic valve. What do they want to do? Freeze the crap out of me? My house, my laws of thermodynamics, dagnabbit!