Since I decided to convert my site from supporting my professional interests it has become an infrequent blog.
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Personal news/links
14.04.2022 Webcam images retired
After a lot of soul-searching I've decided to stop the automated webcam images.
It was a feature I always liked, but for a variety of reasons it's become more and
more onerous and far less useful to me. Apologies to anyone who found it useful.
26.02.2021 Alfie passed peacefully
Alfie had bravely battled acromegaly(pituitary tumour) for a couple of years, never making any complaint when we pricked his
ear to get his blood sugar level, or at the injections of insulin needed to combat his diabetes
induced by the acromegaly. At almost 15 years of age he lived longer than the average cat despite his condition.
Karen and I were able to be there as he passed peacefully, while we held him stroked him and talked to him. I've updated
the memorial page I started a few days ago.
Karen and I will miss the little fellow enormously, but we have a load of happy memories that'll live with us
for the rest of our lives.
24.02.2021 Can't get a visiting vet!?
It's been frustrating trying to get a visiting vet, none locally will visit, even outside, and the only
one who will, from London, can't make it for at least a week! Now we're struggling to obtain some sedatives
for Alfie to make the car journey to the vets less traumatic, but even that's proving difficult.
Sometimes I hate the world.
Quick update - our vet has kindly agreed to supply Karen with a sedative tomorrow, so we plan to spend a lot of time
with him tomorrow and Friday morning, before taking him to the vet late Friday afternoon. It's far from
ideal, but it's the best we can do for him.
23.02.2021 Alfie nearing his end
It's been 18 months since we finally confirmed that Alfie suffers from Acromegaly, and we've been lucky to have him with us
for so long, but in the past couple of weeks he's taken a turn for the worse. Karen is trying to get a vet to visit
as Alfie is terrified of car journeys and, if it's to be his last visit, we don't want to put him through that.
It's hard enough, and expensive, to have a vet visit in normal times, but it's more complicated in the current pandemic.
I've known Alfie for almost 8 years, while Karen has known him all his 15 years, and before his illness he was a remarkable cat
who lit up our lives. Looking after
him during his illness has been challenging, particularly for Karen, but it's the least we could do for the little guy.
His impending demise has prompted me to record a number of personal memories of Karen's cats.
09.01.2021 New PC Arrived
Vibox VI-19 Gaming PC - Windows 10 - WiFi - Eight Core Intel i7 Processor -
Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti 6GB Graphics Card - 16GB RAM - 480GB SSD - 2TB Hard Drive
Now busy configuring it for the next few days!
08.01.2021 Main PC died
Looks like a power supply or motherboard problem. Have ordered a new PC to buy me time to sort it out.
21.12.2020 Seasonal holiday arrangements
For several years now I've stopped celebrating the seasonal holiday on December 25th, and instead had a nominal one on the winter solstice(Dec 21st/22nd). The logic was simple, all winter celebrations started from the point when ancient humans noticed the days started to get longer, and whether they praised their god(s), ancient spirits or simply gave thanks, the winter celebration became a regular thing. In later times 'mainstream' religions of all kinds usurped it, falsely claiming the birth of one of their gods at that time, including Christianity.
Then there's the gift giving. For too many years I'd spend weeks/months trying to find the 'perfect present' for
various friends/family, all superficially well received, only to occasionally read in their faces or the tone of their
voices that I'd missed the mark. Similarly, I'd receive well meaning gifts that were not needed/wanted and have to pretend to be delighted, Oscar worthy on some occasions! There was also the fact that feeling obliged to buy people presents has always been uncomfortable, similarly for others to feel that obligation about me. It's far more meaningful to buy gifts for someone because you want to, and feel moved to.
Last year I made a change, instead of wasting my money on presents that would rarely hit the mark, totalled the expected expenditure(rounding up to the next £50) and instead donated that money to charity, Great Ormond St.Hospital; exhorted friends/family to donate to a charity of their choice rather than buy me a present. It felt good for once to know that none of my money had been wasted, so in future that's what I intend doing every year.
07.07.2020 Ditched Comodo firewall
Have used Comodo as my firewall for many years, and really liked it, but the problems I encountered after the latest Windows 10 update was the final straw. I've experienced problems in the past removing it, when it had problems, prior to reinstalling it afresh. This time the cmdagent kept falling over and when I tried to uninstal Comodo(even with their special tool)it entered an awful nightmare of partial failures, no internet connection, items that claimed I didn't have the authority to remove them... Eventually I nuked everything in safe mode, but this time I didn't reinstal Comodo - it's history for me. Will rely on the inbuilt firewall from now on.
25.06.2020 Lilly died today
Today we took Lilly to the vets, as she'd been lethargic and not really eating for a few days, although she wasn't showing any obvious
symptoms of distress. The vet found a lump, and with Lilly being anaemic, poorly, and 17yrs of age and unlikely to cope with
exploratory surgery, we agreed to have her put to sleep. Karen and I found it very emotional, but we were able to hold her
as she passed away. She'd been an important part of our family, and she will be missed, and will always be fondly remembered.
06.08.2019 Alfie has Acromegaly
With Alfie not responding well to the insulin injections for his diabetes, we took him to the vets to have further tests for a suspected tumour. We got the results that suggested he has a tumour on his pituitary(acromegaly). With a variety of options we felt adjusting his insulin and diet was best for him. His tumour means he has excess growth hormone, his bones continue to grow, causing discomfort in various places, and he has a continual appetite - his long term prognosis is not good. Karen and I will give him the best quality of life we can for as long as possible. Karen has been magnificent, handling his regular insulin injections and specialised feeding.
05.07.2019 Alfie has Diabetes
My girlfriend Karen has 3 cats, the mother Lilly and two of her litter, Smokey a female and Alfie a male.
Today we got the bad news that Alfie has diabetes, which means twice a day insulin injections and regular blood tests. I've developed a close bond with Alfie over the past 6yrs, so, to say I'm gutted is quite an understatement.
01.06.2019 Spurs lose the European Cup Final
After a remarkable run, including beating many people's favourites Man City on the way, my beloved Spurs lost to Liverpool in an anticlimactic final.
16.06.2017 Archer VR2600 modem/router update
The router has been performing admirably. It is almost 3 months since my last IP change, whereas with the BT modem it changed every couple of weeks, and sometimes even more frequently, suggesting that it's BT control of the modem that was causing the IP changes and not line drops.
01.06.2017 Lenovo Yoga Tab 3 Plus 10-Inch Tablet
Decided I needed a better Android tablet than my old Samsung Tab2 7inch device, and opted for this Lenovo Yoga. With 3Gb of RAM and a 2560 x 1600 pixel display it currently provides an excellent upgrade, and the battery life is superb.
18.04.2017 Bought a smartphone!!
I'd thus far avoided having a smartphone, but wanted to get one to check out the technology. I opted for a Chinese one, thus getting a good spec for less money, and chose the UMIDIGI Z 5.5inch, with 10 processors, 4Gb of RAM and a 1920*1080 display. I was a little nervous about the Chinese manufacturer, but initial impressions are very favourable.
03.04.2017 Mini PC stick
Having been frustrated with various Android boxes which attached to my TV to play a variety of media, I decided to try a Windows based mini-PC stick, this one to be precise, a very cheap offering from a Chinese company I'd never heard of before. At a price little more than the cost of a Windows license I wasn't expecting too much, but so far have been very pleased with it. While it wouldn't be a good choice for heavy cpu based tasks, it happily plays videos and accesses the internet simultaneously.
07.03.2017 Installed Archer VR2600 modem/router
I bought this router a couple of months ago intending to replace my BT homehub, but have only just
found the time to instal it - I wanted to have a clear couple of days in case I ran into any problems.
The setup was painless and the router works well. Looking forward to seeing how it performs over the coming months, particularly if it reduces the number of line drops and remote reboots from BT. The router
has many more configuration options than the old BT device so I may need to spend some time reading the manual to get it optimally setup.
10.01.2017 BT network back
Switched off my router last evening, the incessant blinking annoyed me, but when I switched it on
this morning it connected and I had a huge sense of relief. After 3 days without the internet I was climbing walls! Strangely the BT online status report shows there's still a problem in many areas including my own, so either I'm lucky or the BT support staff haven't yet updated the status pages - not
that unusual!
09.01.2017 BT network problem(s)
Internet still down and no update on the problem(s) so rang BT again. This time they told me my problem was related to the ongoing local problem, and despite asking questions to get more idea of the nature and likely duration of the problem, got nowhere. Asked to speak to a techie but was told they would arrange for one to ring me after the problem had been fixed!!
I again looked at my router log to see what had happened in the past day or so and was surprised to see that my log had been cleaned back to just prior to the problem!!! Was this an attempt by BT to cover up the nature of the problem? Good job I took some screen dumps of the log on Saturday!!
07.01.2017 BT network problem(s)
Awoke to find my internet connection down. Examining the router log it had probably been down since about 04:07. Rang BT(the painful Indian based helpdesk) and they suggested a line problem which they wouldn't be able to fix for up to 3 working days, i.e. up to 5 days of no internet!!
Rang up the BT line status number again later in the day to find that they now said there was a problem in the 01702 area(mine) - so probably not my line at all. I looked at the router log in more detail and found a load of connections from https://pbthdm.bt.motive.com before the problem, so it looks like BT were doing some network configuration work that cost me(and presumably many others) days of no internet and all the attendant aggravation.
04.01.2017 Spurs 2 Chelsea 0
Once again the year starts well. For the second time a table topping team on a long winning run is
comfortably beaten. Not as dominant as the game against Man City back in October, but strangely
even more satisfying having read comments by Chelsea supporters prior to the game.
27.06.2016 BT engineer calls
Following a BT engineer's visit(Darren) my broadband and phone connections have been fully restored. It appears to have been some external cabling(to the junction box) from the 60's that had been damaged, both over time and probably with work on a recent soffit replacement, and with the heavy downpours recently the wire had oxidised. The engineer replaced the old cable with proper external cable and was very helpful.
Switched my webcam uploads back on.
Science news/links
14.07.2015 New Pluto picture
The New Horisons space probe has taken a picture of Pluto from less than half a million miles to the obvious joy of the new Horizon's team.
07.12.2014 New Horisons awakens
The New Horisons space probe, launched towards Pluto in 2006, successfully awakened. The probe will start making long-range observations in the new year, and next July will do a flyby of Pluto and its moons.
12.11.2014 Philae landed successfully
I watched the live broadcast from ESA as Rosetta's 10 year mission climaxed when Philae landed on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, over 500m kilometres away from Earth- a truly amazing accomplishment by all involved.
Technology news/links
28.07.2015 Windows 10 arrives
Windows 10 is here at last. I've been very happy with the preview version running in a virtual machine so will get my new machine with Windows 10 installed.
05.12.2014 Windows 10 delayed
During the Credit Suisse Technology Conference, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner reported that the new operating system may not appear on retail shelves until Autumn 2015. According to Turner, Microsoft will talk more about the Windows 10 end-user experience in early spring. After that, the company will release a "developer preview" in early summer, and then launch the retail version of Windows 10 in late summer or early fall.
03.12.2014 100 billion frames a second!
A 2d camera developed by biomedical engineers at Washington University in St Louis has become the world's fastest camera, and can capture an astonishing 100 billion frames a second!