tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33111770180094020202024-02-22T15:52:52.009+00:00The Wrong Side of 50Reflections on life from a (retired) software engineer wondering how (considerably more than) half a century of it managed to get behind him.Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.comBlogger147125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-88335784774401810822023-07-31T15:37:00.005+01:002023-07-31T15:37:45.299+01:00Hermann and Erna Nonnenmacher<p>When my mother died, I inherited a large collection of family photos, some dating back to the 19th century. Large numbers of the photos were loose in plastic bags, others sorted away in albums. Among one album, carefully, if sometimes illegibly, annotated in my mother's handwriting, I found this picture of the German artists Hermann and Erna Nonnenmacher. </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb_wHt5uaGT7xv_qyrSJPbQKSIwEHlm5rzH29Gs0pYr1xdZRa8z5h66e1bWzKJE0q7Vu5wo3YvK2jzyUP_NNvB9JGrQUB1-rC-Nk-yTJU0MM9E3gd_SNEiLxfMWkMe_XuFa_A7psuNm3HqPUp_FqJFaFTqTE6cSe_m2W7Er1NRrYe8iSn6KSBe5FnkY_uB/s1623/Nonnenmachers.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="600" data-original-height="945" data-original-width="1623" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb_wHt5uaGT7xv_qyrSJPbQKSIwEHlm5rzH29Gs0pYr1xdZRa8z5h66e1bWzKJE0q7Vu5wo3YvK2jzyUP_NNvB9JGrQUB1-rC-Nk-yTJU0MM9E3gd_SNEiLxfMWkMe_XuFa_A7psuNm3HqPUp_FqJFaFTqTE6cSe_m2W7Er1NRrYe8iSn6KSBe5FnkY_uB/s600/Nonnenmachers.png"/></a></div>
<p>Renate Pniower, as she was then, grew up in Berlin during the Nazi years; her parents, Georg and Ruth Pniower, were friends of the Nonnenmachers. A quarter Jewish herself, my mother was no stranger to the anti-semitism of that time, but Erna Nonnenmacher was fully Jewish. The Nazis classified their work as <i>entartete Kunst (degenerate art)</i>, and destroyed much of it. Thankfully Erna and Hermann managed to emigrate to London in 1938. </p>
<p>The photo is undated, but I presume it dates from around the time of their departure from Berlin. Hermann Nonnenmacher is holding up a bunch of flowers, as if waving farewell. Yet their cart is loaded with artworks rather than personal possessions. Also, several pieces are still standing around the laden cart, so at least one more journey will be required. And whose are the coats hanging on the railings?</p>
<p>One interesting feature: the sculpture of a hugging couple that stands prominently in front of the wagon is Hermann's <b>Abschied (Farewell)</b>, now <a href="https://www.pinterest.fr/pin/423971752396101063/" target="_blank">on display at the Berlinische Galerie</a>. Whether any of the other works survive I haven't been able to establish.</p>
<p>Oddly, when I first learned the term <i>entartete Musik</i> and mentioned it to her, my mother was unfamiliar with the phrase. She certainly knew the concept though. An anecdote she told me on more than one occasion was of how she and a group of friends would huddle in one of their basements and listen to forbidden jazz records, imported clandestinely from Sweden. </p>
<p>For the rest of her life, Jazz was always the Sound of Freedom.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-63930084533306156962021-05-11T18:38:00.003+01:002021-05-11T18:38:55.706+01:00Some Thoughts on SETI and the Fermi Paradox<p>The Fermi Paradox, named after the physicist Enrico Fermi, asks why humans have had no contact with, and found no trace of, alien civilisations, given that even conservative estimates of how many such civilisations should exist suggest that our galaxy should be teeming with them. The Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has been ongoing for several decades now, but no unambiguous artificial signal from space has ever been detected.</p>
<p>One answer to the paradox is that they just aren’t out there, which would mean that our planet is the first to develop a technological society. Alternatively it might mean that such societies destroy themselves quite early on, in which case Humanity’s life expectancy may be on the short side.</p>
<p>Another popular answer is that relatively backward cultures like ours are insulated from galactic society, so as to let us develop at our own pace.</p>
<p>This reminds me of those occasional discoveries of a tribe in the Amazon rainforest, isolated from the rest of the world. Should we make contact with them, potentially ruining their pristine existence? Personally I would be gutted to discover that an advanced civilisation had been treating humanity in this way—isolating us from their advanced culture and science. Particularly medical science. (Though if they ever read this, I point out that I’d be more than happy to let bygones be bygones.)</p>
<p>I wonder, though, whether the reason we haven’t picked up radio signals from aliens is that a technologically advanced civilisation quickly finds a better way of communicating than through broadcasting radio waves.</p>
<p>I could just throw words and phrases around at this point, sounding like techno-babble from an episode of Star Trek, so that’s what I’ll do. Perhaps they use beams of neutrinos instead of radio, or gravity waves? That would be bad news for SETI, as our ability to detect either of those is still pretty basic, impressive though it is to be able to do it at all.</p>
<p>However, what if advanced civilisations do still use radio, but in a focused beam form? I don’t know how feasible this is, but armed with the confidence that only large amounts of ignorance can provide, it seems to me that if you can do it for visible light with a laser, and given that light and radio are just different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, radio beam technology sounds like a mere engineering detail for a sufficiently advanced culture.</p>
<p>If an alien race is communicating between the stars with some form of focused radio beam, we on Earth wouldn’t be able to pick it up unless Earth happened to be in alignment with the beam’s source and intended target. So maybe, when thinking about candidate stars to point SETI at, we should look out for alignments between two candidate stars and Earth.</p>
<p>By happy chance humans have reached the point where we know the orbits of increasing numbers of exoplanets—planets outside our solar system. As an inhabited star system might feature interplanetary messaging, we could also concentrate on times when two exoplanets orbiting the same star are in alignment with Earth.</p>
<p>I’ve been hoping that humans would discover alien life ever since I was a child watching Lost in Space. Half a century later, I would settle for finding microbes on Mars, but I’m still hopeful I’ll live long enough to learn that the human race is not alone in the galaxy.</p>
Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-51516663062216035392020-07-27T18:39:00.001+01:002020-07-27T18:40:50.872+01:00On My Mother's Side<blockquote><i>There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.</i></blockquote>
<p>This quote from David Eagleman chilled me when I first read it. It implies a time when everyone I will ever know, including my son, have ceased to be. I’ve thought about it a lot since then as I do my genealogy research. So many names of so many people who are long gone from the Earth.</p>
<p>In our attic are several boxes of photos and documents left me by my mother, Renate Lilly (née Pniower). Much of it was in turn left to her by her own mother, Ruth Blume (née Hartmann), and some of that came from her mother, Else Sapatka-Hartmann. I won’t go on with this progression, but at least two documents date back to the 17th Century. It's a rich trove for an amateur genealogist, particularly as at least one ancestor did a lot of research themselves and wrote it all down.</p>
<p>I spent a fair few weeks going through everything, pulling it into some sort of order, and cataloguing it for my son for when he inherits it. When I’m gone, there may be nobody left who remembers what my grandmother looked like, and maybe also my mother. So I’ve been writing names and dates on the back of photos, labelling albums, grouping related photos into folders.</p>
<p>So many names came back to me from conversations my mother had with me. If only I’d paid more attention though. I remember her talking about her friend Inge Juchnowycz, but I don’t remember how the two of them were friends in the first place. Still, I found two photos of her, sent from Canada in the 1950s, and I’ve duly annotated them. Not that my son will have any interest in a friend of his grandmother, and perhaps I could safely just discard them, but once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.</p>
<p>Among my mother’s early photos was a card from 1939: </p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs_XF2xIHToqvFshj9xEvvJJFbrV1USycoK9bdwdb6-XL2Ssh4V_tbFEd1YfFZ9D_mI_S9JDtcqupODB4ZQcs6WeVyhTmjsXUOiMBAKf59lWcHY7v_wc7IJfHrL47rMhwcS-zfnEkOvmFp/s1051/gwillim.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="742" data-original-width="1051" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs_XF2xIHToqvFshj9xEvvJJFbrV1USycoK9bdwdb6-XL2Ssh4V_tbFEd1YfFZ9D_mI_S9JDtcqupODB4ZQcs6WeVyhTmjsXUOiMBAKf59lWcHY7v_wc7IJfHrL47rMhwcS-zfnEkOvmFp/s320/gwillim.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<p><br /></p>
<p>In February 1939 my mother was a pupil at <a src="https://www.exploringsurreyspast.org.uk/themes/subjects/refugees/stoatley_rough_school/">Stoatley Rough School</a> near Haslemere, so possibly she received this card on a school visit to Coultershaw Mill in Petworth. I made some enquiries, but if anyone now knows what these cards were for or why Gordon Gwillim was handing them out, I can’t find them.</p>
<p>My grandmother prepared two photo albums for my mother as mementos of their family. In these I found photos of her uncles, aunts, cousins, and also a baby sister who died aged just one, and whom I had never heard about. With a bit of work I was able to reconstruct the family tree enough to place these people, and then upload their photos into Ancestry.com. It may be a bit silly, but it feels to me that in some way they are not forgotten and so still live on.</p>
<p>Among my grandmother’s ancestors was a branch from East Prussia. Prussia was erased from the maps after WW2, and the place names I found in the papers are now in Poland. I was surprised and pleased to find that one of our ancestors has their own Wikipedia page, one <a src="https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Friedrich_Ernst_von_Corvin-Wiersbitzki">Heinrich Friedrich Ernst von Corvin-Wiersbitzki</a>, a major-general in the Prussian Army, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars.</p>
<p>My grandmother’s father was Alfred Georg Hartmann, </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif90YAX04mbtxATydOM0PbnAvzh_dykBFCEdxLhs4QgPbXoFcENOI69avz3pLOykrbkKv3CZvbOLVSJ1kHe3iQ7C7j1cULRd_Ha4JvC4O5OVk60JWcv76kD1vzoP3xWP9oHZWIJ1-k5SHj/s1017/Alfred+Georg+Hartmann.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1017" data-original-width="805" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif90YAX04mbtxATydOM0PbnAvzh_dykBFCEdxLhs4QgPbXoFcENOI69avz3pLOykrbkKv3CZvbOLVSJ1kHe3iQ7C7j1cULRd_Ha4JvC4O5OVk60JWcv76kD1vzoP3xWP9oHZWIJ1-k5SHj/s320/Alfred+Georg+Hartmann.jpg" /></a></div><p><br /></p>
<p>who was an arts reviewer for various publications. He used to clip out his reviews and paste them into scrapbooks, and these too have been handed down. There are dozens of them, all printed in Gothic German, none of which will probably ever be read again. Nevertheless I will hold onto them, for once they’re gone, they’re gone. A handwritten journal of his business trips, complete with records of all his illnesses, is of slightly more interest. I wondered why he would bother recording his temperature whenever he felt unwell, until I realised that he lived in an age before antibiotics, so dying from a fever was much more of a risk.</p>
<p>I had known that his wife, Else Sapatka-Hartmann (full name Minna Albertine Elisabeth Sapatka), </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJDmhU4a_GLrS8DrbUbACU_sDkwlgGqFJtIwiNkn3lHaMIt850Uz2WY79xdXgM2WlTSBIxNO_aeZgzUTTLS5dHnXMB23mi4smiCdDEgwyHLw76oHmskLTPEuGrl8xP3ENknKNIz9sUftgD/s1467/Else+Sapotka+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1467" data-original-width="1143" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJDmhU4a_GLrS8DrbUbACU_sDkwlgGqFJtIwiNkn3lHaMIt850Uz2WY79xdXgM2WlTSBIxNO_aeZgzUTTLS5dHnXMB23mi4smiCdDEgwyHLw76oHmskLTPEuGrl8xP3ENknKNIz9sUftgD/s320/Else+Sapotka+1.jpg" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>was a painter. I hadn’t, though, realised that she was also an author, writing as Else Alberts. She kept a collection of acceptance notes from her publishers; more interestingly I found three different drafts of a children’s book called <q>Hudi</q>. It doesn’t look as if it ever made it into print. I wondered why she had bothered to keep all the drafts, but in a journal I realised that Hudi had been her pet name for her daughter, Ruth. She still used that name in a letter to her daughter written just a few months before she died. </p>
<p>The photos and papers are all boxed up again, safe in the attic. My Ancestry tree has one of its branches much extended, and the faces of long gone ancestors now look out at me. I know so little of their stories, by contrast, my descendants will potentially have reams of information about me, through my digital footprint. Including this blog.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-41598281167806011502020-07-26T10:56:00.001+01:002020-07-26T10:56:46.954+01:00Comparing Google Play Music and YouTube Music<p>My first online music subscription was with Napster, the legal version. I used it mostly at work, running it on my desktop PC. It worked reasonably well for a while, though tracks that were available one week did have a tendency to go missing the following week (including the only one that I actually paid for). However, napster.exe just got bigger and bloatier and slower, so I looked for an alternative.</p>
<p>Spotify was brilliant when I started on it, so much nicer than Napster. It always remained fast, but it annoyed me by slowly removing features I liked, and the UI design became increasingly difficult to use for someone whose eyesight has seen better days. When it changed to dark grey on a black background, I gave up and swapped to Google Play Music.</p>
<p>Now Google Play Music is being phased out. Google encourages us users to migrate to YouTube Music instead, and this I recently did. The rest of this article describes the experience.</p>
<p>First thing to say is that the transition was almost completely painless. The process took just a few minutes, and when I opened YouTube Music I could find all the tracks that I'd previously uploaded to Google Play Music. I could also find most of the music that I'd listened to but which wasn't uploaded; i.e., native tracks. Of course, I haven't checked that all the music came across, but this seems to be the state of things. Annoyingly, one thing that didn't come across was an album that I'd actually bought in Google Play Music. It's not available on YouTube, so that would have been that. However, I got round this bizarre situation by downloading the album from Google Play Music, then uploading it into YouTube.</p>
<p>How do the two apps compare? Well, the UI looks more modern in YouTube Music, and in terms of music playback quality they seem comparable. YouTube Music though is lacking several Google Play Music features that I miss, and doesn't seem to have added any that I've noticed. </p>
<p>These are my main complaints:</p>
<ol>
<li>You can't multi-select tracks</li>
<li>You can't see how often you've played a track</li>
<li>The total play length of a playlist is often abbreviated</li>
<li>Syncing is no longer seamless</li>
</ol>
<h3>You can't multi-select tracks</h3>
<p>This is far and away the most annoying missing feature in YouTube Music. Basically if you want to remove a 20 track album from a playlist, you have to remove each track in turn. There's no way you can select all 20 and then remove them in a single operation. It's such a simple thing to implement, and such a major pain to not have, that I am really at a loss to understand what Google were thinking about. I've got 42 tracks to remove from one playlist, and it would probably be quicker to delete the playlist entirely and then remake it.</p>
<h3>No play counts</h3>
<p>In Google Play Music each track shows how many times you've played it. I listen to a lot of new music, and I tend to add albums that have come to my attention to a playlist called <b>Reviewing</b>. It really helps that when I go into this list I can see which tracks I've actually listened to. Now in YouTube Music this simple feature is gone. I suppose I'm meant to keep a note somewhere; perhaps a Google Doc?</p>
<h3>Playlist lengths</h3><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqjCBuQNNQtcHDkNQSiaMBsRhsmSRgBwnaoEN9B-TjN87kwdME6zukgFMq2uhKlVLCLqDx7ydBs2C2BOqt1U7mPQ9sGXIe_2IWtAXHmZSSmd3W2QBeefO76DUvUE3KtZAezLKrXnlG3lGr/s480/Playlist.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="257" data-original-width="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqjCBuQNNQtcHDkNQSiaMBsRhsmSRgBwnaoEN9B-TjN87kwdME6zukgFMq2uhKlVLCLqDx7ydBs2C2BOqt1U7mPQ9sGXIe_2IWtAXHmZSSmd3W2QBeefO76DUvUE3KtZAezLKrXnlG3lGr/s320/Playlist.png" width="320" /></a></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></blockquote></div></blockquote>
<p>It's a small thing, but why can't YouTube Music tell me the exact length of a playlist? Adding up numbers, even 216 of them, is trivially simple. Google Play Music does it, so why not YouTube Music?</p>
<h3>Syncing downloads</h3>
<p>I have some playlists that I've downloaded onto my phone. With Google Play Music, the app was constantly synchronising this, so if I added more music to a playlist, it would rapidly be downloaded to my phone. For reasons unknown (unfortunately a familiar refrain now) YouTube Music doesn't seem to bother with this. It can't even get it right the first time, as I've found some tracks in supposedly downloaded playlists that aren't available. And there's no obvious way for a user to fix this.</p>
<p>With the exception of the multi-selection, these are fairly small issues; however, they're all features that were available in Google Play Music, and as that and YouTube are both Google products, it's really, really hard to understand why this functionality isn't also provided by YouTube Music.</p>
<p>Moving to another music provider is a major hassle, but I think I will now start looking around.</p>
Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-65039881876133927212020-07-16T18:38:00.000+01:002020-07-16T18:38:23.118+01:00A View from the Wrong Side of 60<p>When I started this blog I had just passed a landmark: I was fifty years old, and not particularly enjoying the fact. Ten years later unsurprisingly I reached sixty. Briefly I toyed with the idea of renaming the blog to reflect the passing decade, but to be honest, I wasn’t so bothered this time. I had learned from Aviva’s <q><a href="https://www.direct.aviva.co.uk/myfuture/LifeExpectancy/AboutYou">See how long you’ve got to live web page</a></q> that it was nearly odds on that I would make it as far as ninety. My life didn’t seem so close to closing as it once had.</p>
<p>So I entered my seventh decade much more cheerfully than I entered the previous one. </p>
<p>But then last July I began my fifth decade of paid employment. God, that sounded dispiriting ! It didn’t help that so many of my friends had already retired, so by the autumn I had made up my mind to join them. On Friday 31 January I said goodbye to the office for the last time.</p>
<p>Some people supposedly don’t know what to do with all the spare time that retirement gives them, but I had loads of ideas, and luckily none of them were particularly expensive. They did tend to involve me being sat on my backside all day though, which didn’t sound very healthy. I had to make sure about that extra thirty years so I did some research. Turned out I already ticked most of the relevant lifestyle checkboxes, but the two most important were keeping physically active and socially involved. These would require a bit more effort. Still, I had seven days a week free, so how hard could it be to do regular exercise and meet new people?</p>
<p>By the end of March I was locked down at home sitting on my backside. My gym was closed, my U3A membership sat unused. </p>
<p>Luckily I’d anticipated the gyms getting closed, so I’d bought a dumbbell set from Argos the week before lockdown began. I’d expected the weights to be made of metal, but these ones were plastic. Obviously there had to be something heavier inside, though it wasn’t clear what. They each had a plug on them, but I declined the temptation to prise one off to have a look inside.</p>
<p>Anyway, they seemed to work fine, except that I noticed the occasional tickle on my scalp when the weights went over my head. It took a few weeks but I finally twigged that they’re full of fine sand. Also that the plugs could do with being a lot tighter.</p>
<p>Some of them have now lost enough sand that you can squeeze them and hear the remaining sand rubbing together inside. They’ll do for a long while yet, particularly as I am now handling them with a lot more care. Meanwhile I have to speculate how much of my muscle gain is just the weights getting lighter. </p>
<p>For aerobic exercise I decided to walk up and down our stairs every day for thirty minutes, quickly downgraded to twenty when I found out how hard it was. Actually the hardest bit is overcoming the tedium of the view of our stairwell; that and remembering to avoid the eighth step up, which really creaks.</p>
<p>The oddest thing about retirement was how quickly all the concerns of my previous job disappeared. I went home on the Friday, and I remember that evening still thinking about how to fix the last bug I’d been tackling. By Saturday though, all that was gone, and since then I’ve hardly thought about the project I worked on for a decade. I did program a bit in February and March, and I will again in the future, but surprisingly I haven’t missed exercising the computing skills I built up over forty years.</p>
<p>Not that I haven’t been releasing my inner nerd (never far below the surface anyway). I’ve taken it upon myself to relearn the fundamentals of Abstract Algebra, and now know once again the definition of Groups, Rings, and Fields. I dug out my university exam papers on the subject, and there is clear evidence that there was a time when I also knew what a homomorphism or a kernel group were. Yet when I met these definitions again recently I’m not sure there was even the sound of the faintest of ringing bells. </p>
<p>A common dream I’ve had in recent years involved finding myself back at university as a mature student. If this happened in reality I would be studying Biology, but in my dreams I’m doing Mathematics again, and always in the dream there is the worry that I will no longer be up to it. Based on my slow progress remastering the intricacies of Group Theory, my unconscious fears are fully justified. Nevertheless, back in real life I find the study engaging and enjoyable, and maybe I do still have my mathematical chops, because I’ve recently found myself waking up from dreams about cosets and quotient groups, and I’m pretty sure that never happened when I was a student.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-39593327712805243792020-04-06T17:26:00.000+01:002020-04-06T17:26:37.222+01:00Connecting a Virgin Media Superhub 2 to a TP-Link Archer C7<p>[Summary: you don't need to put the Super Hub into modem mode. Just connect the Archer and set that into access point mode.]</p>
<p>We've always had issues with our Virgin Super Hub 2. Originally the only problem was that Amazon Kindles wouldn't be able to reconnect to WiFi from airplane mode unless you rebooted them and the router at the same time. Later we found it was useful to reboot the Super Hub occasionally to improve WiFi speeds. But as the number of wirelessly connected devices in our home rose to over twenty, things really went downhill. Now my PC fails to connect to the WiFi when my son (and his devices, presumably) is in the house, and the WiFi vanishes completely for a few seconds whenever it feels like it.</p>
<p>Theoretically you can ask Virgin for an upgrade to a Super Hub 3. However, if this feature is available on their website, it's so well hidden it might as well not be. I could try ringing Virgin, but previous phone conversations with Internet providers still haunt my dreams, and in any case, for all I know the Super Hub 3 will be just as bad.</p>
<p>I decided instead to buy a new router entirely and connect it to the Virgin one. The idea is that you put your Super Hub into "modem mode", and then plug the new router, in my case a TP-Link Archer C7 (AC1750), into it by ethernet cable. Virgin even provide <a href="https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-hub-modem-mode">instructions</a>, which look simple enough.</p>
<p>I picked up the new router for about £65 from Currys. The Archer C7 had got good reviews, sounded like it could handle the number of devices you find in a house nowadays, and I couldn't see how it could be much worse than what we have now. It arrived in the post a few days later (I'm writing in the days of the (first?) Covid-19 quarantine, so going to collect it wasn't an option), and in its instructions I saw the part about "access point mode": how to use your new router to extend your existing network.</p>
<p>So I followed the instructions for the TP-Link, then switched the Virgin hub over to modem mode, and waited. A few minutes later the Super Hub 2 was showing three lights: Power On, Ready, and Internet. The TP-Link was showing four: Power, 2G, 5G, and Internet. Sadly the last of these was in orange, meaning that there was no internet. Well, there's a surprise! Fancy things not just working straightaway.</p>
<p>I rebooted both devices, but they stubbornly refused to cooperate. As switching off the internet in this house for longer than 30 minutes is no joke, I did a factory reset on the Virgin box, switched off the Archer C7, and left it at that for the night.</p>
<p>Google searches the next day didn't enlighten me much. The most promising suggestion was that I hadn't left the machines long enough to "settle down", so all I could do was try again. I started by plugging in the Archer C7 again and switching it on. To my surprise, it connected with the Virgin box immediately. And I hadn't even put the Super Hub 2 into modem mode!</p>
<p>It's been running fine for two days now. Our WiFi speed is substantially faster, everything connects to WiFi automatically, and nothing has lost contact either. To reduce radio interference (with our neighbours, if not with ourselves), I've swapped all our devices to the new WiFi, and disabled the Virgin WiFi. Looking good.</p>
Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-32224634892074243202018-06-17T18:29:00.000+01:002018-06-17T18:29:23.820+01:00Superpowers in a Level I Multiverse<br />
I recently finished reading <a href="http://space.mit.edu/home/tegmark/" target="_blank">Max Tegmark</a>'s excellent book, "Our Mathematical Universe". As I'd encountered some of the main ideas in this book several years ago, the first half of the book was fairly easy, if exhilirating, going. After that it got considerably harder, though still very exciting.<br />
<br />
Among many ideas the book presents, the one that interested me enough to write this post is the possibility that our universe is infinite. Only a finite part of this makes up our visible universe. Beyond that are an infinite number of volumes of space the same size, say, as our visible universe, but each different. We can therefore think of them as a Multiverse of parallel universes; parallel in the sense that we could never travel between them because of the incredible distances between them.<br />
<br />
A consequence of this is that everything that could conceivably happen, will (must) happen somewhere in the Multiverse. Possibly very, very far away from Planet Earth, but happening all the same.<br />
<br />
Obviously my first thought was about all the universes where my life is slightly different to the one I'm actually experiencing, followed closely by thoughts about the universes where it's substantially different, and considerably improved.<br />
<br />
Coming down from that ego trip, it occurred to me that there's a similarity between this Multiverse and the computer animation used to make special effects in film production. That technology has now reached the point where anything that can be imagined, can also be rendered on the screen. (Admittedly, not without a considerable expenditure of time and effort, much of which involves the writers communicating their ideas to the people who do the special effects.)<br />
<br />
In the Multiverse, unless I've misunderstood this, anything I can conceive of must be happening in some universe.<br />
<br />
Staying with the CGI analogy (and reflecting how many superhero films I've watched in recent years), there will be universes where superheroes exist. And the best part is, they won't need any super powers.<br />
<br />
For instance, we can imagine a universe where some individual believes they have the power to read minds. In reality they're just guessing, but completely by accident they always guess correctly. Massively unlikely in any single universe, but inevitable in a Multiverse. Similarly, there will be universes where someone believes they have the power of thought control, and completely by chance, every time they give a command, the victim was going to do that anyway.<br />
<br />
Here's another one: a person thinks they have X-Ray vision, because whenever they try to use this power, random electrical signals in their optic nerves generate exactly the right images in their minds as if they really were seeing through walls.<br />
<br />
Like the Multiverse itself, the possibilities are endless.Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-74376511345208318122017-07-23T17:59:00.000+01:002017-07-29T14:06:43.692+01:00Cheese: my new health food<p>When you reach the wrong side of fifty, health becomes an increasingly pertinent issue. Your health isn't necessarily poor, but there's nearly always something to remind you that you're not as young as you used to be. (Trying to read menus without my glasses is a new challenge.) I'm not a hypochondriac (famous first words), but I do keep a close watch on my body, looking for anything out of the normal. </p>
<p>When I noticed one morning in January while spooning cereal down my throat that I had a slight pain in my chest and a matching pain in my back, and shortly afterwards a pain in my left arm, I didn't need a medical degree to think there could be something going on. As a matter of fact, pains in my torso aren't unusual because of a back condition. The discomfort in my arm was something new though. </p>
<p>I've watched enough medical dramas to know that this was a sign of a heart attack, but I googled the symptoms to be sure. Call an ambulance immediately, said one concerned site. But now my natural British reluctance to cause a fuss kicked in: if I wasn't having a heart attack, I'd feel a right timewaster if I summoned an ambulance. On the other hand, if I was having a heart attack, I'd feel a complete idiot if I just ignored the pain and cycled off to work. As York hospital is ten minutes walk away, I compromised with both scruples and logic, and set off there on foot.</p>
<p>A&E was not too busy, so I anticipated only a moderate wait before I would be seen. I went up to the front desk and described my pains. </p>
<p>Whoosh! I was whisked off to a cubicle. Turns out that when a middle-aged man walks into A&E and describes potential heart attack symptoms, he doesn't get to sit with the sprained wrists and pulled muscles for very long. </p>
<p>In the end I was in hospital for several hours. I got to see three different doctors, had two ECGs, blood tests, a chest X-ray, and an echocardiogram. At one point I was actually wheeled through the hospital, despite earnest protestations that I could walk there.</p>
<p>As I mentioned, I cycle to work every day, and on top of that I visit a gym sort of regularly. I'd always thought that if my heart was going to fail, it would be on a treadmill. But last October I did an online course on "The Musculoskeletal System: the Science of Staying Active into Old Age." Very interesting, and of course, increasingly relevant. Among other things I learned about how osteoporosis works. Cells called osteoclasts respond to inactivity and lack of calcium in your system by removing bone, releasing its calcium content for other uses. Eventually your bones are left weakened and fragile.</p>
<p>Not on my watch!</p>
<p>The course went on to say that you could slow this down by exercising your muscles and bones and increasing your calcium intake. Accordingly I responded by increasing my resistance training at the gym, and dramatically increasing my dairy intake, particularly cheese.</p>
<p>Cheeses were once a significant part of my diet, but I largely dropped them years ago because of the saturated fat scare. Recently though, the tide of scientific opinion has started to turn, and refined carbohydrates are now being seen as the real dietary villains. There was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/apr/25/saturated-fats-heart-attack-risk-low-fat-foods-cardiologists">this article</a>, for instance, or a <a href="https://www.samharris.org/podcast/item/what-should-we-eat">podcast</a> I listened to with <a href="http://garytaubes.com/">Gary Taubes</a>, author of books like "The Case Against Sugar" and "Why We Get Fat".</p>
<p>While hardly a definitive search of the literature, it sounded plausible to my normally skeptical ears. I began to snack on cheese and cut back on the sweets and cakes, hoping I wasn't clogging up my arteries even as I preserved my bone structure.</p>
<p>So you can guess what was going through my head as York Hospital's finest examined the state of my heart: "You're eating what all day?"</p>
<p>No need to worry in the end—all the tests came back negative. No sign of heart disease at all. What was that pain in my arm? Just some miscellaneous ache, I guess, like so many you get on the wrong side of fifty. It hasn't recurred.</p>
<p>The icing on the cake (not that I'd eat that nowadays) came last week when I had my annual cholesterol check, and every indicator was improved on last year. My cheese diet works! I felt so smug that I called in at the local cheese shop on the way home. (Yes, there is <a href="https://lovecheese.co.uk/">such a place</a>.)</p>
<p>I do miss chocolate, and no doubt I will fall off the wagon from time to time (particularly likely over the Xmas period). Also, if I do have a heart attack in the near future, my recent bill of health will probably make me think it's just a harmless pain that I can ignore. As I fall to the ground, my last word will be, "Jarlsberg".</p>
<p>Oh, and one final note. At no point that day at the hospital did I have to fill out any paperwork, and nobody said anything disapproving when it turned out there was nothing wrong with my heart. Our NHS.</p>
<p>And another final note. I have to add that my meals do not consist entirely of cheese. It probably also helps that I eat loads of fruit and veg, and have oily fish (mmm, mackerel) several times a week. Otherwise I don't think that even a complete absence of carbs would help me for very long.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-648827446187185692016-11-09T14:43:00.001+00:002016-11-09T14:43:13.067+00:00A programmer wonders about living inside someone else's program<p>I've been thinking a lot lately again about <a href="http://www.nickbostrom.com/">Nick Bostrom's</a> <a href="http://www.simulation-argument.com/">Simulation Argument</a>—the one that reasons that we're living inside a computer simulation. If you want a proper description of the argument, follow the link. However, if you're happy to accept my abbreviated version, the idea is that in the whole history of the human race there will be a specific number of conscious individuals. If humanity reaches the technological point of being able to simulate other consciousnesses, the total number of consciousnesses will soar, but the vast majority of them will be simulated. As being born human is equivalent to randomly picking one of those consciousnesses to be you, the odds are hugely in favour of you being a simulation.</p>
<p>I wrote about this a few years ago <a href="https://wrongsideof50.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/living-in-simulation-some-thoughts-from.html">here</a>.
<p>Of course a huge IF here is the assumption that it is possible to simulate consciousness, or as they say, <em>consciousness is substrate-independent</em>. For myself, I would argue that this is not a given, seeing as we don't yet even understand how consciousness forms in our own brains. However, I suspect it is probably correct.</p>
<p>The first question that occurs to me is, why would you run such a simulation? Perhaps historians are using them to answer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterfactual_history">counterfactual histories</a>. More worryingly, we might just be background details inside a video game.
<p>Another question that arises is how we should behave once we start believing we're inside a simulation. Some people suggest we should endeavour to lead interesting lives so that the meta-beings running the simulation keep us going. Not sure of that personally: looking around, there are so many uninteresting lives, my own probably included, that if dullness was a recipe for termination, there'd be people disappearing right, left and centre.</p>
<p>And yet another question is when will the meta-beings decide to stop the whole simulation. I would think that a highly significant moment in a simulation's run is when the simulants (i.e. us) come upon the Simulation Argument, and another even more significant point is when they prove that the argument is correct. Maybe we can never prove this, but if enough people concluded it was true, it might be effectively the same thing. Our behaviour would now be influenced by the belief, to the point that the real purpose of the simulation (whatever that might be) can no longer be achieved, leading to the simulation being ended. If that's right, the sensible thing would be to forget all about the Simulation Argument. On the other hand, the meta-beings could easily (some big assumptions on my part here about their coding ability) have programmed us to be incapable of even conceiving the concept of being inside a simulation, so perhaps this self-realisation is something they look for.</p>
<p>At this point it seems that trying to second guess the meta-beings' motive is as fruitful as trying to see into the mind of God. They all move in mysterious ways.</p>
<p>I came across this argument maybe a decade ago and it's stuck with me ever since. Then recently Elon Musk stated that he thought it <a href="http://singularityhub.com/2016/06/23/elon-musk-says-were-probably-living-in-a-computer-simulation-heres-the-science/">overwhelmingly likely</a> that we are indeed living inside a simulation.</p>
<p>That's easy for him to believe. I can visualise a meta-being in the <em>real</em> world, or <q>Base Reality</q>, maybe in a games store picking up a box marked <q>Elon Musk</q>. </p>
<p>- "What's this one like?"</p>
<p>- "Oh, you get to play a billionaire tech genius who builds spaceships."</p>
<p>- "Cool! I'll take it."</p>
<p>Noticeably they do not buy the game called <q>Charles Anderson</q>, in which you play a software engineer who lives a reasonably good life, but to whom nothing particularly exciting ever happens (for which incidentally he is very grateful), and who certainly doesn't build spaceships (although I did have the Airfix Apollo 11).</p>
<p>This leads ti the nub of my problem with believing I'm a simulation: why would anyone bother putting in so much incidental detail? Currently I am recovering from a mild cold and there is also an irritating paper cut on my left thumb. Seriously? Someone programmed that in? What made them think that the simulation needed to include trivia like paper cuts and sore throats?</p>
<p>Here's some more unnecessary detail. If you are touched simultaneously on a toe and the tip of your nose, you perceive the touches as happening at the same moment. However, the distance the nerve signal from the nose has to travel to your brain is much, much shorter that the one from your toe. The conclusion of neuroscientist <a href="http://www.eagleman.com/">David Eagleman</a> and others is that the brain, on receiving the message from your nose, holds onto that fact for a fraction of a second in case any other signals come in from further away on the body. If they do, that part of the brain then tells our consciousness that the two signals arrived together. In effect, our consciousness is living up to half a second in the past. There are other experiments which force you to come to the same conclusion. While extremely interesting in what it says about our minds, you have to ask why the meta-beings would need to build something like that into their simulation. Why not have just made it so that nerve signals travel so fast that they arrive effectively simultaneously?</p>
<p>As a programmer myself, I know that we nearly always take the easy route. If the meta-beings wrote a simulation with a complication like that in it, I can only guess that they did it because that's what happens in their own reality. In other words, humans in the simulation are likely very similar to the ones outside it.</p>
<p>I concluded before that the most sensible thing for me to do is to accept the possibility that I am just a simulation, but continue to live my life as if I'm not. Today, as I get my head round the concept of <em>President Trump</em>, while still not having got over the Brexit vote, I'm starting to wonder if a bit of prayer to our meta-overlords might not be worth a try.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-30138359995762502282016-10-23T18:46:00.000+01:002016-10-23T18:46:49.196+01:00Unexpectedly Loving Folk Music<p>Last week I went to a wonderful concert at the <a href="http://www.ncem.co.uk/">National Centre for Early Music</a>, happily for me located in York. I've been to many types of concert there over the years, from Jazz to Klezmer through Classical, but I don't think I'd ever attempted English Folk Music. This is a genre that I can usually take only in small quantities, as I tend to find mock west country accents singing about fair maidens a bit tedious. And some folk songs can sound extremely repetitive. Once, in a pub in Whitby during the Folk Festival (my presence in the town at that particular time was completely accidental), I had to endure an especially grating song that repeated over and over without any apparent variation or development. When the band finally came to a stop, one of the musicians carried on playing for a few notes, proving my point, I feel.</p>
<p>So when I saw <a href="http://www.kathryntickell.com/home">Kathryn Tickell and the Side</a> advertised as folk music in the NCEM's brochure, I was initially doubtful. But then I found out that she had played with <a href="http://penguincafe.com/">The Penguin Cafe Orchestra</a>. Aha! Now that's music I do know I enjoy! I got her latest album, loved it, and bought my ticket.</p>
<p>Although not knowing much about Folk Music, over the years I have discerned a connection between it and real ale, so I began the evening by purchasing a bottle at the bar. In the spirit of embracing the new, I picked a beer I'd never heard of called <a href="http://www.york-brewery.co.uk/Beers/Categories/Bottled-Range">Mostly Ghostly</a>, and went off with my bottle and glass to find a seat. Once sat down I put on my glasses (sad, but increasingly necessary) so I could read the label on the bottle: "York Brewery and the Chilli Jam Man present..."</p>
<p>Uh oh.</p>
<p>And I thought I'd <a href="https://wrongsideof50.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/a-lesson-in-beer-drinking.html">learned to read beer before I pay for it</a>.</p>
<p>Yes, it was everything you would have expected from 5.4% real ale flavoured with chillies, combining two things both notorious for their ability to get things moving to produce an effect that lasted well into the next morning. Although a very well crafted ale, I have to admit that my favourite beer aftertaste is not "hot". In the second half I washed the memory away with a bottle of Wold Top Brewery (this time checking the label for surprises). </p>
<p>It was nice to see that the concert was sold out. I've been to shows there where they've had to put out tables "caberet-style" to disguise the lack of customers, but not this time. Agewise, though, I was one of the younger attendees, which is sad, as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjKvQqDbAJ0&feature=youtu.be">this music</a> has so much to offer. The band is a quartet, featuring cello, piano accordion, harp, and Kathryn Tickell herself on fiddle and Northumbrian pipes. I really like this last instrument (the others are great too), which came as a surprise, as the Scottish bagpipes are one of my least favourite musical instruments. The quality of their playing was superb, and their love for the music really shone out. The clog dancing was a nice touch, too.</p>
<p>From now on I will make more of an effort to listen to Folk Music, as there is clearly much that I would enjoy. I start off with Kathryn Tickell's pleasingly extensive back catalogue.</p>
Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-33681699933892915122016-10-02T16:56:00.000+01:002016-10-02T16:56:51.979+01:00In the Region of the Summer Stars Again<p>A week or two ago I went to hear <a href="http://www.theenid.co.uk/">The Enid</a> in concert. This wonderful prog rock band are on their 40th anniversary tour, which explains how it can be that I last heard them in 1981. That was in the Reading Hexagon, and I also saw them a couple of years before that in a Reading University hall of residence (St. Andrews? They blur a bit after all this time). It's not that I've been avoiding them for the last three and a half decades—our paths just didn't cross, but I kept in touch through their albums.</p>
<p>Forty years old the band might be, but of the six musicians playing at the <a href="http://www.pocklingtonartscentre.co.uk/">Pocklington Arts Centre</a>, only one looked like he was around in 1976. In fact only one of the original lineup is still associated with the band, and unfortunately ill health stops him performing live nowadays. Despite this, the concert was brilliant, and took me back to when I first heard the beautiful "In the Region of the Summer Stars" on Radio 3's "Sounds Interesting". The radio station dedicated to playing classical music let its hair down late on a Sunday night and played rock and popular music for an hour (possibly the channel controllers didn't stay up that late). I only listened to the show for a few months before I went to University, but it introduced me to progressive rock just as most people were saying goodbye to it. I've been there ever since.</p>
<p>Decades after Prog's heyday in the seventies there are <a href="http://teamrock.com/prog">loads of great Prog bands</a> around again, but it's nice that a band like the Enid is also going strong. The next day I joined their fan club (if the concert audience was anything to go by, I'll be one of its younger members), so I can keep in touch with their touring schedule and not leave it another 35 years. </p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-42103196301274006172016-10-02T16:08:00.000+01:002016-10-02T16:08:14.082+01:00Why npm install Stopped Working<p>A public service blog post, this time. I recently found that </p>
<pre>
npm install
</pre>
<p>had stopped working on my computer. When you typed an install command, all you saw was the spinning cursor, though it had definitely worked the month before. </p>
<p>I managed to track the reason down by a bit of googling and experimenting, but I thought I'd mention it here for posterity. I had recently installed the JSLint package for Sublime, and for reasons best known to itself, it had added its folder to $TEMP. (I suspect it was aiming at $PATH.) My TEMP "folder" was now two folder paths separated with a colon, which completely freaked out npm. I removed the extra folder path and npm went back to normal (after restarting the command shell, of course).</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-37942348148108470732016-05-12T18:58:00.001+01:002016-05-12T19:03:20.764+01:00My Thoughts on the European Referendum<p>Among all the noise and fear-mongering coming from both sides in the Great European Debate at the moment, I thought I'd chuck in a few thoughts and conclusions of my own.</p>
<p>First, some facts.</p>
<ul>
<li>If we leave the EU, we cannot possibly end up with better access to the european single market than we've got at the moment, but we can end up with worse.</li>
<li>Even though the rest of the EU sells more to us that we do to them, that's in absolute terms. As a percentage of exports, we are far more dependent on selling into the EU than they are on exporting to us.</li>
<li>If we leave the EU, the remaining countries will have strong incentives to make sure that any deal we get is unattractive. Otherwise it might encourage other countries to think of leaving.</li>
<li>Much of the EU regulation that people complain about would still affect us, if it involves selling goods or services into the EU. The only difference will be that Britain won't have any say in them. </li>
<li>The rest of the EU regulations are not going to be just swept away. Regulations written by civil servants in Brussels will be replaced by regulations written by civil servants in London.</li>
<li>Scotland looks likely to vote massively in favour of remaining in the EU. A <a href="http://www.theweek.co.uk/eu-referendum/65461/eu-referendum-poll-will-scotland-swing-the-vote">survey this week</a> suggests that 76% of Scots will vote to stay. If England votes to leave, that will encourage the Nationalists to demand another referendum to leave the UK.</li>
</ul>
<p>Now, some reflections.</p>
<ul>
<li>Exit campaigners express horror about EU membership involving our country having to give up some of its independence. This is ridiculous: everybody gives up some of their independence whenever they need to work with others for a common goal. What do they think marriage is?</li>
<li>I am not so sure that the Commonwealth is quite as enamoured of Britain as some Exit campaigners think. In the Caribbean, some countries are starting to <a href="http://www.channel4.com/news/jamaica-calls-for-britain-to-pay-slave-trade-reparations">demand reparations</a> from Britain for the slave trade. In India there are <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-33618621">calls for reparations</a> for the damage British rule did to the Indian economy.</li>
<li>It is ironic that the politicians who tend to be most against Britain staying in a federal Europe are also likely to be in favour of Scotland staying in a federal UK. Also ironic in the other direction that politicians in favour of Scotland leaving a federal UK dream of an independent Scotland joining the EU.</li>
</ul>
<p>Both the campaigns, In and Out, have been uninspiring so far, concentrating on fear and prejudice to make their cases. I would like to hear somebody arguing to stay in the EU on ideological grounds. For myself, I will be voting to remain in the EU. I've always been an Internationalist, and I hope that one day (not that I'll live to see it) the human race will become a single nation.</p>
<p>If that wasn't enough, there's also the remarkable coincidence that almost all the politicians campaigning for an Out vote are people I strongly dislike or disagree with. In the case of Donald Trump, both.</p>
<p>I was 16 when the country last voted on whether to leave. That vote was supposed to settle the matter of our European membership once and for all. So a final prediction: whichever way the vote goes, the argument will carry on.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-18639570794251829542016-05-02T18:37:00.000+01:002016-05-02T18:37:21.939+01:00A lesson in beer drinking<p>It's been months since my last post, and the title of this blog is starting to feel less and less appropriate. Maybe I need to change it to <q>The Right Side of 60</q> while there's still time.</p>
<p>Two nights ago I opened a bottle of 8.1% strength beer. I won't mention the beer's name because it's probably not the brewery's fault what happened next. However, as a hint it's named after a nearby star, which was also the setting for a battle between Starfleet and the Borg in a memorable Star Trek episode: the one where Captain Picard has been assimilated and uses his knowledge of Starfleet tactics to... er. Anyway, so I open the bottle as I always do, and it goes off like a roman candle, beer gushing all over the work surface. </p>
<p>Two tea towels later and I'm on top of the situation, but most of the beer has gone. I carefully sip what's left. Perhaps it's the great strength of the beer, or maybe the bits of floating sediment that the bottle's instructions suggest I should have left in the bottle ("pour into a glass in one smooth action"), but I cannot warm to its flavour. Part of me wonders if the fountain effect wasn't a red flag.</p>
<p>Why was I even trying to drink an ale nearly twice as strong as normal? Well, it's an age thing. I don't mean that I like more alcohol as I get older. I bought the beer in the poorly lit back room of a beer shop (such an excellent invention—I never saw one until I got to York), and the print on the bottle was very small, and bizarrely I hadn't thought to take my reading glasses with me when I went shopping, so it wasn't until I got home that I discovered exactly what I'd bought. </p>
<p>I made it into my forties before I needed glasses. First for reading, then another pair for longer range, such as looking at a computer screen. The decline is slow but persistent, and now reading without glasses is a definite challenge, particularly first thing in the day; some mornings I have difficulty focusing on my breakfast cereal. In that dim shop, this bottle's label might as well have been written in Egyptian hieroglyphics for all the good it would have done me. In fact, that might have been better, for a couple of glyphs of legless Egyptians or a vomiting crocodile-headed god might have given me valuable clues about the alcohol strength. </p>
<p>But wait, I've just noticed that the label shows an illustration of two Neanderthal figures. Could this have been a coded hint about the expected level of my mental ability after finishing the bottle? </p>
<p>It also says that all their beers are naturally carbonated. Aha! Unexpectedly I realise I must from now on always read the instructions on beer. (Just as an afternoon of near terminal flatulence twenty years ago taught me the importance of reading the instructions on sugar-free jam.) </p>
<p>Old dogs can learn new tricks, provided they learn the hard way.</p>
Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-3911846523677132572015-12-31T17:08:00.000+00:002015-12-31T17:08:25.770+00:00The Flood of 2015<p>With 2016 just hours away, I feel safe in titling this post "The Flood of 2015". </p>
<p>The "ancient city of York", as the news reports style it, is used to flooding. Built at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss, flooding literally comes with the territory. Indeed, it's in the very names of the local landscape: "Ings" is an old Norse name for meadows that flood, and around here you can find Clifton Ings, Rawcliffe Ings and Wheldrake Ings. In the centre of York, the Ouse routinely floods at Kings Staithes, providing wonderful photos of waters lapping at the Kings Head for lazy journalists.</p>
<p>But the weather we've had in the last week has been exceptional. This is a view of Clifton Ings from Clifton Bridge three days ago:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5dm0tB1EL5wWhR5H7sGxizC4N5cT0k-1nvramQmsznlOeBqvZk8B6xllZosMcjB__xs9z-E04M-4qIYQ9qw8wipy5ekaqJ460JvVnWqRbGdAwr7frWcTyY7UMCeZLgDvk9B85IaSJBCTs/s1600/IMG_20151228_122707.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5dm0tB1EL5wWhR5H7sGxizC4N5cT0k-1nvramQmsznlOeBqvZk8B6xllZosMcjB__xs9z-E04M-4qIYQ9qw8wipy5ekaqJ460JvVnWqRbGdAwr7frWcTyY7UMCeZLgDvk9B85IaSJBCTs/s320/IMG_20151228_122707.jpg" /></a></div>
<p>Flood meadow indeed!</p>
<p>On the other side of the bridge you can normally descend some steps and follow the riverbank into the City Centre:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt5P4ZzY-094E3sXc2X5EbrdEkH0eFIIW039QWmqIRD1n_rmdTWlEp7Ag_xgye_vxdH75fomkU8HiXl96ZeZC-ntEZzcl3-Y7ZWh80tZMP4CDysgyhPCGQkIaGJ-mUayWx9_dzMA0NGW9q/s1600/IMG_20151228_120825.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt5P4ZzY-094E3sXc2X5EbrdEkH0eFIIW039QWmqIRD1n_rmdTWlEp7Ag_xgye_vxdH75fomkU8HiXl96ZeZC-ntEZzcl3-Y7ZWh80tZMP4CDysgyhPCGQkIaGJ-mUayWx9_dzMA0NGW9q/s320/IMG_20151228_120825.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyO0LAJwLykxmCML_6jvAgAPVJp8N6F_X3FC6Z1vFxOVCv0TAFCyQLwO0h1hndykh1IHgJJl6HdlLtrCs3sQJ7wKnlL8z7n2fPyEBzF5arHyBTFmAetLjcQzcBb4O5F7nq8R-LhTjL6uJJ/s1600/IMG_20151228_121106.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyO0LAJwLykxmCML_6jvAgAPVJp8N6F_X3FC6Z1vFxOVCv0TAFCyQLwO0h1hndykh1IHgJJl6HdlLtrCs3sQJ7wKnlL8z7n2fPyEBzF5arHyBTFmAetLjcQzcBb4O5F7nq8R-LhTjL6uJJ/s320/IMG_20151228_121106.jpg" /></a></div>
<p>Although we live just a few minutes walk from the Ouse, our home was not affected by the flooding. In fact, when I looked at the water levels on Monday it seemed to me that the Ouse would have needed to rise another two or three meters to threaten us. Then again, a street nearby flooded without any help from the river—if the sewers stop working, any road is at risk.</p>
<p>I haven't been into York to see the buildings that were hit by the Foss breaking its banks, but I imagine the consequences will be with us for several months to come. My heart goes out to everyone affected.</p>
<p>For myself, I now find myself noticing every slight dip and incline in the street, as I mentally track where rising waters would head. And the next time I see a blocked drain I will definitely be ringing up Yorkshire Water to let them know. The number to ring is 08451 242429. I wonder why it's not a free 0800 number.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-91382548239167137892015-11-26T21:52:00.000+00:002015-11-26T21:52:06.765+00:00Who was Francis Mary Harvey?<p>This is going to be a very niche blog post. I have just come across my Certificate of Baptism, issued a month before my adopted parents picked me up from the adoption society. Francis Mary Harvey is listed as my sponsor (i.e. godparent), and I would very much like to speak to her, if she's still alive.</p>
<p>The baptism took place at the Church of St Alban in Finchley on 6 July 1959, conducted by Rev. Thomas R Allan.</p>
<p>If anyone finds this page while searching for Francis Mary Harvey, please could you get in touch.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-15974781879642689852015-09-19T16:59:00.002+01:002015-09-19T16:59:34.410+01:00How to get rid of Annoying Adverts in Android Chrome<p>I've tended to accept adverts as the price I have to pay for getting free access to websites, but in the last few months adverts have become so intrusive and annoying as to make some sites almost unusable, particularly on a mobile device. Here are some tactics you might be familiar with:<p/>
<ul>
<li>You arrive at a site and start reading something, then it jumps down to make way for an advert that's just appeared above it. You scroll down to find the bit you were reading, and it jumps again as another ad arrives. And then again.</li>
<li>While scrolling through an article, a video ad pops out of nowhere. And it's the same video you've been seeing all week.</li>
<li>The site freezes while some stupid ad downloads or something. The effect is the same whatever: you can't finish what you were reading.</li>
<li>While you're reading, a voice starts talking from a video that's decided to auto-play. On the <a href="www.yorkpress.co.uk">York Press</a> site you sometimes get two copies of the same video.</li>
<li>You're distracted by the animated ad that's playing just to the side of the bit you actually want to read.</li>
</ul>
<p>Now I realise that the people who place ads are desperate to get you to pay attention to them, but I've pretty well given up on visiting some sites because of the appalling quality of their user experience. I'm trying not to mention <a href="www.theverge.com">The Verge</a> or the <a href="independent.co.uk">Independent</a>.<p/>
<p>Today I decided to try a drastic remedy, but it seems to have done the trick: I turned off JavaScript and stopped the little sods in their track.<p/>
<p>(This is for Android Chrome 45 on Android 5.1, but other web browsers will have a similar setting somewhere in their options.) Go into Chrome's main menu and pick Settings. Under Site Settings click on JavaScript. Switch it off. It's that simple.<p/>
<p>On the downside, any web page that wants you to input text (I don't know, Amazon, say) won't work, but if you just want to read, this will completely block the really irritating ads. Simple ones that don't want to jump around will still be there, and you can pay as much attention to them as you always do. None, in my case. If you do need to use a web page that needs JavaScript to function, you can always just switch it back on while you're there.<p/>
<p>Or, here's an idea: install a second web browser app and have one Javascript-enabled, and one not.<p/>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-33644805568553776592015-08-08T12:05:00.001+01:002015-08-08T12:05:37.555+01:00Do Pensions Keep the Post Office Going?<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Since the rise of email, the amount of physical mail coming through my letterbox has declined to almost nothing, but a few intrepid letters still manage to get here. They're rarely interesting, and I suspect legal requirements are responsible for them being made out of atoms rather than bits, because probably a third of them now involve pensions and insurance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">For instance, last month I got a letter from the Clerical Medical Investment Group Limited explaining over six pages that, as they are now part of the Scottish Widows group, they were going to simplify their business by changing their name to Scottish Widows Limited. Then there was a load of stuff explaining in great detail that (I hope) this isn't going to affect my pension.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This week I got a letter from Scottish Widows plc about another pension policy. They are proposing to merge Scottish Widows plc (and six other companies) into Clerical Medical Investment Group Limited, which would then change its name to Scottish Widows Limited. Then the same six pages of legal bumf.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I know keeping customers informed is very important, but I can't help speculating on how much it's costing to let me know that the holding company for my pension is changing 'plc' to 'Limited'.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">These are two of several of the many company pensions that I have acquired in the course of a varied career in the private sector. At least annually I get a letter from each of them keeping me in the loop about how much money they're holding for me, how much the transfer value is, and how much it might be worth when I retire (not very much). When I moved recently I had to contact each policy holder to let them know my new address. This takes less effort than it once did, thanks to corporate takeovers that have removed names like Guardian Royal Exchange or Commercial Union (and, soon, Clerical Medical). Talking to Standard Life though required two calls for my Standard Life two policies. Their customer service rep could easily update one of them online, but the other needed a letter from me, as it was in a different system. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">When I got its most recent update report I could see why. The printout looks like the sort of thing I was producing on my Amstrad PC1512 in the 1980s. Which coincidentally is when I joined that pension scheme. I can't remember the last time anyone else sent me a letter printed in Courier font. Now I imagine a room at Standard Life HQ where an ancient daisy wheel printer sits, connected to a computer that predates the internet. I just hope they both last out to my retirement date.</span>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-47496901010723743442015-07-22T21:16:00.000+01:002019-03-04T18:49:02.534+00:00Judi Beaumont<p>As I've mentioned before, I was adopted. My parents (the ones who brought me up, and who I therefore think of as my real parents) had told me about being adopted as soon as I was old enough to understand, and it never bothered me. It still doesn't.</p>
<p>There were, quite correctly, very few details about my birth parents. On my original birth certificate (you get a new one once the adoption is complete) it stated my birth mother's name, with the father section left blank. The adoption society that had placed me had given my parents a few snippets, so that I knew that my birth mother was short with brown hair and brown eyes, and that she was from New Zealand. In my twenties I had contacted the adoption agency after the law was changed to let adoptees get any facts that were held on them, and learned my birth mother's address in Wellington. I didn't act any further, and then largely forgot about it.</p>
<p>However, when I started researching <a href="http://wrongsideof50.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Genealogy">my genealogy</a> a couple of years ago, this small amount of information turned out to be all I needed to make contact with my birth mother's family.</p>
<p>My birth mother had died in 1995. I learned some details of her life and people were kind enough to send me what few photos there were of her, which let me build a picture in my mind of what she might have been like. Limited of course, after so many years. But how that has changed in the last week.</p>
<p>For a few years she worked on New Zealand TV, and now, through the kindness of relatives and friends, for which I will be forever grateful, I have a short DVD of some of her TV appearances. I am really quite stunned—what were the odds that I would actually get to hear the voice and see the facial expressions of this woman who died twenty years ago?</p>
<p>It makes her much more real to me. Not closer perhaps—our paths diverged a few weeks after I was born. I don't blame her for that; it was a different age, when being a single mother was far harder, and in any case, things turned out okay for me.</p>
<p>In some of the clips she's appearing in a Xmas special, probably in the mid-seventies. Most of her co-stars went on to achieve enough fame to show up in a Google search, even to have their own Wikipedia pages (including Jan Russ and Myra de Groot, both later of Neighbours). She does not though. But one of the reasons I started this blog was to put information onto the web that I wish someone else had provided when I was looking for it.</p>
<p>So here, then, is some small record of my birth mother, Judith Ann Beaumont (11 Aug 1935 - 10 March 1995), or Judi Beaumont as she appears on screen, and also sometimes spelled Judy Beaumont or Judie Beaumont. Once of 13 Burrows Avenue, Karori, Wellington; 94 Torrington Park, Finchley; 38 Hesper Mews, Earls Court, London SW6, 9 Nevern Square, London SW5, and 14 Beaufort Gardens, Kensington.</p>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47Qry9FASjisz1pTgoOYmdJ-Ru_3DAMr7vcbEQqfA6SuDWuP2R4ceKW8AmDvbtDJxqmBS7WIGL7CD_5NN6OV4ud8ajjPASENHhW3jEHNYmyy9raJPNZMvRNCP8YVNeQ2AminyhpiF0k3Y/s1600/Judi+1.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh47Qry9FASjisz1pTgoOYmdJ-Ru_3DAMr7vcbEQqfA6SuDWuP2R4ceKW8AmDvbtDJxqmBS7WIGL7CD_5NN6OV4ud8ajjPASENHhW3jEHNYmyy9raJPNZMvRNCP8YVNeQ2AminyhpiF0k3Y/s320/Judi+1.jpg" title="Judi Beaumont" /></a>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb3m8wuM1Ygx1z0gpxWE-TL0tr-zy_VZWH872HXlojXWq81-c7KW0FLVQC6A4Rm8ljUWai5xqxXbHiAYxdjNqRW9BJXUM_3JLZFnrCAmxdrreVvPYfcjJuifUD3TTYgXCwiMQtmiaetto4/s1600/Judi+2.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb3m8wuM1Ygx1z0gpxWE-TL0tr-zy_VZWH872HXlojXWq81-c7KW0FLVQC6A4Rm8ljUWai5xqxXbHiAYxdjNqRW9BJXUM_3JLZFnrCAmxdrreVvPYfcjJuifUD3TTYgXCwiMQtmiaetto4/s320/Judi+2.JPG" title="Judi Beaumont" /></a>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil-CXDDun4cAA8O6Dm5p9mnRpl1NRqyuR6h-iRVFRBgeL1dTiUF7mSb3JyickKsIW0fSwzvL9kmf75SWv-loJMGKFlBVZG_QrEQuGM5putvs_9n_SANkOMk7YpZ5pnzfeGvFZU3pTkU1E0/s1600/Judi+3.JPG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil-CXDDun4cAA8O6Dm5p9mnRpl1NRqyuR6h-iRVFRBgeL1dTiUF7mSb3JyickKsIW0fSwzvL9kmf75SWv-loJMGKFlBVZG_QrEQuGM5putvs_9n_SANkOMk7YpZ5pnzfeGvFZU3pTkU1E0/s320/Judi+3.JPG" title="Judi Beaumont" /></a>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-9062562900654932942015-05-15T22:31:00.000+01:002015-05-15T22:31:38.926+01:00They still Make Letraset!<p>When I got involved in politics back in the eighties, one of the jobs I'd end up with was putting leaflets together: typing up the copy, then printing it off and sticking the individual pieces down onto an A4 sheet of blue graph paper. Blocks of text would be interspersed with cartoons and headings. The cartoons were photocopied from pages of stock art or previous leaflets; the headings you painstakingly constructed from Letraset®.</p>
<p>The end result looked like a school project by a primary school pupil, but at the printers it magically transformed into something that frequently looked semi-professional. The blue of the graph paper disappeared during the production process (though yellow turned dark black—not a mistake you made more than once), as did the edges where you'd cut out pieces of paper, and you got back 6000 copies of your leaflet. Next you had to stick them all through letterboxes, but that's a different story.</p>
<p>Letraset was transfers: sheets of letters and digits that you transferred onto paper by gently but firmly rubbing them with a ballpoint pen. The graph paper was especially useful at this point, to help you keep the characters in a straight line.</p>
<p>It might sound easy, but when you were trying to finish off a leaflet late in the night, it was all too common to miss a letter out or misspell a word, or be forced to admit that the letters were too crooked and you'd have to do it all again. Worse still was suddenly realising you'd run out of a crucial letter. "Cambridge City Council" was a real bugger for using up Cs, I remember. And Letraset was not cheap.</p>
<p>Eventually I got my first laser printer. Oh, the bliss. I could type anything I wanted and just print it out. No missing letters, no wobbly lines, and for next to nothing. </p>
<p>That was in 1995. Since when laser printers have come crashing down in price, and desktop publishing has made blue graph paper a thing of the past. So it was with some amazement that I discovered yesterday that you can still buy <a href="http://www.letraset.com/products/90-Letraset-Transfers/">Letraset</a>. Who uses it? And Why?</p>
<p>I could google it, but I suspect it's very much a niche market nowadays. I imagine council election re-enactment societies, where groups of hobbyists lovingly reproduce election literature of yesteryear. The hard way.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-23143924673949107162014-11-09T18:35:00.001+00:002014-11-09T18:35:37.382+00:00Sinking Feeling<p>A decided drop in support for me recently. First my office chair settled slowly to its lowest position and wouldn't come back up again, then three days later my bicycle saddle decides to fall off.</p>
<p>I've had to replace saddles before when metal fatigue gets the better of them, and to be fair I had been hearing a creaking noise recently when I pedalled, but I thought it was coming from the pedals. However, when I had a closer look it turned out that the metal about to come away was not the saddle, but the tube that joins it to the frame. Interesting—you wouldn't think that would ever go. Still, it's a small piece, so I got my spanner and removed saddle + tube from the bike, and drove to the most convenient bike store. </p>
<p>They didn't find it as easy to replace as I'd hoped. In fact, they gave me a choice of two possible replacements: one just slightly too wide and one just slightly too narrow, but both far too long ("you can saw it down to size!"). I demurred, and headed off to a less convenient cycle shop. As this was the one where I'd bought my bike, a Gazelle Esprit, I figured that if they didn't know how to replace it, I'd probably end up having to buy a whole new cycle. As part of being less convenient, there is very little car parking anywhere near it. (Presumably they expect the bulk of their customers to arrive on two wheels rather that four.) So stopping at a public car park just five short minutes walk away, then realising I had no change for the ticket machine and that there were no shops nearer than five minutes away where I could get some, I spent the best part of the next ten minutes on my mobile trying to pay by credit card. It was a hassle, particularly as there is no Backspace key on a telephone keypad (which meant I had to start over), and listening to a recorded message when the wind's blowing past your ear is no joke either, but it was eventually achieved, and at least next time I won't have to set up an account first.</p>
<p>So five minutes after that palaver I'm looking for salvation in the cycle shop (appropriately named 'Cycle Heaven'). The shop assistant took one look at my saddle and went off to get the part I needed. Never have I felt so pleased to shell out £4.99 for a small piece of metal. At a stroke my bicycle is transmuted from large garden ornament back into trusty steed.</p>
<p>The office chair is proving harder to fix. I'd always known there must be a compressed air container somewhere in a swivel chair, but I hadn't realised it's actually the whole tube that runs between the five-wheeled base to the seat. On YouTube there are plenty of videos showing how trivially simple it is to replace this gas cylinder. You start by hitting the wheel unit with a mallet, and off it pops from the cylinder. Except, it turns out, on my model. Mine has a clip at the bottom to hold it in place. Fortunately I hadn't been using the mallet for very long before I guessed something was wrong. At the other end the gas cylinder goes into a hole in a metal assembly that is screwed into the actual seat. Again, the videos are agreed: you can try hitting the cylinder from the side to dislodge it, or twist it out using a pipe wrench.</p>
<p>Well, maybe I need a better wrench, or perhaps a better grip. No amount of brute force and WD40 had any impact on it. I decided eventually that there might be another clip to release it, but if so I would have to unscrew the assembly from the seat to get access to it. So I did.</p>
<p>No luck there either: there is absolutely no sign of the cylinder from the other side, and I'm at a loss to see how I can take the assembly apart to find it. So tomorrow I will have to shamefacedly take it back to the shop where I bought it, in pieces, and ask if they can replace the faulty component. At least now the chair will fit in the car more easily.</p>
<p>I shall watch very closely how they replace the cylinder. Who knows? I might even make a video of it.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-16180845036335659862014-11-06T21:21:00.000+00:002014-11-06T21:21:59.362+00:00Batman Returns!<p>Exciting <a href="http://www.wired.com/2014/11/batman-home-video-finally/">news</a> that the Batman TV show from the sixties is being released on Blu-ray. Apparently it's never been available before because of legal wranglings too tedious to repeat here but fully elaborated in the article. </p>
<p>When it was first shown on TV in the UK I was about seven or eight, at a guess, and it was the most exciting thing I'd ever watched. How many hours I spent re-enacting episodes with my brother. "Wham!", "Pow!" Holy roleplay models! </p>
<p>The plots were a bit confusing to start with, as Batman and Robin would finish each episode about to be horribly killed, but then in the next episode would be pursuing a completely different case. Then I realised that the closing line about not missing "next week's exciting episode" was leading me astray, because ITV were showing the program on Saturday and Sunday.</p>
<p>Then when they repeated Batman in the mid-seventies it was again compulsive viewing, but now I was old enough to start getting the show's many jokes and ironies, and wonder just how Batman managed to fit so many unlikely devices into his utility belt, or why none of the villains ever pulled off his mask, even though they managed to capture him at least once in every story. </p>
<p>That was the last time I saw the show. However, when I watched <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CiZDQZLiW7g">this trailer</a>, and Adam West says the immortal line, "To the batmobile!", I felt an old thrill suddenly run through me as I spontaneously regressed more than 45 years. Holy nostalgia!</p>
<p>They're available at <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Batman-Complete-Limited-Exclusive-Amazon-co-uk/dp/B00M8B8XWG/ref=sr_1_2">Amazon</a> for £109.99. Holy cow!</p>
<p>Why so much? Well, there are 120 episodes for a start. I'd have guessed less than 50, but it was a long time ago. Plus, this is a "limited edition" box set, with a price presumably aimed at the real Batman fans. I think I can hold out for the more reasonably priced unlimited edition. Or maybe they'll come out on Netflix. To be honest, I very much doubt I'd be able to sit through all 120 episodes, but I'd certainly enjoy watching a few.</p>
<p>Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da, Batmaann!</p>
<p>Now, I just need the Gnomes of Dulwich to come back.</p>
Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-23555285194703350752014-10-25T18:59:00.002+01:002014-10-25T18:59:16.787+01:00Trouser shopping — a reflection<p>I do not enjoy trouser shopping. Other items of clothing either come in well-defined sizes, or a coat, say, I can slip on by the rack. Trousers are harder. You have to find some promising candidates, then go off to a tiny cubicle and get half undressed to try them on. And if you don't like those ones, you have to get redressed and start the whole thing over again. In my opinion, only shoe purchasing is more irritating, where you need to get someone to help you before you can even get started. (Unless you happen to only have a left leg, I suppose.)</p>
<p>My ideal would be to go into the store, take off my shoes and trousers, and then wander around trying on pairs until I found the ones I want. Well, you'd think people had never seen a man in underpants before! </p>
<p>What I look for in trousers has altered significantly in recent years (and I'm not talking about flexible waistbands, although these should not be sneared at). One thing I really dislike in trousers nowadays are buttoned flies. When I first bought a pair with buttons up the front I thought it was quaint and amusing, that is until I needed to get in there in a hurry. That's when I realised why humanity had invented zips in the first place. They're not much fun buttoning up either, especially in cold weather when your fingers are numb.</p>
<p>Went I went trouser shopping last week I had a newer consideration in mind: would the pockets be big enough to fit my next mobile phone, now that the tendency is for them to look like small tablets. I don't even know for sure yet that I want a 6" phone, but I do know that my phone has to be able to accompany me wherever I go. As if anticipating the recent announcements from Apple and Google, all the trousers I looked at had capacious side pockets. </p>
<p>Another sign of the times: in Debenhams they have a QR code in the changing rooms so that you could download their wonderful Debenhams app. And on one pair of trousers a tag suggested I might like to text a number to donate three pounds to a marine conservation charity. As I was just about to make a considerably bigger donation to Debenhams, I passed on that one. The connection between marine conservation and what I wear on my legs wasn't obvious; perhaps the idea is that people will feel less guilty about spending a large amount of money on clothing is they donate a small amount to charity, thus allowing them to spend even more on clothes.</p>
<p>Some things, though, never change. As usual it seemed that an army of similar sized people had visited the shops just before me, leaving mostly trousers too wide or too short for yours truly. Or I'd find some with plenty in my size, but I wouldn't be seen dead in them. Not that I'll get much say in the matter.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-57546427101344510952014-10-23T19:06:00.000+01:002014-10-23T19:06:13.866+01:00Who says gas bills are rising?<p>A stunning letter from energy supplier SSE:</p>
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<p>Although we've been in our new house for four months, it's taken that long for our new energy supplier, Good Energy, to take over the supply of gas and electricity from SSE, who were handling things when we moved in. In fact it had taken so long that we'd had interim bills from SSE, and duly paid them of course. As they'd estimated our usage, we received a refund for the electricity, but with the gas I reckoned we would end up owing them money at the end. And so we did: one whole penny.</p>
<p>It doesn't take much of a brain to work out that SSE will be costing themselves dozens of times this amount just by mailing to tell me. When I ring up their 0800 number to make the payment, that will cost them some more, and their bank will no doubt charge them a bit more for the privilege of receiving my penny. The blindingly obvious decision should be to write off final bills that are less than the cost of collecting them. So what's gone wrong?</p>
<p>Well, looking at the three pages of colour printout that allegedly "explain my bill in detail", I think the blame lies with those fiends incarnate, the computer programmers.</p>
<p>A couple of months ago the bill we received estimated a usage of £91.64. But now, the bill for that period has been revised to £57.31, with an additional bill from then to the date of termination of £34.34. Total: £91.65! But our final meter reading was eight units more than their estimate in August, and eight units surely cost more than £0.01, so I'm guessing that their billing software spotted that it wasn't worth sorting things out, and fudged the revised bill so that the final total would equal the amount we'd already paid. Alas, some rounding error has left them still short of that extremely expensive penny.</p>
<p>If I'm right, I should have received a final bill of £0.00. Still costly to tell me about, but they would at least have been saved the phone bill and the bank charge. No wonder they offer £46 a year off if you go paperless.</p>
<p>It says "If you'd like to discuss your payment options, please give us a call." Oh, I'm really tempted, but all my previous attempts to talk to a human being on their 0800 number have just resulted in my left ear getting very hot from having a phone jammed into it for 15 minutes. To add insult to injury, their muzak is exceptionally annoying even by muzak standards, and it's interrupted every thirty seconds by a voice telling me that I'm going to get connected real soon.</p>
<p>Now, I just need to remember to actually pay the bill.</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3311177018009402020.post-33141696545748162262014-09-11T13:02:00.000+01:002014-09-11T13:02:18.842+01:00The Future—Today!<p>We watched the pilot episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" this week. Made in the year 1987 and set in the year 2364, I felt it held up quite well, allowing for some shaky characterisation that you might expect in a first episode. One bit made me laugh though. Commander Riker stops a crewman to ask if he knows where Data is. The crewman takes pleasure in showing him how you can tap a huge panel on the wall and then ask the ship's computer to tell you Data's location. It even displayed moving lights to point you in the right direction.</p>
<p>27 years ago the show's writers thought that this would be cutting edge technology in the late 24th century. Today millions of people have got the same technology sitting in their pockets. Out by three and a half centuries!</p>
<p>We haven't got holodecks yet, but VR headsets are starting to make a real impact, while 3D printers are clearly replicators in the making (no pun intended). Even more than when we were sending rockets to the moon, it feels like I'm living in the Future.</p>
<p>Guess it will still be a few years though before I can tell a kettle to make me a cup of "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot".</p>Charles Andersonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15559969191882949003noreply@blogger.com0