[Ed P]

One of my more venal kids said that we should go around the house putting stickers on the backs of everything with our estimate of value. That way they won;t put the good stuff into house clearance, and would know what to put into the piles to be divided between them. I’m still not sure if she was joking.!

There was actually a lot of truth in the requestt as house clearing is a horrible job and you rapidly reach the point of just wanting shot of everything.

[Ed P]

As we got on to the topic of diet I thought this research paper on food and brain function may provide some interesting thoughts.

As a ‘teaser’ here are some of the highlights I noticed:

“Low percentages of fish in diet e.g. Germany or New Zealand have a higher percent of patients with ‘major’ depression, versus countries with large percentages of fish in the diet e.g. Japan or Korea.

Dietary consumption of omega-3 fatty acids is one of the best-studied interactions between food and brain evolution. Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) is the most abundant omega-3 fatty acid in cell membranes in the brain137; however, the human body is not efficient at synthesizing DHA, so we are largely dependent on dietary DHA

Studies indicate that diets with high contents of trans and saturated fats adversely affect cognition (No cheeseburgers for A-level students!). Conversely stuff them with spinach instead as folic acid is a necessary brain food. Folic acid and vitamin B apparently protect against age-related cognitive decline.

… the application of Vagal Nerve Stimulation  to patients with epilepsy was associated with improved mood, VNS was perceived as a potential treatment for depression. In humans, VNS failed to produce improvements in depression patients who participated in a short-term open trial (lasting 10 weeks)6; however, in a longer-term study (lasting 12 months), VNS produced beneficial effects that were sustained after 2 years. (The vagal nerve is sometimes known as the ‘gastric nerve’ due to its actions on the gut, heart and lungs.)

Ghrelin is an hormone that is secreted by an empty stomach … it promotes…enhanced spatial learning and memory formation. (Starve your teenagers while they are revising for exams!)”

Just about enough data to keep any food faddist happy!

[Ed P]

+1 to all the good wishes. Keep a watchful eye on your Dad’s attitude to life during the next six moths – apparently depression is the biggest danger after a cardiac incident – first signs of mortality and all that. Hopefully they still run post-cardiac courses/exercise courses e.g. link If so, encourage him to participate, they are a valuable resource.

[Ed P]

I always thought it was fish oil that was supposed to speed brain development in the young.  One controversial theory is that humans evolved from sea-shore dwelling apes.  Unfortunately all the fossil evidence for such an origin is now under a couple of hundred feet of water due to rising sea levels, and it does not fit in very well with the now trendy (but rapidly fading) African evolution theory.

[Ed P]

Dave, I was advised to cut down on red-meat as well.

When I lived in Asia the Buddhist fast-food stalls used textured soy protein and they could make that stuff taste just like almost any meat product (fish through to pork char siu). Twenty odd years later the UK is starting to catch up and some of the soya protein stuff in Tesco is almost as good. Their mince is an excellent substitute for real mince in any Chili Con Carne recipe.

However, best of all is the ‘mock Duck’ Lynda McCartney Style that product is really tasty and I reckon could make a reasonable duck substitute in almost any recipe. Her shredded pork veggie burgers are also pretty good. Recommended.

It has now reached the point for us that a good steak is a treat only to be enjoyed on a special occasions.

[Ed P]

Quora still requires a log-in but that tends to stop spam – you cannot win!

Although Stack Exchange is very good, the mods are a bunch of anal nit-pickers who are very unhelpful to those they deem not to have made enough effort. e.g ‘The question has been asked before – naff off’  this is a frequent reply even when it is obvious the person posing the question is a noob.

[Ed P]

If you want to ask ‘intelligent’ questions try Quora.

[Ed P]

Back now but check out the Vault 7 releases! No doubt some of these will come back as malware to bite us all in the bum.

[Ed P]

tadka wrote:

Wheels-Of-Fire wrote:

Don’t know about a flat earth but i may be able to help with the maths. Just draw a line from the middle of your line of sight to the center of the earth to form 2 right angle triangles. Now use the pythagarus sum of the squares rule to get the length of your new line. Subtract the length of your line fron the radious of the earth and bingo. I get 6 meters on my calculator

I found some website where you enter whatever data you have on a triangle and it gives you the rest. I made two tringles and a line in the middle to divide them so basically 4 triangles. Then I worked it all out in a somewhat more longwinded way. But I got 44m. Sounds like a bit too much of a curve there but I kept making mistakes so it’s probably wrong.

Yep your calculation is  wrong. Just a simple thought experiment tells you that your calculation is way out.

Imagine you and someone your height are on either side of a big lake (roughly 3 miles across). at the point you can only see their eyes (binoculars allowed!)you have a line between your eyes that just scrapes the earth’s surface in the middle. The chord meanwhile goes from your feet to his feet and the difference between them (i.e. the ‘bulge’) is your height ~2 metres.

[Ed P]

Your question prompted me to check on WikiHow. Interesting little site it taught me a new (rough) formula for the horizon distance.

Square root[Height of your eyes in feet x1.5 ]= horizon distance in miles

i.e roughly 3 miles at sea-level for most adults

[Ed P]

+1

[Ed P]

There have been a lot of sites that have been hacked and info gutted. (Nexusmods and CD Projeckt to name but two). However I put the hack of CEX in a different league. It sounds like they did not bother to encrypt their data – enabling someone to steal plain-text info  deserves the maximum possible fine.

Hey-ho time for me to check https://haveibeenpwned.com/ again!

 

[Ed P]

The problems seem to have zapped the Synology Forum!

[Ed P]

I’ll add one thing to my comments – the ease of adding subtitles! All too often I find that I am forced to switch them on during many US drama series as I cannot understand a damned word that is being spoken! While my hearing has deteriorated it isn’t THAT bad. Others have noticed the same difficulty as exemplified in this blog. I challenge anyone to make sense of the lines being mumbled in the associated clip!

[Ed P]

Sky footie is on both UHD and HD (exactly the same camera view). This makes it very easy to flip between and compare the two. The differences ARE noticeable both in colour and detail. However, I’ll have to admit that the differences are very subtle e.g. the ability to see expressions on the faces of players or spectators who are not in the main focus. While I think it makes it more enjoyable I’ll agree it is hard to justify the extra money for UHD over HD. Where it MIGHT be a worthwhile advantage is in golf as it should be easier to see the flight of the ball even when it is not being zoomed.

I agree completely with BL’s comments on the ‘smart’ element, especially connectivity. I use the main TV to clean up unwanted clips from my security cameras. Much better than having to go and fire up a dedicated monitor. Samsung also have a separate box for connections that makes it simple to change peripherals without having to delve behind the wall-mounted TV set.

[Ed P]

Long term history will be able to judge after all the secret documents are released – but I reckon we were very lucky to survive that period.

It was a pity that political and venal greed screwed up the tremendous potential that existed after the fall of the Berlin wall.

[Ed P]

Reagan and Thatcher were always banging the war-drum and egging one another on. Reagan even started his re-election campaign by announcing he was going to order the nuking of the Russians within 5 minutes! link

Things got close to World War III at one point (Able Archer), and the UK Government built even more funk-holes for the Establishment (RSGs). The late 70s through the early 80s was a very edgy period. At one point I seriously considered emigrating to Australasia for the safety of my family, as the West seemed to be governed by a bunch of crazy war mongers.

[Ed P]

The problem as in the past is a lack of content that takes advantage of the new technology. Technically there is a huge jump in capabilities in terms of extra colour depth and resolution for Ultra HD in comparison with a standard HDTV. I have an Ultra HD TV as I’m a ‘nut’ with respect to colour depth, but I’ll have to confess it really does depend on the content and whether the in-built upscaling provides improvement for the ‘old’ content.

I think this review is a fair critique of the current state of play.

[Ed P]

For Linux you can ensure a good ffmpeg environment  by first installing Handbrake from the ppa. link

I know both ffmpeg and Handbrake are on the distro but Ubuntu has in the past played silly b’s with both in a mistaken DRM move to keep US lawyers quiet. Easier to use the French set-up to avoid this.

[Ed P]

I was in the US during that period, and Ronald Reagan was revered as their version of Royalty.In other words they realised that he was just a figure head but they trusted his advisors and liked his ability to talk tough.

The Americans I knew were quite upset at the European contempt for him.

[Author]

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