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Again credit where it is due. My wife drove and escorted a blind 88 year old lady to the regional vaccination centre to receive the Pfizer jab. She was extremely impressed with the organization starting with the parking arrangements through to the after-jab arrangements and the ever attentive, helpful staff. It took about 30 minutes from start to finish.
If vaccine supplies hold up we could well be the country leading Europe out of this mess. B-)
No backups were kept because it was a deliberate purge of records including their backup. The numbers of records deleted has now increased by 50%.
This was not an accidental deletion but one that incorrectly tagged records for deletion. Such a purge had to be made on all EU derived data as a result of Brexit. (hence my Brexit comment). I suspect that someone wrote a recursive routine in anticipation of the Brexit requirements and it got loose in the wrong datasets and ignored ‘do not delete’ restrictive tags.
Unfortunately due to the way this secretive Government works we will never get the full truth, it will all get blamed on some poor programmer and the Brexit requirement that almost certainly triggered it will not even get a mention. :wacko:
Still it may at least expose ‘Poison Dwarf’ Patel to another public examination of the way she manages her job.
January 15, 2021 at 11:36 am in reply to: I Thought 2020 Was Not So Good Standby for 2021To Kick Off #66406Richard, that was a real ‘good news’ – ‘bad news’ post! I hope that the good news returns for you very soon.
I trust that you are both on massive vitamin D, zinc and vitamin C supplementation. The importance of vitD has finally been proved, and vitamin C is now supposed to reverse some of the lung cilia damage that Covid causes. Zinc’s role is moot, but zinc deficiency (age, diabetes, overweight etc) maps extraordinarily well against those who need ventilation. In my view although I know that correlation does not equal causation, when four or five disparate factors are correlated then the likelihood of causation grows.
I cannot prove it, but I am pretty darned certain that I had a bad case of Covid last February and had I not been having a rant with @VFM about treatments and used those same supplements I think I may have become one of the unlucky hospital cases. (never did use the chloroquine @VFM recommended as I do not like its effect on my eyesight). Unfortunately I think I did get long Covid as breathing difficulty and coughing after hill climbing bugged me for over six months.
Anyway, enough of my meanderings I hope that your wife quickly recovers and that it never touches either you or your daughter. Good luck, and I hope that the rest of the year is a happy one for you all. :good:
Although administratively Public Health Wales has been pretty crappy in getting out the vaccine, in the longer run it is likely to be manufacturing that is the critical path.
We have a relatively limited supply of the Pfizer vaccine allocated to us. The Oxford vaccine appears to be less constrained, but others such as Moderna and Jensson are not expected to arrive before April/May. The Valneva approvals are unlikely until October/November while the GSK Sanofi vaccine appears to have bombed by not giving sufficient protection during trials — maybe they can reformulate or change their dosage but it probably should not be expected before year end.
The bottom line is that a lot of our eggs are in the Oxford manufacturing and batching facilities for the short term.
The Government deserves a little credit for not putting all our eggs in one basket!
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I forgot to add, I used the GSMArena battery ratings to proxy the battery replacement period.
Agree on the OS front, that was one of the clinching factors in my divisor, as with an equivalent Google OS plan their battery life potential would have been much better, and I would have gone down the Pixel 5 route.
The other plus with the iPhone is that for reasonable ££s Apple will put in a new battery, and my son assures me that if I take out the AppleCare plan that they will replace the battery if it did not perform to expectations within the warranty period (not sure what that means! :unsure: )
After much mulling and pfaffing around it occurred to me that I only buy a phone when the old one is about to die.
My Apple-mad son’s wife exists on his hand-me-downs and her current iPhone is 7+ years old. Using that as a benchmark I should divide the Apple 12 mini’s £700 by 7.5, versus a Google Pixel 4a’s £400 by ~3.5 (A Pixel 5 would give a better cost/year figure but not beat that of the Apple.
In case you want to know, I proxied the battery life by taking the ratio of how many hours one phone charge lasted. (Battery life is directly dependent on the numbers of full charges that are applied. That is why the Pixel 5 comes out better than the 4a on my reckoning.)
Bottom line I decided to swallow hard join the dark-side and treat myself to a phone that I might with luck only have to renew once! B-)
I was playing around with the economics of purchase, and as I do not change phones until they die I came to realise that I should really be looking at phones in terms of purchase price/year. Using that viewpoint the pecking order changes considerably with the iPhone 12 mini, edging out the Pixel 5 which in turn edges out the Pixel 4a. (Pixel 5 starts out one ahead on the Android releases and has bigger battery that should last longer)
All moot at the moment as the Pixel seems to be stocked out in my preferred locations, so that gives me even more time to mull this over.
To my surprise my Apple-mad son said its iPhone 12 mini or Pixel 4a. Because he could not justify the price difference he came down on the side of the Pixel 4a. His other choice was the 5.8″ Samsung 10e but said it would have to be an Amazon reject to meet my mid-range price points.
On my current Android I use OsmAnd+ which for a small fee allows me to have access to always updated UK, European and rest of World OpenStreet maps. The output is very similar to the Cachly map. (thanks for that). IIrc terrain did cost me a little extra, as would coastal water or cycle track data, but at the time I thought it worth the fee to get offline updated access. (runs into quite a few Gb however!).
What is your iPhone like in the sun? I must confess to always being underwhelmed by most phones in that respect, the Swift being pretty poor as well. From a very limited number of reviews (in 2012!), Samsung performs the best in that respect, however all the reviews use the same test results and only the iPhone4 is tested. In another review the Google Pixel 4a is utter carp except in the shade because for some malign reason Google have disabled the high intensity option and a full root is required to get it back!
Imo you learn a lot more by fixing something than you do by trying to learn it.
Sticking a phone in the rear pocket of jeans and sitting down can put a hefty bending moment on the phone. (I find the front pocket an uncomfortable location).
Maybe you could try sticking the phone in your trouser pocket instead? My One Plus 8 Pro (6.78″ screen) fits easily in my Asda jeans.
I have cracked a couple of screens like that, and vowed to cut out that particular habit. Even the last gen Gorilla Glass on the Google Pixel 4 comes with user warnings. I would rather risk dropping it down a toilet as most phones now seem built for a temporary immersion. 😉
A very slight swerve, and an indication of some issues in putting your sensitive unencrypted data on the Cloud.
I think that it is pretty evident that I have zero sympathy for the antics of extremists in general. However, when Parler hosting by AWS was threatened, the hackers were able to get in and scrape everyone’s data. I think this could now be a problem for the few that were using Parler for legitimate business purposes as their data is now exposed along with that of the rogues.
BTW Hope Trump gets impeached.
I worry about that move, which is already underway as I post.
Brit’s feelings over Brexit were bad enough and could still finish in a fracturing of the UK. Some attempts were then made to reconcile differences by the pro-Brexit majority, but the attitude of the Remain groups does not even come close to the gun-law politics and views of many Republicans. I would have been a lot happier to hear Biden give the one country, reconciliation line.
The danger with a fractured Super State at war with themselves is that they may invoke a common external enemy to get out of their own mess. The equal danger for us is that our idiot Government will then lead the charge just as TB Liar did for Iraq and Cameron foolishly did in North Africa and the Middle East.
The Google Pixel 4a also fits the pocket in terms of apps/size/camera, but seems to be a bit crappy in strong sunlight. (A strong consideration if used for navigation in the countryside). If Steve has any Google Pixel comments I’d appreciate them.
The Nokia 8 (surprisingly) could be my alternate to the iPhone SE 2020.
However, before making a jump to the Darkside, I thought that I had best check out whether Apple has the equivalent iPhone apps. Most, including , to my surprise, my e-home apps now have iPhone equivalents, but there is to my mind one huge gap that maybe Drezha can answer. (I’d hate to ask my Apple-mad son, as he would slip into Apple salesman mode!)
Out of lock-down, my wife and I like to cross-country walk on the footpaths of the UK (mainly in the West Country). The problem is usually one of phone reception and the need to use off-line maps that cover both terrain and footpaths/bridleways. I use offline OpenStreet maps as these are usually much better than Google for this purpose.
Although I know that Apple used OpenStreet at one time, but a search on this in the Apple Store reveals zilch. My question to Drezha and others is whether Apple has offline maps that cover both terrain and footpaths. ( terrain, as sometimes the sight of a darned great hill is a bit off-putting to us and instead we divert a couple of miles!).
If the answer is no, then it looks like it will have to be a Nokia 8, even though it is much longer than I would like.
Thanks, but AaaagH! Now I have to decide if the better camera on the 12 mini is worth ~£300.
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