[Richard]

I was on cholecalciferol earlier this year but after reading warnings about possible side effects I stopped it after a three month course. Confusingly at the time the GP had talked about B levels. Confusion was not helped by some prescribing errors by the practice. They had started to give me three months’ allocation every month.

Now I wonder if I should resume at the correct level. Choices, choices.

[Richard]

BL, I’m glad it is working the way that you wanted. That is always a plus.

What does DAB give that other services currently do not deliver?

I have never even seen or used a DAB radio and that is won’t change anytime soon. My wife has her specific wants in-car. Our disabled daughter wants only her own kit plus headphones – and not always even those. She would ever accept my choice, even traffic updates or road directions kill her goat. So silence often reigns supreme . If its just me, maybe a talk programme, Radio Three or nothing. There is not  really much point for me to worry. I’m only doing a few miles there and back to yet another local appointment.

However for those with the freedom to chose for heaven’s sake enjoy it while you can.

 

[Richard]

The Duke wrote:

Fingerprints shouldn’t matter. All the screen does is register where the electronic input hot the screen. Your ‘prodder’ just conducts the electricity from your skin to the phone. Your issue will be your aim. When ever I get a new device, it takes a week or so for my muscle memory to zero in on the new size/different keyboard layout etc. Re cars, mine to has all the buttons I need on the wheel. Vol, channel select, cruse and limit control, plus horn. (I think that covers it). 

Steve, even I can see which bit is the touch (insensitive) screen, especially in the car which has more real estate at which to aim; neither device’s screens often register anything right or wrong too much of the time.

The Tech bit found on line: Modern tablets use capacitive touchscreens that rely on the electrical conductivity of human skin to complete the circuit. Non-conductive surfaces, such as an old-style stylus or a gloved finger, cannot trigger the touch pad. Capacitive styluses are designed to be conductive. Several different types of capacitive stylus are available, and it is even possible to make one at home using instructions found online. End quote from Ebay

Wetting the finger tip does help it to select a target, certainly recent hand washing helped allowed the phone screen to work. I suspect that the doubtful skin on my finger tip is currently far from helpful, I have heard of similar troubles from others, any finger print damage is only a side effect.

Google’s speech to text input, when practical, is better than the annoying screen. Buttons, while more expensive to make were far more reliable, style alone is rarely great. Still the phone has survived a few encounters with the walls and floor, so perhaps it is not all bad. Today’s message that it ‘did not make voice calls’ was unexpected and also straight out wrong! It did and does. Suitable, or not so suitable, (too large for many people) finger stalls are currently out of stock

Mind you the Moto4G Play cannot even find any updates so is still stuck on 6.0 though that might be down to Nothing Anywhere also known as EE, I might try another Tesco SIM for a day or so.

Now I am off to see why the garden vacuum does not suck (petrol) I could introduce it to the phone perhaps for hints on sucking?

 

[Richard]

I have a problem with touch screens. I rushed out on a rescue mission, the newest car had battery trouble, (11 months old and 2.7 volts….) With AA assistance it started so I hot footed it to the Kia dealer who was very good. I tried to send a text while waiting via a my Moto G4 touch phone but without my screen prodder. The first gibberish message went off without warning. A second try took ages. It ‘sort of worked’ only when I licked the finger.

The call selector screen for that in car mobile and the radio use the same screen method. At least there is a functional channel change button on the steering wheel. I nominate the stations I like, ignore the so called music dross, then flick up or down to find what I want.

I was talking about steering wheel mounted buttons for things like volume and channel change. Loose them loose the infotainment stuff complete and probably scrape the car. Even the speed limiter, cruise, phone answer and disconnect are mounted there. The USB power and sound system connections are remote from the integral sound and navigation system in the bottom of the console.

I suspect my touch problem is caused by age. I have rubbish finger prints on several fingers. They have either been burnt off on hot glass tubing, (up to just off red, at first they smelt a bit), or on other abrasive activities. I guess now they don’t bother. I use a wand for the phone – provided I have it with me. Perhaps some sort of rubber finger cover like money counters used to use, but made with the right rubber would work on the car. Perhaps it is just one of the wonders of advancing age.

[Richard]

Is DAB car radio better than it was?

I understood a while back that it only existed in ‘pools of reception’ with dark, mushy or however else it goes, areas in between. A bit like mobile coverage was, and in may areas still is these days, (at home for example).

The thought of changing out any of the present radios does not inspire me to touch them. With remote control buttons all over the place and power and USB sockets to also connect, I think I will leave well alone. Perhaps I am just getting too old and worn to take on such exercises. Fixing a petrol garden vacuum is taxing my capabilities at the moment, I have re-fixed the manifold screw, but now the darned thing has lost its carburettor priming capability. It is a lovely(?) messy job with a few years worth of mess stuck about the guts.

[Richard]

No one is further from being an expert than I am so please take this as an initial primer for a conversation…

I understand that may people no longer want CD players but have either music on a USB stick/key or on a player of some sort. My old car has a CD player, which I have never used, my wife’s four/five year old car has a CD player which I believe she has used; my one year old car has a USB port and possibly other options. It certainly has Bluetooth but I use that for the mobile. (I believe that there is a way to connected the mobile to my Satnav to get real time traffic information but it took me 20 minutes last time, plus reading the manual so I have not repeated that too often. As disabled daughter cannot stand the noise of the Satnav guidance that is not a popular option.)

In the end I suspect that it come down to personal choices, and only you, the family or the son in question can fill in those blanks.

Does the ISO cable refer to the way that the radio connects to the inbuilt speakers in the car? That is some form of standard plug and socket set up, but I am outside my comfort zone by a country mile now.

[Richard]

During the 1960s some of the MOD ration packs had gone to the Civil Defence and as they aged, they were offered to various bit of the catering lot. I remember one site I looked after, the sales pitch for the tinned corn beef suggested that it was fine to eat, though as it was a bit elderly it might turn out of the tin a bit darkerer than expected. Some was black…, but still fine to eat and the colour would not show through the gravy in the right sort of cottage pie…

For some reason the site did not take up the magnanimous offer, I do not think anyone else was interested either. I am not sure it sounded any better or worse than you ration packs which I guess were largely dehydrated and possible more stable until reconstituted.

[Richard]

Clearly Trump uses all of his energy spouting, shouting and raving leaving none for his brain to function on. He is no guru, but his passing would be no loss, except to the junk food industry as his the junk food diet is clearly not helping him.

Lest it be thought that I am seeking to look like Twiggy’s thinner brother, I have a long long way to go before I am anything like that!  My approximately 12% loss only takes me into the upper middle range of overweight and has taken 189 days; albeit with several periods of stress induced back sliding. My fair (foul?) weather friends Mr and Mrs Merlot and their side kick Chardonnay (and others) together with their associates The Easy Munchies have something to answer for.

Though mobility and to some extent flexibility are better, I still having problems moving which given some stability problems from joint and back issues becomes a potent mixture. I am never likely to get into the NHS preferred weight range, which would need about the same amount of weight loss again, plus a further 4KG .- That is not look in danger of happening in this lifetime – though the wardrobe still contains clothes from that time in my life. Still I aim to press on slowly – an average 60gms loss a day is hardly rushing things. So maybe in 233 days time I will have something to show for trying to become more of a mouth control freak, – no holding of breath please.

A daily graph as shown the impact of this years life disturbances with several periods of several months when events just rolled over the top of me. If anything was undesirable from a health point of view it was those periods when I was swept up in a bubble of uncontrolled problems. While I cannot control this month’s pick of the crop, at least I have a few issues that I have been able to direct and own. Though the failure of a 12 month old car battery this morning could not be controlled, at least the event has been recovered via a helpful garage – they do exist.

[Richard]

I stopped them in somewhere about 2009, walking became too painful, though other issues came along later to upset my apple cart. If statins would have done much for me, it would have been to make me feel I was living longer, rather than achieving any good result result. No one suggests I did the wrong thing or demanded any new tests.

I did read a bit of ED’s linked reference, but time and physical reading issues worked against me. Perhaps I am wrong but diet and metabolic aspects appear to intertwine very heavily to affect one’s outcomes.

I still working on reducing my weight, (>10% so far), though if I eat much more fruit and vegetable will I fly like a fruit bat or graze like a herbivore?

[Richard]

Resources are a major issue for all agencies these days, they cannot even chase down all the priority leads, so searching for new haystacks to poke into looks far fetched to me.

However, luck and coincidence can be valuable, you hear of a ‘person of interest’ and they contact others. What do you do and how do you advise whose with a possible interest in  knowing?

At the personal level the PSD2 malarkey gives me the runs as I see that as a direct financial risk and threat surface.

[Richard]

I could see a vanishingly tiny, (sub atomic particle size?) reason for either GCHQ and/or NSA still knowing me though about the only possible reason that comes to mind is a shortage of real targets. Somehow I doubt that applies.

The idea that Russia might be daft enough to take a personal level interest is in a different league of silliness. While I would be happy to decry their covert actions to discredit such things as vaccinations for MMR, ‘flu, or their working to stir up concerns about fracking etc. I doubt that marks me as a prime personal target for them. Should they take an interest then I would suspect they have seriously lost the plot. Their efforts directed at targets that offer the Tzar a more direct payback, either identifying soft targets that would annoy the population at large, or at the more personal level targets for fund raising money scams. In this regard they do of course face competition from those lovely(?) nut job employees of fat boy kim in N. Korea.

A tendency to avoid the internet for financial activities, allied to a healthy, (overbearing?) dose of cynicism about mails should stand me in good stead. In this regard a far greater concern for many should be the potential impact of PSD2 on their financial risk profile and attack surface.

[Richard]

Leo was an interesting project. I was taught maths for a while by a chap who had driven himself mad working on programming the thing. Well programming it was not the whole story, he started work trying to test the programmes as part of a team, the only issue was that the machine was not available because it was late arriving, of course. They worked the programme with pencil and paper. He left and became a disillusioned teacher. He had to move on again when his child was born severely disabled and they needed to find suitable support.

Another project was the Elliot automation computer controlled machine tools, I believe it was called the Elliot Auto-code 803. Quite what happened to that one is not in my memory banks but Elliot disappeared like all things.

I cannot confirm the Churchill story except to say that the original Colossus was broken up and the code breaking work was suppressed, I can understand why. However in the 1950s as those stories show there was some effort put into the nascent civilian computer effort. However Churchill was out in 1946 and the country was then under different management. It would be easy, dead easy to criticise the choices of the day. 1947 was a terrible winter and the imperatives were to give returning troops work and to try to get the country producing again but with no money with which to do so. Churchill had started the studies for the new national health in I think 1943which blossomed forth in 1948 under the new government. It needed staff to run it and one of the early objectives was to help ensure full employment. Overall the drive then was to get production and employment started, with export or die being the main driver. Through the late 1940s and early 1950s that was all that mattered. Sadly it was all done on clapped out old hardware, while I visited new factories making new stuff in the 1960s e.g. Mullard churning out transistors to replace valves it was still a cottage industry with doubtful yields –

Question: How do you decide what to make?

Answer: We make them and then test them, then we see what we need then we sort them into different types. those that fail testing go into transistor clocks.

Go down the road, or up to the Midlands and the story was worse, even by the 1960s engineering was still using machines made in the 1800s, OK the late 1800s e.g. 1890 etc. to supply parts to the car and lorry industry. Ship building was based on hopelessly out of date sites forced into hopelessly uneconomic ways of working. We probably had the worlds best riveters and boiler makers. Craftsmen making riveted ships that no one wanted for a price no one would pay. Everyone else had new purpose built new yards making welded ships. We would rather build the worlds most complicated steam engines that required large amounts of labour to keep them running while the world was moving or had moved to other motive power sources. New stuff took far less labour to keep it working often a quarter the manning levels. (This did not stop the likes of Argentina ruining their railways mind you.)

Some ideas failed for the well known reasons of bloody mindedness, with investment cash always short and the risk of long disputes over new working methods who wanted to throw money at long shot items that were sold as replacing boring work? Any one remember Wilson’s white hot technological revolution. I do, it delayed a whole load of essential developments in the communications world, a long boring tear inducing story of failure to understand. GEC, before they threw all the money into a pit marked do not go there. They set up a research and computer centre that they could only use for about 10% of its capacity. They decided to rent out spare capacity. I think they only had one or two customers before those customers filled all the spare capacity. I asked why only a few of the links were being used, they sheepishly said that their customer(s) used the machine for far more challenging stuff than they did and filled it up.

Where did we go wrong? My answer would be everywhere. There was frankly no single point of failure. A lack of imagination, a lack of flexibility, a lack of the right training, not understanding the way things needed to change, rigid mindsets, shortages of funds. Do not play mix and match just picking a few, they all applied plus a few more. Things had to break before anyone could stand a hope of rebuilding. I heard someone speak about alcoholics, they said do not persuade them to stop, buy them a drink. Then they can hit the ground while they are still in with a chance of recovery and, more to the point, can see their life was going wrong. Delay that vital step until they are too damaged to pull back and they are lost. So it was for our industry, subsidies kept no hope industries running while starving better ideas of needed funds. What little money there was got thrown at a string of flops, Linwood and Rootes, De Lorian et al.  There were other flops in Wales which tried and failed to create jobs. The civil service moved tasks to northern England, so thousands of female clerks type positions were supposed to mop up the unemployed from heavy industry, that was bound to work not. The damned jobs should have been data processing based years ago and built on a vibrant computing industry, not on HB pencils, but that would not create thousands of short term tasks.

Colour me bitter by all means.

[Richard]

Dave, maybe all you said covers all that needs to be said. However, the NSA bloke in the USA was very possibly a victim of the sloppy recruitment policies and inadequate management capabilities  of the NSA. He then used a personal laptop with data he should not have had at home. After that monumental screw up ‘K’ found the data on his personal laptop and the world, plus dog, plus flees on the dog knew almost all there was to know about the matter.

As for that lovely previously failed KGB operative Emperor Putin (or Tzar Putin?), anyone who cares to read of his actions should have a rather better understanding of the way that he is currently working. Restricting his own citizens and everyone else in Russia via a range of laws and decrees. He is clearly priming himself to rival Stalin in the milk of human kindness stakes.

I loosely subscribe to the theory that Kaspersky is of little interest to the KGB while they are dealing with ordinary oiks like us. Putin is however very interested in finding any route to weaken, or damage the will or ability of others to stand against his desires. If his lot can find anyway to gain access to systems, that is the prize. It can be done in two ways, to subvert enough people to stand for him, and gain a critical toe hold entry to non military and normally non tactical or strategic systems. Two benefits accrue, mess about with traffic management, or power distribution for example and ordinary oiks become very anti authority. Secondly those aspects that Dave wrote about being protected suddenly become less important. As a bonus, any armed forces lose funding in favour of beefing up our digital defences. This is already the case. The only problem with the action on current digital defences  is such defences may well be no more than a Maginot Line, already bypassed and thus close to unimportant.

It is regrettable that many in Europe have already mortgaged themselves to Russia, Germany needs their gas as do many other locations handing the Tzar a valuable control lever. Greece openly courted the Russians when things got sticky when the EU, especially Germany, made their ill judged mistakes over the Greek finances.

If anyone is deluded enough to think that their personal computer habits are of any interest to any security body then good luck. There are only two cases of interest, those up to their necks in anti state activities – (and sadly not all of them are spotted in time) and those in some official position who could be blackmailed or otherwise damaged by possession of quasi damaging information.

Sadly the quality of too many NSA personal appears to be far too low to be of much use to anyone, vetting and recruitment appear to be hopeless and subsequent management deplorable. While GCHQ are being run off their ‘backsides’ in an impossibly target rich, but hopelessly resource strapped environment.

Action against Kaspersky serves two minor objectives, it possibly limits cash flow to an increasingly hostile power, but more importantly and possibly the real reason, might spur some lazy sods to think about what they are really doing about data security.

I still think Barclays were simply tilting at windmills.

The moody, unstable, thin skinned toddler in the Whitehouse is probably doing more to recruit terrorists to the causes of disharmony in its many forms and hate than any previous fool. As such it is hard to decide which is more dangerous to the world Putin or Trump. I declare it a dead heat.

[Richard]

I agree with Bob, though as the arms can be swung about it may well be possible to ‘tune out’ some screen overlap. I have wall mounted three different screens at home – for three different users and the ability to release desk real estate is hugely valuable. The space under the screen can be very useful. Just make sure you get the height right before you start drilling holes in the wall. At the price is sounds to be a bargain, less money than a new screen anyway.

Warning for others it adds onto a ‘normal VESA mount kit’ and is a pure adapter to deal with non VESA screens.

[Richard]

ED I assume that the dog in question has at least one wooden leg that does not fit and is normally left in its basket? My experience of such forced disasters is that unless the kit is really high end, they are vanity projects of the ‘Gee I made this work’ class. Like the time I did data processing on a Wang word processor as company limitations on software prevented more useful options. That changed a short while later and the right tools could be employed.

[Richard]

Alan Wood wrote:

dwynnehugh wrote:

Looking at some of the replies here, I think there is far more hysteria here than out in the big world!!

I tend to agree.

Yes, I’ve seen far more here than I read anywhere else.

[Richard]

Well I guess this nigh on 72 year old should take the bit about a tax on the young as being a complement on my youthful age. Somehow disabled daughter, wife and self still manage to use rather more water than our 29 year old daughter does with two kids and a husband. Mind you she watches the water like a bird of prey watches for food.

I cannot blame SWMBO wanting to wash away the effects of our local death camp – the one pretending to be a hospital. After a serious case of anaphylaxis in the recovery room she was sent home yesterday evening. She was only given a directive to prise an epipen out of the GP. So with no identified cause and without providing any overnight coverage another attack could happen at anytime. The GP was seriously ‘unimpressed’. Sadly the nurses in the recovery room appeared pleasant enough if hard to understand, there were certainly enough of them. Organisation and direction were another matter. It is quite popular to criticise the level of parasitic management sat on top of the NHS, but some floor level supervisory and organisational capability would be nice.

[Richard]

Thanks Dave, she is still in the HDU (annex) but croaked that she might go onto a ward later.  She is desperate to get home but the reality does not appear to have fully hit her.  She might escape by evening but maybe tomorrow, or?. Apparently long service staff said they have not see its like before, so I am not expecting early developments. but could hopefully be surprised.She sounded very fragile this morning, but no surprise there.

Shortly I’m off to the specialist with disabled daughter – Mum is usually her carer so the appointment could become ‘interesting’. For the moment daughter appears OK; thank goodness this did not happen a few weeks back when she was very seriously disturbed.

[Richard]

It is very dependant on your water consumption patterns. With three people always in the house and a wife who is a bit fanatical about turning taps on it currently costs a fortune. About £600 p.a. However with two people working and perhaps doing a few machine washes per week and perhaps showers rather than long bath time soaks it could be less than half of our figure and perhaps less than that. Try to see what similar households are paying in your area.

As for meter readings, I am having a right royal spat with my old and new utility supplier. The meter reading taken by their reader minion turned out to be very wrong. I did not spot the stupid error until later but by then it had been entered on the national error log*. It appears almost impossible to get the mistake corrected. So having over billed in effect for more than 2 quarters consumption in one, the stupid system is now estimating a consumption going forward which is impossible to correct. We have still not reached the September reading and probably will not until the end of the year. I have raised a formal complaint and await developments.

*The national error log is the corrected name for the place where all meter readings are logged, real, imaginary, sensible or straight out stupid. So whenever a meter reader takes a reading I suggest that you demand to know what they have recorded and if it is wrong insist on a correction there and then. If it is left for a few days, it becomes almost impossible to correct .

This is not a good time for more troubles, my wife went into hospital for a day case today, however it went badly. She had to be revived and intubated to allow her to breathe as she reacted badly to something and swelling closed her airway. She could not be found space in the high dependency unit, standing room only there, so she is parked in a recovery suite. I feel a difficult night lies ahead wondering and waiting. Tomorrow disabled daughter has a vital appointment with her specialist. Can I please have a few more (fitter) me to sort out the messes life is creating?

[Richard]

May I beg to differ on a small point? I am not disputing the use of Charleston in the Odenin line but I think that some of the quay scenes were filmed in Exeter docks (as they were then) and not as they are now.

Charleston is still worth a visit as an interesting location, or it was when the children were smaller than now, say about 20 years back,. Hopefully not too much has changed there to remove the historic interest from the docks and the ship loading apparatus they had developed to simplify their task.

[Author]

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