Man cannot live on Jaffa Cakes alone… but he can try

I don’t care what the manufacturer of the CPU is and how many cores it has, Microsoft Office is still going to beachball and be “uploading” for eternity.

There are no words. This has to be one of the saddest headlines ever to read:

Funeral for mother and sons who died with coronavirus

Your heart just breaks for the husband/father they leave behind.

Watched a couple of reviews of the new M1 MacBooks: rather than the higher end 16Gb models I’m more interested in those with 8Gb RAM and I’d the fans spins up on MS Teams video calls. That’s the real world use case.

I would love for Microsoft to explain there logic that deleting text in Word/PowerPoint copies this content to the clipboard. It’s madness. Better yet would be a feature to disable that nonsense.

Wondering if it’s now safe enough to upgrade to macOS 10.15

Sorry Tim, but it doesn’t “just work“: I get up, walk downstairs, make a coffee, never sit down, walk back up the stairs and at the top my watch tells me I need to stand. The crazy part is that it’s had me hooked for years and the only thing that’s keeping me from breaking my habit is me.

I should create a new blog that generates a post every time excel crashes without warning or on copy and paste. It would probably generate more content than here. 

All news is local

South Ayrshire Golf club owner loses 2020 presidential election

Fresh Egg

This week’s BBC page on photos from across Scotland is one of the best there’s been.

Nobody did it better. Sean Connery’s best James Bond moments - British GQ

Perfect delivery of 4 words.

Sir Sean will always be my Bond. And such a gentleman. Truly gutted.

  • Dial number…
  • press 1… press 2… press 1….
  • Please hold…
  • “Good morning how can I help… ok, let me just transfer you”
  • Please hold…….

This remains an impressive piece of work. Sobering, humbling, and makes you appreciate the “long peace”, even if it isn’t always so peaceful.

Breakdown of "life" in 2020

  • Monday: Work
  • Tuesday: Work
  • Wednesday: Work
  • Thursday: Work
  • Friday: Work
  • Saturday: Close open work issues over last 5 days
  • Sunday: Prepare for work for next 5 days

“Hey Siri… set a reminder for 26 weeks called update to iOS 14”

Watched the Apple Event and I’m actually pleased to see there’s nothing for me. Otherwise Q4 2020 would be hideously expensive.

Queen Elizabeth Forest Park

Last night my parents showed my newspaper articles from 1922 written by great great grandfather. This has started me down the rabbit hole that researching the family tree. I’ve made it as far as William Lamb, born in 1677.

Another example of academics and politicians feathering their own nest over COVID

Ship it now, Fix it later

Being a reluctant user of Microsoft products, I’ve found that at least on macOS I can automate may way around the bugs using Keyboard Maestro. I’ve already automated a daily restart of OneDrive, and automated document saving. I’m now considering automating the running the ResetOneDriveAppStandalone.command on timed basis to keep the MacBooks fans below 2500rpm! After 40 years of writing software you’d think they’d have learned to right reliable code by now but instead they follow the ship it now and fix it later mentality. But when is later?

Storm Francis lashes UK. BBC News On the global scale this is a light breeze and hyperbole aside it’s not the “UK” but rather a corner of the England.

This week’s edition of Week in pictures from BBC News encapsulates all of 2020.