Derek Peden

Joel Golby in The Guardian:

I have a working theory about the root of this shopping stampede groupthink, and it’s the war. There is a prevalent mindset in Britain that a good old war (not one of these new wars, obviously; if a modern war happened right now we’d all be attacked by machine-gun drones and nuked to death in seconds, and the whole thing would be over in about a day and a half), but a proper Vera-Lynn-and-paint-your-tights-on war, would be good for us.

Think how good a war would be. We’d all eat boiled grey mince for four years and solemnly rinse our underwear in our leftover bathwater like the martyrs we are, and we’d bloody well muddle through it, wouldn’t we, because we’re British. I don’t want to say that the people who think Old War Britain would be great are many of the same people who voted for Brexit, but only because I’m not YouGov, and me saying so would be a hunch not backed by data. But if you did the polling, you’d find out that I’m right. The Venn diagram of people who currently have a garage full of toilet roll, those who think national service would “sort the youth out, because they have too many iPads” and those who would ideally quite like a wall built between us and France, is basically a Covid-19 virus-particle shaped circle.

Microsoft should seek license the macOS Beachball as their Office logo. It’s the most recognisable part of the Office Suite, especially Excel. (Numbers, yes I know but it’s shared work documents.)

This evening I’ve received 2 emails from Airline CEO’s underlining that “safety and cleanliness” are a priority, and offering to wave the fee typically charged if you wish to change a flight. Clearly COVID-19 is hitting their Q1-20.

Looked at my Now page and found it was at least 14 months out of date.

Loosing the plot trying to get Target Display Mode working. Worked faultlessly all day yesterday but today not even for a second.

When I was a kid it the Automotive quality was such that it was 50:50 wether my dad’s car would start in the morning. In 2020 software is in the same state with failures in background processes and recurring requests to login.

It’s only ever during air travel, as you soar above or through the clouds that you realise the documents you wish to review or update are only available on “the cloud”.

We’ll be forever grateful.

Larry Tesler: Computer scientist behind cut, copy and paste dies aged 74. BBC News

Springstreen Tribute act, don’t mind if I do. Hardly the real deal but there are worse ways to spend an evening in March…

It feels like the Error Reporting App is my most frequently used Microsoft Office Application.

Apparently “Country Roads” is also karaoke classic Finland. Whilst I’m glad to hear that local culture is alive I’m just glad to hear something where I know the words

Brexit day 50p coin unveiled reports BBC News. Another reason to pay by NFC contactless payments and avoid having this filth in you pockets or purse.

I’m not a frequent user of Facebook and have considered closing my account. What actually keeps me there is Facebook is where people are: people I was at school with, studied and got drunk with at University, friends and family.

My lack of use of any platform for keeping in touch has been brought to bear this evening when I saw a post from an old friend commemorating the loss of 6 members of her family in a tragic accident in 2017. Of course it’s not my unawareness of the tragedy that bothers me but that I wasn’t able to offer any words of comfort then, not that anyone really could. Had I been a more frequent user of the platform then I’d been able to add my voice to may words of comfort that I’m sure she would have received.

That’s not to say that it’s about me. Of course not. But should measure ourselves by the interaction are able to have with others, the shared experiences, both physical and digital.

Facebook should be about people: Our interactions, our relationships, our successes and defeats, our wins and our losses.

Less than 2 weeks into 2020 and I’m already enjoying the new year. I’m sure that there are and will be new challenges this year but I’m looking forward to facing them and enjoying what comes next.

You’ve got to give “Sharon” credit, she really knows to operate social media. www.bbc.co.uk

Watching ads before a showing of The Rise of Skywalker. I’m literally the one person here.

Showed my 10 year old niece how to create (not just download) an iOS shortcut to generate a GIF from a still images, just so that she could animate the movement of her dolls

Interesting bug there Microbrains. You’ve found even more ways to screw up

A speech about working together as the country tears itself apart and is pushed towards alienating our nearest neighbours rather the working with them.

Apple’s still taunting me with a badge for iOS13. There really should be a way of disabling that, especially when Apple drops the ball on software quality and releases a plague on all our houses.

A “Bumpy” 2019? Did the inarticulate buffoon Boris write the address? www.bbc.co.uk

Forecast is for good weather on Christmas Day. We’ll go wild in the whole 4 hours of daylight.

My beloved AirPods (gen1) are on the way out. They’ve started dropping out and are <95% battery out the case for 2hrs. So soon I guess I’ll be looking at the AirPods Pro

KLM failed in their claim that my bag would make my connecting flight yesterday, but did the next best thing in putting it on the very next flight out a few hours later. Nice save. What would be even nicer would be a responsive website for checking progress.

For anyone who’s bothered to follow me on Micro.blog, thank you, but my confession is my programming skills are limited to “Hello World”