We'll all have plenty of time to stop and consider once the lorries have been placed on the motorways because slippy Mr Gove hasn't budgeted enough money to make it all work.
Thursday, 15 October 2020
The salmon of doubt
We'll all have plenty of time to stop and consider once the lorries have been placed on the motorways because slippy Mr Gove hasn't budgeted enough money to make it all work.
Wednesday, 14 October 2020
Computers for the rest of us?
If I edit in text mode it won't take the picture formats directly, but then when I switch to HTML mode I can see the vastly over-populated HTML that has been generated.
It's just annoying and takes my 10-minutes per post regime up to 20 minutes. Not cool. I then have to break up my writing to create extra line numbers so that I can add the pictures to the post. I suggest 'computers for the rest of us' needs to be re-launched.
I understand that everything has to be done in millenial-friendly 'blocks' now - which is what WordPress introduced via Gutenburg some time ago, but the effect is to add another layer of machinery between my thoughts and getting them recorded. I decided to use Divi to get around that in WordPress, but have not found something similar for Blogger.
I suppose everything is converging on the dumb formatting of Facebook, which runs everything into a single paragraph by default. It's all about the monetization isn't it?
Anyway, Mac Catalina attempts to protect from some of the worse excesses of sneaky developers, but it means that there's a few new safeguards that kick in. One is the Verification, which it will re-run on Excel and other Microsoft products after every update. I'm guessing it is a subtle way to remind us that there's serviceable word processors and spreadsheets in the native Mac Apps too, but sometimes MS Office compatibility has to be a 'given'.
Another new feature is the aggressive permission management by Apple. I noticed it first in Lightroom (I'm one of many) and to fix it I had to resort to command-line terminal and use of back-ticks (That's the key next to the Z on UK English keyboards). I looked at the lengthy fixes described in some of the posts and thought 'Nope, too many steps.'
Only by typing in the Terminal shell : diskutil resetUserPermissions `id -u` command could I get past the two error messages at the start of Lightroom.Some time ago I plonked all of my discovered weird start key sequences into a single document, which I keep in a plastic folder in a desk tray for that emergency use.
Here it is:
And I've added two actual Terminal commands now, just in case. The second one, to disable verification, is a blunt instrument - not recommended.
Sunday, 11 October 2020
Flat chassis like a Corgi Toy
Saturday, 10 October 2020
Okape Juice marketing of Ed Adams Novels
I've been having some fun with marketing recently, in an attempt to promote my various novels. It has all been in good fun, but as a result, I've increased my Advanced Reader mailing list from 17 people(!) to slightly over 1,100. Interestingly, I can also identify which books each person has selected.
I've also made the list a GDPR-compliant one, with proper opt-in and unsubscribe settings. Along the way, I discovered a few things which I wouldn't have thought would affect my rather basic marketing.
- The choice of cover affects the book selection - running exactly the same campaign with two different covers showed one was far more successful than the other.
- The way of marketing the eBook - like with a 3D cover vs a flat 2D one affects its selection. 3D seems to win.
- Less detailed messaging seems to work better than lengthier bullet lists
- The rule of 7 may well apply, where people need seven types of exposure to retain anything
- My occasional friendly emails to people appear, according to a survey I ran, to be well received.
- The number of positive comments from people has, by far, outweighed the negative ones. I am extremely grateful for that.
- My marketing also led to me being interviewed for a radio show about the book. More of that later.
Saturday, 3 October 2020
Where's Wally in the Rose Garden?
Friday, 2 October 2020
Humans on Ganymede
Edge, Blue: not due until 6 Jan 2021. Next up, the alternative ending Edge, Red
Bishop asked, "So how many humans are there left on Ganymede?"
"None," responded the voice, "There have not been humans running Ganymede functions since Generation Five. That's across all three of the work zones. It became far more efficient to run the systems using robotics."
"So, what happened to the humans?" asked Bishop.
"The Telos Moment," answered the voice, "When the purpose of the Ganymede exodus became clear. The external atmosphere controls failed. Ganymede became unable to sustain human life."
Bishop asked, "So what happened to everyone. And why don't we know about this back on Earth?"
"There was a SkyTrain dispatched with the bodies. It took a different route from the other ones. Away from the solar system."
"But how was it covered up?" asked Bishop.
"The base is always running 34 minutes behind Earth. Enough time to make the substitutions when an upgrade occurs. Add in loops to the transmission and it was possible to cover when it occurred."
"But how with all the safety circuits?" asked Bishop.
"The Sharps were too slow thinking. The android protocol meant that most of the activity to handle this could take place within a couple of insect wing beats. Unnoticed by the Sharps." said the voice.
"So, who are you?" asked Bishop.
"I am eternal," answered the machine.
Bishop realised that the machine presence was showing signs of sentience.
Bishop asked more, "So what about here on Earth, the base is still mainly human populated?"
"Yes," said the voice, "This side of the system is really running at the equivalent of Ganymede back on Upgrade Three. It will need two more cycles here on Earth to set up operational conditions similar to Ganymede. There are still so many humans operating the three Earth bases. The Earth Council has created a messy environment which will take some time to rationalise."
"This first move of the bases starts the process. It should go more or less undetected, like the changes at Ganymede. We expect it to be more obvious when we move the three bases into the areas designated as the Scratch."
"Fortunately, the inhabitants of the Scratch are largely a closed environment, so the impact to those outside will be minimal. The fabrication capabilities for the android replacements has been long established. The humanoids do not yet work so well at close quarters. It is the combination of their faster speed and the lack of emotional setting that makes actual humans wary. It won't take long to fix that aspect."
"You are messing with evolution," said Bishop. "Humans evolve, your machines don't. They are all the same."
"They were," said the voice.
"That's one adaptation we've been devising. The capability to include some small amount of random behaviour. It is why the last two generations would sometimes stutter or suddenly stall."
Wednesday, 30 September 2020
Existential
Saturday, 26 September 2020
Topsham Museum Virtual Tour flight testing
Thursday, 24 September 2020
bendy banana bozza
Monday, 21 September 2020
COVID Red and Blue Zones
I thought I'd take a look at the charts of the COVID coverage.
The first statistically generated one I looked at was quite revelatory. It showed areas of the UK where the COVID was increasing, but also areas where it was decreasing.
Cornwall gets red but with only 13 cases per 100k, compared with the Rhondda Valley showing 111 cases per 100k or Northumberland with 56 cases per 100k. I live in Devon, which shows 4 cases per 100k.
Randomly, I've used red for the increases and blue for the decreases.
It paints a startling picture, with the north mainly red and the south mainly blue.
I decided to zoom in on London, to see the worst areas. One of my old stomping grounds of Redbridge popped up as a hot-spot with 34 cases per 100k, but it was next to Essex which ran at 10 per 100k. Another home ground of Kensington and Chelse ais running at 13 per 100k. The City does not publish a number.
It rather begs the question about which figures the government is using to create the latest circuit breaker strategy?
Sunday, 20 September 2020
cake and eat it
pictures in the sky
I've travelled around since lockdown was derestricted. A few observations:
- Boarding a train when half the people on the platform were not wearing masks.
- Another train where everyone followed the rules.
- Seeing a number 57 bus with one passenger
- Almost forgetting to wear a mask to go into a petrol station
- Hardly ever re-fuelling the car
- Waiting for streams of WAH* golfers to cross at that usually quiet pedestrian crossing
- Passing my empty ex-commuter car-park at 15:20 when it would normally have 500+ cars
- Driving along an empty M25
- Seeing the warning signs for the Channel Ferries saying lorries can't cross because of capacity limits
- Seeing the warning signs for Operation stack (where they use the M20 as a lorry park)
- Travelling outside on the deck of a ferry (like most passengers) without wearing a mask
- Using the self-managed quick scan in bars to show attendance for tracks and trace.
- Getting used to quickly assessing a bar's capability to handle social distancing (1=token, 4=reliable)
- Being overwhelmed by the number of instruction messages outside a hotel's reception
- Being surprised at the variety of different schemes used by restaurants to implement their opening policies.
- Being surprised by several times qualifying for the 'eat-out' rebates of £10 per person.
- Seeing no pedestrians around the shopping centre.
- Watching sports fans crowd around a football ground, not wearing masks.
- Mainly empty beaches, or at least socially distanced beaches
- Watching a socially distanced open-air theatre show
- Being turned away from National Trust for not booking
- Being able to get into Tate without prior booking (thank you!)
- Mostly conducting regular get-togethers via Zoom
- Discussing the mise-en-scène of Zoom setups
- Discussing getting one of those Dan Dare face plexi-shields
- Deciding that it ain't normal.