Author: Sleepypete

Tired tonight.

A combination of not getting much sleep (my brain has forgotten that Go To Sleep program) and going hyper due to being highly miffed this morning (desk booking incident) has burned me out somewhat today. I may have … an early night.

Desk booking ? We have to book our desks and there’s a 70% occupancy rate. We have 70% of the desks available that we’d need if everyone was in. You can imagine the mayhem when all the desks are needed. Especially when you have contractors who cannot recognise the difference between an N and a O and therefore sit in the wrong desk and don’t have the courtesy to move when you point out their mistake to them. I have to admit, I am extremely blunt when it comes to the desk booking. We’re having to be more aggressive than we should in defending our area due to poor briefing given to new joiners.

But enough about work. Ok. Had a couple of meetings that restored my faith in professionalism after that incident with the incompetent contractor. I mean ! Not being able to recognise basic shapes. God forbid he gets anything important to do.

Yep. I have a low opinion of the support contractors we see, mostly due to the reason we have them in. Low pay and worsening conditions are making people jump ship over to other organisations. Who then come back doing similar jobs, poaching staff and costing us more money.

Fact of life in our place.

Music ?

I currently have Hannah Peel’s The Broken Wave playing in the background. It’s a wonderful album with an amazing singer and her magical music box. Songs like Song For The Sea just make me stop everything and listen.

(I wanna get this post out before midnight, so I will probably come back and fill in the links later …)

What other albums do I have like that ? Albums that grab you with their quality and hold your attention all the way through. Albums with a story. Albums that carry their theme. Albums with a certain magic. Albums to truly enjoy.

Well, on the theme, it has to be Madonna’s total disco celebration of Confessions On A Dance Floor. If you’re looking for energy, this has it. In spades. Awesome album, got me back listening to Madonna. She’s always been an outstanding artist, who has evolved over the years. She still has it.

I listened to Arctic Monkeys’ Favourite Worst Nightmare last night. The Arctics first two albums kept you listening with their quirky new style all the way through and when A Certain Romance comes on to finish Whatever Happens … you know you’ve been listening to something that’ll be a classic. It’s just a perfect ending to a quality album.

Cardigans … you just knew something was coming from these :-). All of their albums are triumphs for me, they’re jammed full of amazing songs done in their own unique style which has also evolved over the years. It’s kept evolving into Nina Persson’s solo projects too. You have the outstanding cover of Iron Man, the beautiful lullaby of 03.45am No Sleep, the shut your cares away and dance of In The Round, the poignant Song For The Leftovers, the violence of I Need Some Fine Wine, the happy wanderlust of Daddy’s Car. The anthemic For What It’s Worth and rocking My Favourite Game. I’ll be a fan until I die. Or go deaf.

And listening to Hannah Peel’s Cailin Deas Cruite Na Mbo, I’m reminded of the delicate flower that is Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes. Her first album, Fur And Gold was utterly enchanting with songs like the Rabbit Song, What’s A Girl To Do and she’s got better from there with songs like Laura.

And with the name Laura (who was a lovely lady who worked on the same project as me for a while), my mind goes to albums related to two very special ladies who I have the pleasure of knowing :

First up is Morcheeba with lead singer Skye, their Big Calm has that theme running through, that piercing voice and variation of songs that comes together as an album. And it’s rounded back with the sublime Fear And Love.

And the other is the Carpenter’s Gold album, which is just littered with song after song that I’ll sit back to listen to and attempt to croak along to. Songs like We’ve Only Just Begun. That wonderful voice of Karen C was taken from us far too early.

Who have I missed ? I grew up with All About Eve and Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern books. One of the characters that caught my imagination was Menolly, a singer songwriter who was a victim of prejudice, making up addictive ditties that the traditionalists hated. But I loved those stories and Julianne Regan of All About Eve became the voice of Menolly for me. And she liked a Facebook comment when I said “Happy Birthday our Wild Hearted Woman” (that being one of my favourite tracks), which made me very happy.

Oh and there’s also the inimitable Kate Bush with those soaring vocals. I had a few of her albums on repeat. They worked really well as albums that interwove the songs together and I still listen to them. She kinda ran out of steam with The Sensual World, I didn’t like the albums after quite so much. But when there’s The Kick Inside and Oh England My Lionheart and … Hounds Of Love (best ever album by our Kate) …

I think I may well know what I’ll be queueing up next for a long trip in the car.

No blokey albums ? Let’s have a look. I think that’s reflecting my tendency to fall in love with that female voice. (post ed – I forgot about the Arctic Monkeys up there)

What to finish on, it could be no other than the band I adopted for a nickname. That’d be Alisha’s Attic with their middle album, Illumina. This album is amazing, full of emotion and it won my heart with songs like The Incidentals which gets me humming along and maybe even breaking into singing if no one is around to hear me.

I get embarassed with the bad karaoke.

I’ll leave it there but not before seeing some A Camp tracks pop up, which reminded me of Algebra. Hope the neighbours can’t hear me with that bad karaoke.

PS Forgot a couple. I’ve been following Garbage from the early days and they keep coming out with great albums. Fix Me Now, yes please. And then there’s one of the albums which was the genesis for this post, The Staves debut with Dead and Born and Grown.
PPS I missed Goldfrapp too ! Their first wonderfully wierd album, Felt Mountain, with the sublime Utopia is coming up soon in my listening. Road To Somewhere is their best for me by a long way. Close your eyes and relax.

Been struggling for Good ideas for posts lately and by Good I mean happy theme posts instead of BEWARE THIS DANGER type posts.

And then I saw …

Perfect !

But before I dive in to that, yeah – been struggling for post ideas. You don’t (at least this is what I think!) want to hear about my adventures in virtual worlds. I watch a lot of Youtube gaming videos which gives me an idea of what’s interesting and … Elite doesn’t make for interesting watching. It makes for interesting playing (for me!) but you have to filter heavily what you talk about with it. That’s like … new ships, trading routes (yawn), helping with community goals, getting promotions.

Oh and the Cookie Clipper finally has a suitable name since coming out of mothballs … She’s been rebadged “These Aren’t The Cookies You’re Looking For”. I bet R2 approves from his galaxy far, far away. I wonder if I should call the Space Truck “Centennial Sloth” because of all the special modifications.

Good things ?

Music. Definitely music. I’ve been listening to 4 new albums lately as I do that thing of listening to individual tracks first before the album to check them out.

Taylor Swift – Red. Great album. Has some excellent tracks. She just keeps giving us great music, long may it continue.
Lucy Rose – Work It Out. Another top album, it’s even better than her first.
Steve Gregan’s soundtrack for Guild Of Dungeoneering. Has the great mini song tracks that give the game a lot of its charm. Mostly background music though.
Scott Bradley’s Post Modern Jukebox. Nah. Won’t get any more from these. They have a certain style. Some of their covers are as good, if different, some of their covers (Living on a Prayer) butcher the original. But I don’t regret buying it as you have to form your own opinions on these.

And then there’s also an excellently boppy Working Girl from Little Boots and more excellence from Taylor Swift with 1969. There’s a tonne of great music out there to listen to. Especially if England foil your plans of listening to the cricket on the way home by finishing the game early. Great stuff our boys :-).

Cute pets !

There he is again, our Ben with tail a-wag as per usual. I think that tail wags in his sleep.

Pizza. Oh pizza how I love you and hate you at the same time. I have to pick my moments with pizza, it adds inches to my waist and the acid I make from the cheese makes it tough to sleep but … it’s pizza and I shall love it always. It’s just that good.

Computers can be tough to love but they do give us much more contact with the outside world than we would have had before. Hey, maybe we would have been propping up bars to meet people instead of seeing who we see over the bytes and bits.

And then there’s the games (some awesome, some poor, some incredibly frustrating due to interminable bugs) and the variation and portability the computer gives me with my music. I listen to far more variety now than before due to those soft rules I have for picking the next album that I’ll queue up. Next is Moby’s Play, which I’d have mostly ignored without those soft rules but … it’s still a great occasional listen.

Coffee. Coffee is life. And I haven’t had any since Thursday. Roughly 4.30 pm I believe. Yep. If you can remember hours without coffee, that’s probably a sign of a teensy, weensy touch of addiction.

That kettle is going on right after I hit that Publish button.

Last and most important is that You.

Yes. You. You reading this right now. You’re awesome.

It gives me a massive lift seeing the hits coming in here from … everyone ! But that’d be the regulars in particular. It reminds me that there are great people out there looking after me, looking out for me, being interested in what I write, what I’m doing, where I’m going.

And then there’s also the people who make closer interaction than that. Those who hit the Facebook Poke button, those who bounce the messages over to me, people who assure me through regular contact that I’m a part of their lives, people who I help or help me during work. Perhaps that jester on the shoulder part of their life but if I make one person smile or chuckle or laugh in a day, that’s a good day.

We can’t live this life on our own, it gets supremely better when there are other people around to make you happy, or for you to make happy by making jokes for them or just even being around to be part of their lives too.

See if you can make someone else happy today ?

I have a few (well, three) drone related books coming up for review over the next few weeks which you might – or might not – find interesting.

Unless it gets shot down on the way…….. [lol]

Yep. And carried to you by an Amazon Drone.

Drones are going to make the future very interesting – and not always in a good way. They're here to stay though…… Not long now before anti-drone technology is sold on Amazon!

We’re seeing tech get ever more into our lives.

That’s intrusive tech, invasive tech, playful tech used intrusively … other things. A common theme there is what people do with the tech.

The latest is an incident in the USA, where someone has taken the law into his own hands to shoot down a drone that was hovering over his (and neighbour’s) property.

Here’s the info from Register …

Basically, a group of people were flying a drone over a neighbourhood which was (allegedly) dropping into gardens for a peek. Cue shotgun wielding person to shoot it out of the sky. There was then a confrontation as the people owning the drone came to say hello (+ a bit) and they got threatened with a pistol as they approached Shotgun Guy’s property.

Let’s see :

The drone was close enough to the house to be hit by a shotgun. This is very bad. You could reasonably assume as the homeowner, that the drone was spying on the daughters or looking for valuables/burglary entry points.

Shotgun guy did what he could to minimise risk to the neighbourhood (he used birdshot ammo which has a low terminal velocity / shouldn’t hurt anyone on the way down).

Drone was being used to film someone (I am not inclined to believe this).

A pistol was used to threaten people. This is very bad.

And there’s more in the article.

But what makes this just one example of a very bad trend is that these drones are being used for all sorts of mischief. We’re seeing increasing incidents where drones are being flown near airports, dangerously close to aircraft. Here’s another Register link.

This is very serious. If a drone hits an aircraft, or gets pulled into an engine, that could result in the murder of the several hundred people on board. And I fully mean that term “murder”, the act of flying a drone close enough to an airliner to endanger it is a premeditated act.

It’s not the tech, machine, weapon or automobile that kills people, it’s the people in control of it.

Drones are the latest new toy. People don’t think they are subject to the same rules of nicety that society depends on. They think, NEW TOY ! MUST PLAY, without considering that they are causing offence or injury. It used to be rock music being played too loud for the neighbour trying to get sleep around shift work, now it’s peeping toms graduating from a camera in a tree to a camera on a drones.

Do I agree with the offended homeowner getting rid of the drone ? Yes.
Do I think they should have used a shotgun ? No. Too much can go wrong with firearms.
How about the threat with the pistol ? This would have you see prison time in UK. USA is a little weird with its gun culture.
What do I think they should have done ? A non-lethal method of taking down the drone.

You don’t need a shotgun to take down the drone, frying its electronics should do equally well. Although there is that thing of what happens to the drone when it falls out of the sky.

I definitely think something needs to happen for airport safety. The French had problems with drones being flown around their nuclear plants too. It needs to happen before someone takes down an airliner.

But we also need to remember how to play with our toys. Do it safely. Don’t endanger people. Don’t do stuff that will earn you a punch on the nose if someone figures out if it was you.

This is a bit of a downer post again – I’m struggling to come up with positive posts !

I use that one a lot don’t I ?

I need some good ideas for fun posts. More memes please ! More inspiration !

Ok. Last night had some good inspiration. I went to see Inside Out with the work-ish crew. (CQ, CK and BD) Good movie, Pixar keep coming out with excellent movies and even better shorts before hand. Lava was almost as good as the dog one. We went to Frankie and Benny’s before and … they have a new waitress.

This waitress has that magical combination of pretty-cute, intelligence, a fun manner and a smile to warm your heart. CQ has a picture which may appear on Facebook at some point. And when she asked me what dessert I wanted, out comes a smile, my soul got lost in her eyes and …. sigh. Mind blank.

I know a few more people like that who do that to me too. Hello Pretty Ladies ! Yep. That means you. Reading this. (If you’re a lady, I think I have male readers too. You’re cool as well).

When I see that smile with a bubbly chuckle, when I get messages that say I’m better than I think I am (low self confidence), when positivity comes my way, when people laugh at me being jokey/goofy, when people say they value my opinion or knowledge, part of me is doing that Sigh – Mind Blank.

You smile, I smile, world is good.

That’d be Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Although I do prefer this type of FUD :

Philospher Kitteh asks the right questions.

So this Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ? There’s two fairly high profile technology related worries (and a bunch more that aren’t so critical) out there at the moment.

First up – anyone with an Android phone (or tablet that can pick up text messages) should be very concerned right now about their device being hijacked. Here’s the Register story about it. Basically, there is a critical bug in one of the core bits of software on Android that makes the phone vulnerable to Nasties delivered via text message. The attacker only needs to know the phone number to attack (and our telecoms companies have obliged by leaking all those numbers) and the payload automatically executes from the text message.

This is something that could have been done for years, from the preview pane in your email client. That client is usually actually running something like Internet Explorer code, which is subject to all of the vulnerabilities that has.

The difference this time is that it cannot be readily patched like what you can do with an internet browser. My old Sony Xperia X10i mini was so locked down by the original equipment manufacturer that I couldn’t update to later versions of the software. It would have been riddled with security holes.

What can you do about it ? Very little. The attack can be executed to leave no trace, the offending text with the Nastie can be set to self delete.

We’ll have to see what the tech companies come up with on this one. I hear that Google’s Nexus is already patched, haven’t a clue about the other companies. It could be time to give in to that upgrade temptation to get something with newer, fixed software. (Although I’d hold off a month or two for the fix to happen).

The other big one is attacks on the software in cars.

Not that car. Although it is a rather pretty car. Curves are awesome on anything.

Nah. You look at my car and compare it to my first, the only transistors in my first car were in the radio. My current car has a tonne of technology, some of which interconnects :

Drive by wire – throttle and brake all go through a computer. Steering is happily independent, although it is power assisted.
Infotainment suite – radio, satnav, car monitoring Stuff. Loads of technology. It has a DAB radio which sends traffic info to the satnav. It can connect to the internet via a suitable device like my phone.
Electronic instruments – this isn’t so bad. Because if they all go dark, you can tell how fast you’re going by just keeping those eyes on the road.
Networks in the car to handle lights and all the other bits n pieces.

The scary news from last week was the possibility of using DAB to attack a car’s electronic systems. So someone would set up a DAB broadcaster and use it to inject the attack code into a car’s systems.

Am I worried about that one ? Should you be worried ?

I don’t think so. Cars are designed to fail safe. The possibility of a stuck throttle is a problem that exists on all things with an engine. It’s a story from before I was born but my dad gave up motorbikes due to nearly being killed by a bike where the throttle stuck open. That could happen to the Cobra replica above, which could only be fixed by turning the engine off at which point you’re in a missile with no power steering, no power brakes and a lot of kinetic energy which promise Ouch.

Different vector of Bad Things Happening, same result. And the drive by wire systems should not be vulnerable to external attack. “Should”.

Jeep with their Cherokee are the ones being fingered at the moment and they’re already sending out patch fixes. If you have an affected car, the recall notice will be out soon which will offer a free fix.

There’s danger in pretty much everything in this world, despite the efforts of many to wrap us all up in cotton wool and mittens and fuzzy things. Hell, the stress of having all that danger on your mind might kill you.

Don’t think about the bad things. Cars are far safer now than when I started driving. I borrowed a Rover Metro (while my horrid 420 was being fixed) which I thought of as a tin coffin. If anything had tapped me on the road, I had the feeling it would fold itself into a bloody Sleepy Sausage. Cars these days have all sorts of impact protection, airbags, other stuff to keep them running right and to allow you to walk away in an accident. Not sure if you’d walk away from an accident in that Cobra.

Our world is becoming a safer place. Believe that. Hold that thought close.

Oh and spare a thought for the engineers and other design people who try to make it that way !

Go on ! Give your pet engineer a hug. And then try to avoid tripping them up when they run away screaming. Or … give them something shiny to distract them. They’ll like that.

Which is pretty much what I think when I jump into a new star system in Elite and see that big glowing ball of fire in front of me which is the new system’s star.

Pretty baubles.

Stay safe, think of shiny things and try not to dwell too much on the bad stuff.

That’s not something I hear too often.

It was in (that big computer goods store) after I finished having a little chat with the Apple fella who sold me my iPad. Not sure if he recognised me* but he got over that little trip quickly to give me some handy info about the Apple TV.

*lots of shop people recognise me after I go back in a few times. Wonder why that is. Perhaps it’s the grin and me looking them in the eye when the grin comes out ?

Smiles are awesome.

Respect is too. I think the other reason why the shop people recognise me is politeness and respect vibes that I try to send their way. Retail is tough. Any customer facing job is tough. The assumption is that the customer is always right, even when the customer is being a blithering idiot, swearing and generally being rude to the poor person on sub-living wage trying to get through a day working in probably bad conditions in the shop or eating place.

So I try to pass on good vibes to make their day a bit better. And … it gets me things like smiles in return (which always cheers me up) and hey ! it sometimes gets me bigger portions. Win.

So how come I was out there at the Mall tonight ? Simple – needed petrol and didn’t want to get it from the supermarket this time. Bit too close to when I went shopping last time and I didn’t need that much. But I do like to feed the car when it asks. I have maybe 70-80 miles from when the light comes on but it’s daft to cut it too close to the bottom of the tank when you don’t really need to.

(Snack count = snacks still present in cupboard) (although the popcorn is a little low)

Nah. I wanted to do a little scouting too. I have a couple of items on my techie wish list :

Apple TV. This is an interest thing rather than a big want. It’s a device that feeds the telly (or in my case, my AV amplifier) with all sorts of things, like the usual internet TV subs (Netflix) and the rest of those. It also gives a pathway for sending pictures and audio from devices like my Macbook and iPad to the telly. Handy for streaming video, possible replacement for an Apple Airport Express which I think is failing.

I don’t think I really need it though.

The other is a keyboard for my desktop. Mine is getting stiffer with age and I’ve had it for quite a few years now. There are two categories of keyboard :

Standard keyboards are either wired or wireless. Wireless is a complete waste of time for me and I’ll actively avoid them. It’s not just the need for batteries, it’s also signal loss and lack of response from them. I almost put a bug report in on Star Wars Old Republic when I was playing the beta, because my character would just stop doing things for many seconds at a time. It wasn’t the game, it was a rubbish and fairly new (therefore no excuse from low batteries) Microsoft wireless keyboard. The only reason to get a wireless keyboard would be for the Macbook or iPad and even there, the screen keyboard and Macbook keyboard are just fine.

I may get a standard keyboard to replace this one. No frills keyboards are what I look for. Elite emphasises that, there’s barely enough room for this standard keyboard beside the flightstick.

The other type of keyboard is the gaming keyboard …

Yep. Silly. These tend to add on extra buttons for macros, extra wrist rest things (non removable). Lots of protuberances that make the keyboard look special (translation – stuff that just gets in the way). These keyboards are too wide to work in the space I have available.

(Says he looking at all the rubbish I haven’t thrown away that’s sitting on top of the desk).

Oh they also come with mechanical keyswitches and a 0 added on to the price. A few keyboards ago, I had a mechanical keyswitch board and it was outstanding. I may have to look for it, I may still have it.

The big reason why I’ll avoid getting a “gaming” quality keyboard is not the weird design or the extra buttons, although I’m tempted by having proper mechanical (noisy!) keyswitches again. No – it’s the ridiculous price hike that gets attached to anything premium.

Flashy labels do not make a premium product, although they make the price premium.

Enough about the techie stuff – but I will leave you with a couple of rules there :

Look for function first of all. Does it do the job you want it to ?
Is it superfluous ? If you don’t need it, don’t buy it. Sounds obvious doesn’t it ?
Are you paying too much ? I’m not paying £100 for a keyboard.
Does something else do it better ?
Will it last for you ?
Is it what you want to buy or what they want to sell ?

That last one is a biggie. Ask yourself your motive for spending money, are you being convinced to buy something that isn’t the best for your money ? Beware the persuasive salesperson.

Even if they do posess a winning smile, wonderful dimples (this had nothing to do with me switching to Npower a good few years ago – honest) and a charming manner.

Although tonight – the one who left off a conversation with “Alright young man”, emphasis on the young :

He can have all my money.

PS Leg check – all good. It’s 90% repaired and took tonight’s walking around at work and at the Mall in its stride. Not tested it as far as running across the road to dodge unsuspecting cars (who should have been indicating and looking where they were driving) yet.

Honest.

Nah. I needed to test my leg. But before that …

I’ve had a couple of away days ! It was actually supposed to be 3 away days but one got cancelled. I’m closely involved with two parts of the team I’m a part of at work. There’s a delivery team and another one that looks more after helping out the people supporting the kit we look after.

But yeah, it’s all about getting away for a day or two, away from the distractions of the email and the phones and the people coming up with really important things they want you to do. You know, the sort of thing they should have been doing themselves. And then the days are about getting more from each other in the team and how we can work better as a team. Part of that is how we present ourselves, to get more help from the widest parts of our organisation. Because the more expertise we bring in, the better product we come out with. It’s so important to admit that you don’t know everything. I definitely don’t. And in our organisation, keeping people involved helps with :

Approval to do what your project is supposed to do
Money ! For the project.
Assistance with queries on how to use, what it should be, who’s using it, how are they trained
Lessons for how to support what we make. Because support is maybe 10 times the cost of buying our stuff. It’s really important to get that right.

(And I’m really happy that one of the people who keeps an eye on me and keeps me pointed in the right direction is a support person. And can I have some tea please ?)

Getting back was interesting yesterday. We had heavy rain that was turning conditions on the motorway towards what I’d describe as “Filthy Nasty”. Not dangerous, not spiteful but still pretty nasty. Visibility was way down, which is what turned it nasty. But there was no wind tugging at the wheel and no massive puddles pulling cars in odd directions.

But it was quite scary at times with :
No visibility due to being in 40mph traffic (on 70mph motorway) with big vans in front. Can’t see much of the road ahead, so you can’t anticipate the accident you’re about to be a part of.
Daft people making the road go slow for no apparent reason. There were no reduced speed limits for the bits where we went standstill, so why did the road go standstill ? It happens … and is very odd.

One of the things they had where we visited was a flight simulator rig. This wasn’t quite in the region of big fancy moving massive things but it did have 4 (count ’em) Very Large Screens plus a Cushy Fancy Chair and a medium end flightstick. (It was a Saitek X52 Pro).

Kinda glad I didn’t get the X52 that PC World are selling reasonably cheap. It wouldn’t have fit on my desk. The Thrustmaster one I bought barely fits on my desk and I have to have it and the keyboard at an angle.

But I digress – the flight sim looked awesome and I could actually get it for my machine. It was X-Plane 10, not sure if I’d get that or MS Flight Sim, although I do already own IL-2 Sturmovik, which is a WW2 flight sim. I play Elite Dangerous a lot but proper flight sims are way more difficult and engaging than space sims.

Proper flight depends on how the lift surfaces interact with the air. If they stop going through the air, gravity takes over and the plane takes a liking to the ground. In Elite, I land by positioning the ship over the landing pad and going straight down. I can go left, right, up, down, forward and back freely. Not so in an aircraft.

How did I do ? It was an abbreviated flight because everyone else was legging it to get lunch and I didn’t want to miss that. No time to come around in a racetrack to find the runway and set up an approach, just a dirty dirt landing around the airstrip. I landed ! Hurrah. Nasty one though but I’m happy considering it’s the first time I’ve done any sim time in many, many years.

Right – it’s getting dark here and I need to stand up to turn the lights on – did I mention testing my leg earlier ?

Yep. Time to go on a mission.

I really need to find something alternate to drink at bars instead of coke. Beer is out because I have a really low tolerance before I get very ill. Coke is what I prefer but it makes me dehydrated, mucking up my mineral balance.

That’s really bad because when I go for sleep later, more often than not I’ll cramp up. And that happened on Thursday. I have a couple of different grades for cramp :

Light what was that ? cramp – where I can sort it out without getting out of bed.
Medium ouch cramp – where I need to stand up to sort it out
Heavy cramp – where it cramps hard enough to strain or tear muscles.

And I have literally torn muscles in the past due to cramp. There was a time when I could barely walk for a week, due to tearing both calf muscles. One on the way to a fitness test, one halfway round that test. Kept on going of course (no sense, no feeling).

This is medium/heavy. I’ve gotten away with it – the leg hurts but I can walk on it easily. It just has zero power available for anything more than walking, like dodging cars. I notice that a lot because I got used to having legs with massive sprinting power (also useful for push starting reluctant cars).

The pizza walk was a good test. And I’ll be drinking lots of water too as I get back to the home life pattern.

So that’s where I’ve been ! Doing useful things.

Oh ! The iPhone hotspot tethering worked … In that the Macbook and iPad could talk to the phone. Pity that the phone barely had any signal and that my Macbook Air (late 2013 model) is one of those with dodgy wifi*.

*(technical explanation – 5GHz new wifi works, 2.4GHz old wifi … doesn’t. But it doesn’t know that so it annoys me by trying to use the broken wifi anyway)

And I definitely better leave it there before :
I get too techy on you !
The light gets too dim to type.
I trip over unseen clutter on the way to the light switch.

PS They put my Big Internet Spaceship into a garage that’s behind quarantine. I was planning to use it again ! Just having to settle for the beautiful Cookie Clipper (purple edition) instead.

Cya !