A little retail therapy...!

 I attended the London pen Show today. First one I've been to. It caters to pens, obviously, but mostly fountain pens, which I like. However, my last few haven't really done well with me; two Kawekos, a Platinum, and a Lamy Safari, and before that, in school (AHEM years ago!), a Parker 25.

The Lamy and the Platinum still work fine, I just can't get comfortable enough with them: They're too light, and there's no real feedback when I have them in the hand (I prefer a pen with a bit of heft in it). The two Kawekos jammed up all the time, which was a pity, as others have had good results with the brand. The Parker 25 was lost in the mists of time.

So, the London Pen Show.

The show was small, well attended, and for a fiver admission, well worth the visit to Hammersmith in west London on a damned chilly morning, at yougottabekiddingme o'clock in the morning?! I work LATES, for pities sake! What's the "morning" thing?! 😂

Anyway, I was up at 7 in the a.m., on a train by roughly 9 (again, in the "ayem"), and at the show by just after 10, whereupon I linked up with my brother-in-law, neice, and some of their friends.

My niece is an admin of a UK facebook group, the "Fountain Pens UK" group; she's also VERY knowledgeable about how these pens are made, and how to repair and maintain them. She also knows a number of people in the trade, and put me onto Gravitas Pens, and their very compact 'pocket' model, in this case, a brass body with a medium nib.

I tested one at the table Gravitas had at the show, and WOW, did it feel NICE in the hand. It also writes cleanly, with a decent flow of ink to the nib, giving clear, consistent lines. I was impressed - so I bought one (you KNEW that was coming, didn't you? 😉).

Also, have a look at that photo, at the cap at the bottom of the shot. Notice the logo Gravitas uses: It's VERY much like the old British Army "Crow's Foot" (a.k.a. the "British Broad Arrow Mark"), that used to be plastered/stamped/printed on pretty-much every bit of Army kit in inventory until well into the 1980s 😂

I also picked up some ink, and a few notebooks for the pen (well, you KNOW it's rude not to, and all that 😉😂

Anyhow, I now have a decent fountain pen, which didn't cost a mint, and got home happy, satisfied, and yawning like a very tired thing (late shift worker, remember?).

All in all, not a bad way to spend a lazy Sunday 😀

Time for some DIY...

Also, bugger. The weekends single job has morphed into three, this morning.

Job #1. Replace shredded garden gate.

Job #2. Fix apparently blocked water trap to down pipe from gutters to water butt.

Job #3. Replace 22" LCD computer monitor, which just this morning died, dammit 😠

Well, dodging between the hailstones, I partially drained the water butt so it was no longer overflowing, unblocked the down pipe from the gutters, and cleared the trap by the butt. Water is now flowing as it's supposed to, although I got a bit of splash from the 12 inch column of water from the recent rain and hail 🌧️ that was held back by the soggy mess of moss in the drain and trap 😱

So, one down, two to go...

The last two storms to come through here, Eunice and Franklin, really did some damage around the country; this included blowing apart (damn near shredding, even) the garden gate and ripping it in half here at home, meaning that I have to set to and replace the damn thing.

The parts blown off by the storms.

Top hinge damage

With flash this time.

Bottom hinge damage.

This gate managed to survive the Great Storm of 1987, so it wasn't as weak as it appears. Never the less, it was shredded by Eunice and Franklin. Gives you an idea of how bad the storms were. Note that the storm of '87 did its damage mostly as the trees still had foliage on them, as it his in the autumn, not the winter. As a result, Eunice and Franklin did their damage by virtue of wind speed alone, and boy, did they spread the misery about.

The other view. The latch was completely buggered.

I have a rough idea of how I'm going to go about replacing the gate, and it involves laying my hands on ten feather fencing boards (thinner on one edge than the other, hence "feather board"), a few nails or wood screws, a couple of brass hinges, a hammer, and a bottle of "Curses, invective, loud and vile" 😆

As to the monitor, well, is going to be a pain in the backside, and likely involve traipsing down to Curry's, Argos (Sainsbury's), or using some other online supplier, such as Amazon, and will no doubt cost over a ton, dammit 😠 At least I can get by for the moment with the laptop monitor, even if it does result in more eyestrain due to resolution limitations.

Oh well. At least it's a long weekend, with reasonably fair weather forecast 🙂

A quick update...

 

OK, I may have the settings for comments sorted on here, now; seems I missed an aspect of commentary on here which may save me a lot of time in the future. If you want to comment, you should now be able to create an account. This provides a level of safety; I still have the blog on 100% moderation (and apols for the historical comments that just got approved, there was a shedton of spam I had to wade through, most of it Arabic, Cyrillic, and Chinese, that had to be deleted one item at a time, dammit), but I hope to be able to reduce that in time :)

Happy New Year, 2022!

 

Happy New Year!

I've not posted here in a  l o n g  time, so it's high time I restarted posting again.

So. New Year's Resolution: Post at least once a month on here, if not more regularly.

I'll also be looking at possibly moving this blog somewhere else, where I can vet who can post comments prior to those comments being moderated.

In the past, I've had to remove spam and other, more objectionable commentaries, and I'd like to be able to do that before it can be seen by others.

In the mean time, Happy New Year, and let's hope 2022 is a damn sight better for everyone than last year was!

All the best,

R.

Toothache is a pain - getting treatment in these unpleasant times is agony.

I just spend the last four days in some considerable pain (occasionally fold-up wish the world would bugger off type pain) from toothache.

Thanks to anti-covid measures, my dentist wasn't able to take me as an emergency examination until earlier today; no other dentists, private or NHS, could help, they're all in the same damn boat, and that ruddy Rib (Rigid Inflatable Boat) is just about swamped in the wake of Covid.

By the grace of whatever your Deity might be, I got seen earlier (thanks to a short-notice early morning cancellation), and I'm now on antibiotics (ruddy great horse pills of 500mg Amoxicillin, 3 times per day for five days), which have made a MASSIVE improvement in things already.

The pain was a result of an abscess, of course. The resulting infection-caused swelling in my face was not at all nice, but is going down nicely, even now, just over twelve hours post-exam.

I've got to make return visits for longer-lasting and more permanent treatment (which is going to cost a packet, as there aren't any NHS dentists available around here), but I have the satisfaction of knowing that my gnasher-basher centre is now part of the Portman Group (https://www.portmandentalcare.com/), and has a wide range of resources available to it without need for referral to other firms/practices.

I still don't like the idea of going to a Dentist (I'm sure Torquemada was a trainee gnasher-smasher), but at least I know the one I see is a respected one.

Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY! (Data Security, app bans, and National Security)

Once again, the current US President (No 45, in this case) is making a mountain out of a molehill.

Just, in this case, not much of one, and for one of the small number of instances in his tenure as El Prez, he's actually hitting on a genuine (NOT FAKE! WOW!) issue. 

A Judge in the USA has issued a 'stay' order, preventing the US Government (USG) from denying US internet users the ability to download certain Social Media (SM) platforms, these being of Chinese origin - in this case, specifically WeChat.

Boiled down, the USG has said that the Chinese-operated SM platform, which also routinely censors information that the Chinese Government does not like (such as information on SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19), threatens US National Security through its "malicious" behaviour of seeking out and downloading user data of many forms, such as network activity, location data, and browsing and search histories.

OK, then can we expect bans for FB, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other SM platforms that apparently regularly dive into user data with apparent freedom?! No? Quelle surprise, mon ami.

Many applications (and there's another misuse of language that I'll get into in another post before long! Watch this space 😉 ) note user data, and it's not just limited to network activity, location data, and browsing and search histories; they'll look for telephone logs, activities, who you're talking to that very moment, your contact lists, and so much more besides.

For YEARS, security analysts and companies have advised users of these packages that they MUST examine the 'permissions' that these things demand access to, in order to allow users to actually use the packages, and deny those that try to overreach the amount of permission that actually need in order to operate. You really should be asking why they need access to all this information, folks. Taking a photo should not generally need, for example, access to your contact listings. Point made?

Now, while acknowledging that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch (a.k.a. "TANSTAAFL"), these 'apps' also often allow 'in-app purchases', sometimes only offering the use of a credit/debit card payment system, instead of, for example, GooglePay, or PayPal, or similar (which omission also tends to breach their agreements with the major operator platforms such as Apple and Google, but that's another story).

So, by allowing these prying 'apps' access to your inside leg measurement, you're also giving them the keys to your bank as well. Really smart. Not. Remember, there have been documented cases of peoples bank accounts being plundered by rogue 'apps' (do a search on your preferred internet search engine if you want to see examples of this). Always check those permissions, people. If they are asking for odd and extensive 'permissions', you really MUST be asking "WHY?".

From a National Security angle (and I've been both a Reservist and a Civil Servant in the employ of Her Majesty's Government, so I know whereof I speak), government employees should be required to adhere to a kind of SM limitation agreement, in the form of either requirements under primary law (which we have in the UK with the Official Secrets Act), or Non Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) (which is the only option in the USA, due to the 1st amendment rights to freedom of speech). The idea that users personal data being used by the Chinese is some form of national security issue is not much of a stretch of credulity, but it is a stretch, none the less.

A more realistic threat to US National Security would be those SM users with access to classified information. Far better, I think, to require people with clearances that the USG is concerned about, to restrict them from using SM as much as they do. Enforceable Usage Policies (and specific NDAs for those forms of access) in return for clearances seems to be the best way to approach this: The willing surrender of certain privileges/speech rights in return for access seems to be a fair deal, to me.

So, while the USG and El Prez are doing a Chicken Little, and it actually is an issue, it's just not much of a National Security issue comparatively speaking, and a wholly preventable one if people use a little common sense, by having SM users engaging a few brain cells and asking if an 'app' actually needs those odd and extensive permissions.

Of course, that's another issue too: Common Sense.

Yeeeaaaah. Let's not go there today, eh? 😉

Facebook, I've had more than enough of your rubbish.

It's a crying shame that the first post on here in a long time is going to have to be on this topic, but they forced it on us, so they can reap this blant as a direct result.

Facebook, the social media platform, is rolling out a "new and improved" web-based interface, which will replace the "Classic" interface we've been using on desktop machines for a few years now.

They are now apparently calling desktop machines words akin to 'primitive' and 'outdated', which is quite obvious rot and nonsense.

The new interface is designed to work on tablets and mobile devices in general, not desktops (which have much larger monitor sizes and resolution capabilities).

As a result, it looks utterly horrendous on a desktop machine.

Further, in a process to wean us off the Classic interface, it would appear that they're throttling - necking down - the throughput to desktop machines (its an easy task to discover what kind of machine, what operating system, even what screen size a user is using; it's an HTML and CSS 'feature').

How did I discover this? Easy. I was in an IM chat with a mate from the USA, when all of a sudden, facebook got horrendously slow, with server lag much in evidence. No other site I tried when this was happening suffered any form of lag or slowdown, just facebook.

I tried accessing the same facebook IM chat on my smartphone, and lo and behold, through the SAME ISP (WiFi connection), the link to Facebook was at full speed. Just not on my desktop machine. This has been happening a LOT since they said that Classic was going the way of the Dodo, by the way.

This is, in my not-so-humble opinion, the thin end of the wedge; they're levering you all into using their privacy-invading smartphone app. An App that I will NEVER use.

So, I'm suddenly and massively reducing my presence on Facebook as a direct result of this attempt at privacy invasion and user manipulation.

I will find another social media app to use eventually, but in the mean time, I'm minimising Facebook, and will be using this outlet more.

Good luck, people. Don't be sheep, vote with your feet.