First World Problems

So we have installed Rocki units in three rooms in the flat – the lounge, the bedroom, and the library. I just started playing a Clannad album from my laptop to the speakers in the lounge. Much to my bewilderment, a moment later a different album started playing in the bedroom.

I thought it may have been coming from my phone, so shut that down. Kept going. From my iPad? Shut that down. From my partner’s phone? Shut that down. Something bizarrely broken with AirFoil on my laptop? Shut down the laptop. Has someone managed to hack our network and is pranking us for lulz? Is it the NSA? MI5?

Nope. One of the cats had sat on the stereo remote control in the bedroom and started playing a CD.

I need a simpler life.

Woolwich to Old Street

I’ve been meaning to write up some of the routes I take through London. Or Mordor, as a cycling acquaintance calls it, which adds some frisson of terror to the whole exercise. One does not simply ride into London. I will try to pepper this with relevant Google street view pictures, but won’t be attempting to embed maps. I find that their tools for doing that are decidedly unfriendly, and seem to assume you are working on a 24″ screen with a tablet rather than a 15″ laptop with a trackpad.

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Two Wheels through The City

I’ve been quite ill, again, recently, and am still not fully recovered. Certainly not recovered enough for the walk from The Tower up to City Road to be a quick one, and not recovered enough to risk that ride. So for the past couple of days I’ve been pushing my scooter through The City. Haven’t died yet, but…

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Passwords definitely considered broken

So we have news of yet another major slurping-up of poorly secured credential sets. A column at the Guardian talks about all the usual measures that can be taken to more-or-less protect your multiple identities, but once again misses the two subtle and deeply geeky issues that underly this breach.

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An Open Letter to Australia.

If you believe adult asylum seekers are not, entitled to their claims, to they should be “sent back to where they came from”, or they are “queue jumpers”: If you do not say to the elected Australian Government that this is wrong, then you are tacitly supporting this treatment of children

Would you like your children, or your nieces and nephews, or your friends’ children to go through this?

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing .

Up and down

Well I wore the new Sallet and boots today, both of which are great. We’ve been doing a light weight relaxed thing at Raglan Castle, including fighting in the hall. What’s not so good is that the scabbard I need to replace is now broken, meaning I can’t wear a sword easily tomorrow. Also the hose I want to replace are starting to pop seams.

Shoes Sorted Out

Thanks to Peter from Plantagenet Shoes, I now have a lovely pair of his 15th C buckled knee boots. While his waiting list for new orders is quite long, by a stroke of fortune he had a pair already made, and has had my feet in his records (as it were) from when he made me some 16th C shoes a few years ago. They arrived yesterday, fit brilliantly, and are the normal exacting and high quality he has a reputation for. I confidently expect to still be wearing them 10 years from now.