Spring, Irish Biden, Google Spit!

Blue sky above, freezing wind below, yet the birds are chasing one another about the branches, and the buds are beginning to bloom.  By the weekend we may have leaves once again adorning the trees.

Spring is the best time of the year.  The future is ahead, the blossoms and wee flowers begin to appear, the weather heats up, soon, and Blue Tits gorge themselves on thousands of would be butterfly's.  

How enjoyable simple things can be.

Nothing else has happened as most are on holiday.

Big fuss by the 'Daily Mail' concerning a junior doctors strike leader going on holiday when the strike is on.  They do not mention the Secretary of State for Health, who ever he is, is also on holiday, but that appears OK.

Joe Biden continues to astound, he fails to comprehend the Prime Minister, though neither do we, he mistakes the 'All Blacks' New Zealand rugby side, for the 'Black & Tan!'  He continues seeking US pretend Irish votes by stressing his Irishness, if he can find some, and talks down the UK just because he needs those votes.  'Special relationship' indeed.

Maybe he just forgot?

I have used a lot of swear words this day. 

I am trying to amend the war memorial and it just will not work.

First it does not allow me to insert what I was inserting, unless it is giant size.  There is no means to reduce the size.

Then while attempting to amend things the whole portion disappears! 

Where did it go?  No idea!

The arrow button brought it back, but where was it, and why did it go?

Eventually, I decided to delete that portion and start again.

This I did.  I copied the words, deleted, reinserted the words, and then the picture item as before.

As before it would not work.

In doing this several pictures decide to join in for some unknown reason.  Much of the day was spent trying to unjoin them.  Why do this?  The old system worked perfectly, so a 14 years old improved it so it does not work simply.

Now, after several words I have not used for years, I find I am close to success, except the next portion has disappeared!   A photo I wished to insert there, is also huge, and now deleted.  

This is not the time for a would be councillor to knock on my door and suggest voting for them!

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!  I left it unsaved and with work to do, later.

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon...

Facebook, Twitter, Google and Amazon are some of the social media I have been indulging in recently.  Nothing has satisfied and all appears rather dismal in truth. 
Facebook, of course went wonky after the last Microsoft download, other things now work, once I have found the fault, but facebook is dead.  I may produce a new page later but for now it lies forgotten.
Twitter I use for most of my up to date information about the real world, mostly useful.  These recent days have been dire however.  The news is depressing, little of astounding interest appears, and Boris still lies all day and gets away with it.  
Google of course remains Google.  A helpful site if you seek information and wish them to store all the info connected to you and your 'friends' in their underground servers somewhere under Greenland. 
I am choosing to use Duck Duck Go more often, they claim you cannot be tracked, but tend to use Bing, which is Microsoft I believe.  Someone somewhere is watching you always.
Amazon.  How can we leave out Amazon?  That nice Jeff Bezos does not get on too well with that nice Donald Trump so that is one good thing to say about him.  What his employees say may be different. 
Just think, we did not require such organisations 25 years ago, how did it all change?  Far seeing individuals?  Clever computer geeks?  What was it that enabled such organisations to rise so quickly and take over much of the world?  Enabled by a public unwilling to read the T and Cs, unless we are lawyers there is little point, and all of us to stupid or without the power to stop them using our, and our friends, and our next door neighbours information as they like, we see them gaining power and money by living of our backs and dumping adverts unwanted upon us.  AdBlockPlus deals with most of these on the laptop, not on the phone, and now YouTube has new adverts on every item that requires individual removal, most annoying.  This, to be honest means I rarely see actual adverts, but they do annoy.
Indeed, I was so weary of social media and the money grab today I forsook it to make soup and a rice based hash that was uneatable.  I will finish that tomorrow.  That took up several hours, most hours spent cleaning up afterwards, and awaiting the heavy rain storms forecast for this afternoon.  Of course one passing cloud has been and gone but no storm so far.
Now it is back to Twitter but little enjoyment to be seen today so far. 
It's being so cheery wot keeps me going.
I've just thought, all that soup I made, I hope it cooled quick enough or it's Ecoli time again...

Tyrants...

Trump has been having a good time.  Since moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, I wonder what the staff thought about that, and pandering to the rednecks who he thinks will ignore the tales of women abused, many wives, lie after lie, the loss of staff daily he has now made a mess of both Iran and North Korea! 
Moving the embassy because of US political electorate and because he is being pulled by a string the Israeli President is holding is one thing, not a good thing, but ignoring the consequences of such action and indeed taking a one sided view as politicians always is is clearly a bad thing.  While agreeing God has placed the Jews back in their homeland, thanks to the British, it is not always right to rush ahead thoughtlessly by following the will of an ungodly Israeli leader.  All Israeli leaders since 1948 have been secular, not religious Jews.
Trump must be pleased with the report that Prince William (which one is he?) will visit Israel and go visit the West Bank also!
To add to this the ending of an agreement which the majority of EU nations thought wise, and indeed the best possible at the time, just to play the tough guy is reckless at best and plain stupid at worst.  Iran is not just another Arab nation, Iran goes back, in their own mind, to Cyrus the Great some 2500 years ago and see themselves as a big nation in that part of the world.  They do not take bullying from the west easily, especially after the treatment the UK and Russia have given them in the past.
Here the US follow Israel and Saudi in their fear of Iran.  Because of that already the Saudi's have broken Syria with the west's backing, who knows what would happen had Russia not intervened, and a region already overflowing with refugees now has millions more, but we do nothing about this.  Being Arabs and far away they really don't count do they?
Quite how Trump has gone from 'bigging up' his meeting with the North Korean leader to blowing it in such style I fail to understand.  It could be China have intervened, the trade with the US is important here, and we never know what is going on behind the scenes,especially in North Korea.  
Two nuclear nations, so called, yet Trump plays games and offers an impression of not really knowing what he is doing.  The comments made in the media may of course have been deliberate, the whole thing is likely a game Kim is playing also, but we are left wishing a more sedate, indeed intelligent, President lived in the White House.  Is there no chance we can have one soon?

Today Europeans face the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) coming into existence today. This is an EU rule that is intended to give individuals control over what facebook and Google and the like make of your data.  So for a while lots of emails from many companies have arrived demanding we 'accept' or not, or in facebook and Google's case 'take it or leave it!   
In short a great deal of fuss from folks who will not rob us, a great deal of words from the main ones who do!  These will continue to use our data, the weird people in charge gathering the cash, the power and who knows for what reason while our precious data is transferred into adverts for those daft enough not to download 'adblockplus.'  
I am not sure it is worth the fuss but someone somewhere will continue to make money and get around these laws.  The intention is good but while these folks are now open to huge fines if found guilty of avoiding the law it will take years to sort that out and they will have the data until then.  Most of us will not see much difference.  If we don't like it we can always dump facebook and Google and that will hurt them.

Google Chrome Failure!

I have used Chrome for a while now as the main browser.  At first I used it because it loaded quicker than Firefox but as time passed it, like me, grew slower.  I have many links on there, too many I know as I have spent considerable time dumping many, yet others are important to keep. This linking was a simple straight forward system: a click on the star at the top brought up the choice of where to put it, I chose and it went in.  Simple.
Now however the geeks with nothing better to do than ruin everything with no thought or concern for people living in the real world have changed it, unasked and badly!  Now a click on the star brings up a slow colourful box telling you it has logged the link, but where?  It does offer a list of folders, if you click again, but only a handful, not all.  Yet another click opens out a list of links with a selection of folders at the left hand (and wrong) side.
This sounds simple but ALL my links now are found on this list, mixed up and disorganised, not in the appropriate file!  I am now supposed to spend all day fixing this because of some geek who has been smoking funny cigarettes?  It's a shambles, yet another example of the internet being run by people with no idea of the real world.  Why change a perfectly good system, why jazz something up that works?  Why not stick to reefers or go find a girlfriend? 
I have downloaded Opera once again to give it another go, would you believe they use the same system as Chrome!  Bah!
I have gone back to Firefox, they at least are more consumer friendly and less likely to be run by the CIA.

Just after noon, as I digested my lunchtime repast, I settled down to an afternoon of giggling.  This is not my normal procedure, usually it is nailbiting football stuff, however I watched Hibernian continue their dream of winning the Scottish Cup.  This is an item they have not had in their possession since 1902, and I need not remind you that man did not fly until 1903 and reached the moon in 1969 yet Hibs have still not yet won that gleaming silver trophy, the oldest football trophy in the world!  Today the sun shone on Leith Hampden as the Hibernian hammered the opponents Falkirk, a worthy team from the central belt, for the whole 90 minutes.  Hibs hit the post, made the goalkeeper work, huffed and puffed and inevitably Falkirk scored a goal!  Indeed it was the only goal and wee Falkirk go into yet another cup final, they won the cup last in 1957, and Hibernian and their fans, who managed to stay until the end this time, once again go home in tears.  A sad, sad situation.
It's a giggle for us though!    

I can see the sun setting behind the trees leaving a delightful colour in the sky.  I must point out to my weaker readers that when I say the sun is 'setting behind the trees' I don't mean the sun is setting behind the trees, I mean I can see the sun setting and trees are in between me and him, I hope you understand.  If the sun set behind the trees every night there would be no room for the rest of us by the end of the week!  The car park over there only holds about twenty cars.
Anyway now that I have cleared that up I wish I had been able to take the camera out there and attempt a photo but as I am sitting in bed I canny be bothered.  So lean out the window and suffer the cold air for a moment and then back inside.  How brave!  
Was it worth it?  No!
Actually it was worth it.  The picture may not be great but looking at the sky always is.  We change, circumstances change but once the gray clouds have gone the sky changes delightfully according to the position of the sun, time of day and stuff floating about the heavens.  The colours are magnificent and even run down dreary places, such as Leith will be tonight, are made glorious by the glint in the sky above.  When feeling down I suggest you look up, it makes the heart glad.  

 
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Now I'm not one to complain, but....

So for a while the laptop has been doing strange things, one of which concerns Google.  Normally on Chrome I have the Google UK picture, and on the right hand side a link takes me to the next page where the 'Add-Ons' are found.  Now when I click a tab the Google page that appears is different, and the next page link on Google UK has gone.  The new page is not 'Google UK' but a Google page with no Google mail, images, +You link or indeed the email address as usual.  There is nothing aIong the base either, instead under the sign there are links to places I have been, none of which I use as I don;t trust this, and attempting to use the type an address in the address bar takes over.  What is this? Is there a way of fixing this?  I have run the anti bad guys stuff but none have worked so far.  This irritates me, and I am not one to complain.....

There is the usual fuss in the media concerning this appalling event.  It appears this took place last night when I was busy having a life.  As usual banal, trite melodies offered by perverts and weirdos won the day.  It is long since this vapid bilge ceased to be an opportunity for struggling singers and became a replacement for the psychiatric hospitals Thatcher killed off, but why do people watch it?  This freak show 'entertains two thirds of the European public, yet there is nothing there!  I am more and more convinced the end is nigh, when you see what won can I be wrong?

"You'll never get out of here alive!"

Once again I spent Saturday morning at the museum as nobody was available to work it.  Next week l, off my own free will and kindness, will be there on Saturday again.  You see I am so kind and caring gentle and sweet.  I was also knackered!  I did manage to persuade the boss to make up a short advert looking for volunteers for the museum to fill in the empty spaces, far too many are sick, dying or finding jobs, and sweet as she is this happened.  So I shoved them into three churches letterboxes as there are people there who will be available I am convinced.  As one of the churches has many older "cough" peoples there will be historical knowledge also.  We will see!

Hours I have spent looking for my family.  So far none have been in prison but several have disappeared, if only one or two others would join them?   This has helped with finding dead soldiers but there is so much to do and I have hours of work to do to get through it all.  This and watching the football takes up so much time!  Of course dithering, falling asleep and wandering to the shops to obtain reduced price goods has also been required, the falling asleep bit being most popular.  However uncomplaining I battle on, my day ahead is planned out, nothing will deter my study, rise at six and plod on till midnight!  But I ask, what happened to my man George....?

Leaning on a Lampost

Once I got a moment I stopped at looked at the lamp in the corner this morning.  It has been in the museum for a while yet I never look at it.  At one time it lit up the station platform aiding the inspector and guards to catch fare dodgers and find dropped coins when the passengers had passed through.  It is amazing to think we used to light all our lamps by gas!  Houses, churches, theatres and pubs were all gas lit.  This gave the benefit of also warming the place up but made the people drowsy somewhat. That must have annoyed many a preacher and aided many a pickpocket I suspect.  
The daily round of what we called in Edinburgh, 'the Leerie,' who went around with a long pole with a wee light on the end opening each lamp, lighting the wick and passing on to the next.  All over the land men wandered about with their pole, kids chasing them asking for a shot at lighting the lamp, a job mostly occupied by aged men, possibly unfit for any other purpose.  How long would it take to light a town during the 19th century, especially when some 'Jack the Ripper' type was urging you to hurry up so he could get on with his er, occupation.  
Some gas is still in operation, Buckingham Palace is lit , outside, by gas lamps, as are the royal parks and Covent Garden area!  Berlin has some 44,000 lamps in operation as have some areas in the USA. With the privatisation of gas I suspect to have gas lit streets today would quadruple a towns costs! Today the street lights around here go off between midnight and five am to save cash. The railway must have been more atmospheric in those days.  Mist, gas light, steam engines, the mixed aromas, nothing like that exists today sadly.

Interesting to note Google offered a hummingbird for 'earth day, yesterday Charlotte Bronte's birthday was commemorated but nothing was on show for the risen Christ.  Google deliberately avoids Christian festivals although all sorts of obscure American personages and scientific ones are on offer.  Militancy at work, certainly not 'equality.'

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Now There's a Strange Thing....

My bleary eyes were not deceiving me as I struggled to keep them open this morning, the bar on Google Chrome was mixed up.  I checked on the Firefox browser and all was well there, but Chrome was very strange.
It appears that for reasons of its own links long dumped were resurrected and added to what was there now.  Several folders are on the Bookmarks Bar and one or two of these were also stuffed with long forgotten links!  Aye Aye though I, is this a virus, Malware or just Chrome doing its own thing?  I know not but have deleted the excess, except Jazz Radio as I deleted that because it was blocked by something unknown but now works!  These old inks go back at least a year, so where did they come from?  Tsk!  As I was rushing out to the museum I had no time or patience to work this out, now I am too knackered! Hopefully it has now fixed itself.  Running the usual checks produced nothing. I am putting most of my links onto Firefox, Chrome is faster but very 'thin.'
Have you noticed the strange additions to Google?  Links rush out from either side, unwelcomed by me, and irritate by offering me links I do not want or need!  Anyone know how to dump them?   I do wish they would not 'improve' things unless they are an improvement.     

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Summer, a time to read books in the sun!

Still the sun shines, still the leaves are green, reflecting the sunlight, still the sky is blue.  Naturally the wind comes from the east, over the North Sea and dampens it down a bit, still if in a windbreak it is marvellous!  I know that may not be the best picture to reflect the light, however the near naked man spoilt the picture I would have taken earlier and nothing new made itself known.  Not even a cat asleep in the sun could be found, which shows how hot things were.  

Nothing else happened except the discovery that the USA is watching us through Google, Facebook, Yahoo, etc not that we ought to be surprised at this of course.  We all knew that for the sake of 'US security' none of us were safe!  The British government have shown their mettle here and said absolutely nothing, because they participate in this, no wonder Google don't pay any tax!

I've just finished a re-read of A.J.P. Taylor's History of the Great War.   I consider this an excellent, somewhat irreverent, approach to the war and well worth a read, a good starting place for anyone with no knowledge of the conflict.  Obviously it has to condense four years into a small book but Taylor was very adept at making words fit into space.  He made many TV programmes in the late 50's/60's in which he just stood there talking to the camera on his subject for 28 minutes and always finished dead on time.  A superb talker he made the subject real, he also knew his subject and was not unhappy, some would say 'keen,' to indicate places where he disagreed with everyone else.  This book contains a few examples that would upset some when it first appeared on the bookshelves, although not noticeable today.  Plenty of pictures, with sometimes irreverent comments, opinions in passing on the various leaders, none of whom come up to the mark, but a good commentary on the four years and their aftermath.
A bit dated now, he died in 1990, but well worth a read. 

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Thursday

Very warm today, and the blue sky was full of interesting cloud patterns. Nothing makes the heart feel better than a blue sky and a sunny day, unless you have toothache of course! I was out there attempting fitness once again. I say again as I am quickly unfit after sitting around for say, three minutes! Yesterday and today walking fast and taking a longer walk than required has left me aching and stiff. However I am not one to complain so I may try similar tomorrow, maybe....



Now here's a thing, I made up a small site containing a few pics of my dad in China. I sent it to 'Yahoo' for their search engine, and now it appears there when I search for it. I added it to the Google sit, however while it appears when I search using the link at the top of the 'Google Chrome' browser it is not found when using the 'Google search engine' on Firefox! Why? It is not found on IE either! Why???? 2 KOSB in China & India

Lovely isn't it?