Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…
Apparently that’s Europe’s verdict on the Brexit shambles, as reported in today’s Guardian. It pains me to say it, but I think Europe has got it exactly right. Indeed, I think we have a clear case of omnishambles here.
The cherry on the top of this (Eton) mess is likely to be that Boris Johnson will replace Theresa May as Prime Minister. Out of the frying pan…
Sad to hear that Magenta Devine has died at what, to me, is the young age of 61. She co-presented an impressive series of Rough Guide travelogues on BBC television in the late 1980s. The woman had style and wit. She was also the neighbour of my best friend who was living in a London Mews at the the time. I’m sorry I never had the opportunity to meet her in real life, but I’d probably have been too tongue-tied and star-struck anyway.
Addendum: a nice tribute to Magenta, written by an ex-partner of hers is here.
I see that Microsoft has announced that it is pulling the plug on the Microsoft Health Dashboard applications and services. I can’t say I’m surprised; the writing has been on the wall ever since Microsoft dropped the Microsoft Band two years ago.
When the first version of the Microsoft Band was introduced in 2014, I thought that the most interesting thing was the backend services of Microsoft Health. The combination of Big Data and AI could have been game-changing, and as recently as a year ago Microsoft made a series of announcements to push this further.
It may well be that these cloud-based initiatives in conjunction with the medical industries will continue, and all that is now being killed off is the consumer-facing tier of products and services.
Still, I regret the demise of the Microsoft Band and its application services. Although the device was flawed physically (wristbands split all too easily and could not be replaced), the design of the functionality was very good. I eventually replaced my (third) Microsoft Band 2 with a FitBit Ionic smartwatch, and frankly, it’s not a patch on what the Band offered me.
We’ve noticed a new visitor in the field next to our house in the past few days; a Great Egret…
It’s probably looking for a mate, but I think it’s going to be out of luck around these parts.
Lovely! I really need to move to a place where I might find egrets in the next yard.
Donald Tusk hits the nail on the head. The Nigel Farages, Jacob Rees-Moggs and Boris Johnsons of this world deserve nothing less. It is they who have betrayed the British people, not the EU.
You are fully correct
In recent years, the UK Home Office has increasingly seemed to be driven by checklists, rather than any understanding of the people they are dealing with.
Here’s just the latest example in a very long list: a man, 90 years old, is being told to fly to the US to get a visa so that he can stay in the UK with his wife.
Apparently, a Home Office spokesperson has said:
“All UK visa applications are considered on their individual merits, on the basis of the evidence available and in line with UK immigration rules.”
As a good friend of mine has said on many an occasion: “Just what is wrong with these people?”.
Someone asked me last night how long I had been living here in the Netherlands, and I replied: “35 years”.
“So, for half your life?” he asked. And up until that moment I had not thought about it, but he’s right: for the first 35 years of my life, I lived in the UK (even though, technically speaking, the country of my birth, the Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency and not part of the UK) and now I’ve been living for 35 years in the Netherlands.
It gave me pause.
you have led a charmed life, don’t you think?
Oh, absolutely – I have been extremely lucky, and as a result, content with my lot.
Nina Paley has finished her magnum opus and released it to the world.
Deceptively simple, yet raises uncomfortable questions. Worth watching.
In these dark times, god knows, I need a little cheering up. And Randy Rainbow continues to deliver and prick presidential pretensions.
I know I’m very late to this, but I’ve just come across this via a link in another online forum. Worth a listen…
Here in the Netherlands we have a number of internet service providers (ISPs) to choose from. One of the oldest is XS4ALL, and it has been offering internet access to private individuals since 1993. It’s been my ISP since 1994. Although it was sold to KPN in 1998, it has remained as an independent subsidiary. At least, it has up until now.
Yesterday, KPN announced its intention to phase out the XS4ALL brand (and selected other subsidiary brands) and continue operations solely under the KPN brand. According to KPN:
“With the focus on the KPN-brand we are going to extend the KPN service with the best elements of the individual brands, such as the highest rated service by XS4ALL, the affordable advantage services of Telfort and the personal service and expert business advice from Yes Telecom “
This has not gone down well with XS4ALL customers (including me). A petition to request the continuation of the XS4ALL brand has already been started. The issue is that XS4ALL scores consistently the highest in customer satisfaction and service as measured by the Dutch consumer organisation. It also has a wider range of products and services on offer than the parent KPN. So the fear is that those aspects that marked out XS4ALL from the rest of the pack will be lost in the mediocrity that is the oft-perceived hallmark of KPN.
XS4ALL has a strong brand image and is well-liked; it seems strange that KPN would seek to kill the goose that has been laying golden eggs for them.
I note that as a result of the (negative) reaction, a KPN spokesperson has now said that it’s not yet certain when the change is going to happen and in what stages…
For me, it will be shortly be irrelevant anyway. That’s because we should be getting a new fibre-optic network in the neighbourhood by mid-2019, and KPN (and hence XS4ALL) refuse to offer their services over it. I will have to switch over to a new ISP, and I have chosen for Solcon. The irony is that Solcon also happens to be a subsidiary of KPN since 2017, but KPN, for some reason best known to themselves, are letting the Solcon brand continue…
[…] Back in January, I blogged about the fact that my Internet Service Provider, XS4ALL, was going to be swallowed up by its parent company KPN. XS4ALL customers were not happy about this – over 50,000 of them (including me) signed a petition to keep the XS4ALL brand alive. […]
Just watched “The Happy Prince” – a film about Oscar Wilde; written by, directed by, and starring Rupert Everett as Oscar.
Simply magnificent.
Ivan Rogers, the former UK ambassador to the EU, delivered a speech this week on the nine lessons of Brexit. The full 10,000+ words transcript is here, but if you prefer a précis, then this will do nicely.
The basic message is that the choice for Brexit and, in particular, the process of Brexit have both been fucking disasters, although Ivan Rogers is too much of a gentleman to use such words. The blame for this trainwreck, he argues, cannot rest on the shoulders of the Brexiters or the Remainers alone – both sides have contributed to the dishonesty and the confusion that today reigns supreme.
One might almost say “A plague on both their houses…”
what a mess. I really think that the UK felt everything would go easy for them just because they are the UK. But the EU had to make an example of it. If they made it easy on the UK it would give other nations the idea to pull out too.
Brilliant!
Yesterday I went to an afternoon concert in which Lucas Jussen played Saint-Saëns 5th Piano Concerto with Het Gelders Orkest. I enjoyed it very much.
Also on the program were the orchestral suites of Daphnis et Chloé, but what was a revelation to me was the opening piece: Stravinsky’s Chant Funèbre. This was composed in 1909 as a memorial to his teacher Rimsky-Korsakov, but the score was lost. It was only rediscovered in the spring of 2015. Worlds away from the Rite, which was to follow a scant few years afterwards, but a beautiful memento mori.
Another day, and yet another rant at Microsoft.
I’ve already ranted about the fact that the OneDrive ‘Files on Demand’ feature is a step backwards from the old ‘Smart Files’ feature in Windows. I’ve also complained numerous times that the Microsoft Photos app is severely lacking in comparison with the Windows Photo Gallery, which Microsoft has withdrawn from the market, and no longer supports.
And now these two – ‘Files on Demand’ and the Photos app – have together created the perfect storm, which has blown into the latest version of Windows 10 running on my Surface 3 tablet.
A few weeks back, the Surface 3 began acting up – the screen kept on breaking up. It had all the appearances of a fault in the graphics hardware or the screen, but I thought I would try doing a factory reset on the device. That actually worked, and I was back up and running in Windows 10 in a couple of hours. Of course, I had to reinstall all my apps and Office, but at least I had a working machine again.
All my documents and photos are now held in OneDrive, and shared across all my devices. I’ve got about 500 GB of data in OneDrive, and my Surface 3 only has about 80GB free. So I instructed OneDrive to use the Files on Demand feature, and save space by only downloading files as I used them on the Surface 3.
That was all fine and dandy, but the following day when I picked up the Surface 3 to use it, it immediately became apparent that it was running really slowly. A restart had no effect, and it wasn’t until I looked at the File Explorer that I realised why – there was only 110 MB of free space left on the C: drive. I have 330 GB of photos up on OneDrive, and OneDrive was trying to download all of them into the Surface 3.
I straightaway set the properties of all the files and folders in Pictures to ‘clear space’ – so that space would be regained, and sure enough, the amount of free space began to climb as the ‘Files on Demand’ placeholders were used instead of the full files.
I breathed a sigh of relief, but it was short-lived, as it quickly became apparent that OneDrive was starting to re-download all the files again. Something was going through all the files and folders in Pictures and accessing them. It certainly wasn’t me. OneDrive was saying that the ‘Runtime Broker’ application was doing it, and this was enough to make OneDrive copy the file from the cloud storage down to the Surface 3.
It turned out to be that damned Photos app – even though I wasn’t using it, it now apparently runs in the background, and naturally includes the Pictures files and folders as a default location. It spawns the Runtime Broker for some devious purpose of its own. It’s probably running the facial recognition algorithm to look for people’s faces in photos, and in order to process the photo, it needs to have the photo present locally on the Surface 3.
I thought perhaps something might have gone wrong during the initial re-install of Windows 10 – after all, surely I can’t be the only person suffering from this issue? So I did a second factory reset, and the issue is still there – OneDrive is still trying to pour a quart into a pintpot at the prompting of the Photos app.
As a temporary workaround, I’ve deleted the Pictures folder from the locations scanned by the Photos app, and that seems to have stopped this unwanted behaviour.
But the question remains, surely I can’t be the only person with this issue? Looking through Microsoft’s Feedback Hub reveals others – but we seem to be relatively few. Certainly too few for Microsoft to have noticed that anything is wrong. Doubtless it will never get fixed.
Addendum 2 December: I had sent this issue through to Microsoft as feedback on the 26th November. I had the following reply:
We have received your request for assistance and are busy researching a potential solution. We may need additional information. You can count on us to get back to you within within [sic] the next 24 hours.
Naturally, I’ve not heard anything further… Why am I not surprised?
A long time ago, back in 1973, I heard a play on BBC Radio: Cries from Casement as His Bone are Brought to Dublin. It was an extraordinary experience, and a brilliant realisation of the script.
This week I bought the BFI’s Blu-ray transcription of Penda’s Fen, one of the plays in the BBC’s “Play for Today” series, that was first broadcast on television in 1974. I’ve just sat down and watched it, and it was equally extraordinary.
Something nagged at my memory, and I realised that both works were written by David Rudkin. Whilst I doubt that you will be able to hear the radio play again, the BFI/BBC release of Penda’s Fen is available. It’s well worth seeking out.
Unfortunately, Penda’s Fen appears only to be available as a disc with EU Region Coding and thus blocked from being played on North American equipment.
That sort of thing is a real pain. Fortunately, Gutenberg and his successors weren’t able to introduce DRM into the printing process, or the spread of knowledge would have been very different.
What’s also ironic is that the disc was produced jointly by the BFI and BBC Worldwide Ltd. (my emphasis). Another example of “think global, act local” in the negative sense…
It’s the little things that gradually mount up. A series of changes, often small in themselves, that suddenly align and bring about a situation that can cause a major catastrophe.
Over the years, I’ve built up about 500GB of personal data stored on my computers: documents, emails, photos and videos. Naturally, I have this data backed up, in several locations, both locally and off-site.
Over the years, I’ve used a variety of techniques to make the backups. In the early days, I used writable CDs, then tape cartridges, and then a local data server, backed up to hard drives that were then stored off-site. I’ve also gone through a variety of backup software, ranging from simple to sophisticated. For a long time, I was using Microsoft’s Windows Home Server to take backups of all our home data, and make copies for off-site storage. But as is Microsoft’s habit, Windows Home Server was dropped and no longer supported. As is also Microsoft’s habit, no decent alternative was forthcoming from them at the time.
As a result, I started using Veeam’s Agent for Windows, which was perfectly satisfactory, if not as intelligent as the backup solution in Windows Home Server. VAW would take backups to our local data server, and I would then make copies for offsite storage.
Then came Microsoft pushing the use of OneDrive as cloud storage. Over time, we started to make more use of it, but I also ensured that VAW was also backing up any data we stored in OneDrive.
So far, so good. But then came the next change. Microsoft introduced the Windows 10 Spring Creators Update in April this year (a.k.a. Build 1803), and suddenly, VAW was no longer able to backup any of our data that was being held in OneDrive, and failed giving an error. According to Veeam, it is related to the reparse points mechanisms which are included in the ‘Files On-Demand’ OneDrive feature. This ‘Files On-Demand’ feature was added in the 1803 build and it doesn’t work with Veeam Agent.
So, OK, I thought, OneDrive is itself a form of backup – our data is being held both locally and in the OneDrive cloud, do I need a second backup taken by VAW and a third copy stored offsite? What could possibly go wrong? And so I left things as they were.
In August, Microsoft started pushing a new folder protection feature for OneDrive. Folder protection will offer to automatically sync your documents, pictures, and desktop folders to OneDrive to ensure a PC’s important folders are backed up to Microsoft’s cloud service. It sounded good, so I converted all our PCs to use the service for backing up our local data to OneDrive automatically. It meant that now the majority of our data was being backed up to OneDrive, and very little was being backed up by VAW. What could possibly go wrong?
A week ago, Microsoft released the next major update to Windows 10 – Build 1809 – the Fall Creators Update. I let it be installed on all our PCs – Windows Update said it was available, downloaded it and installed it. And VAW was still failing to backup data held on OneDrive. However, I had the new folder protection feature for OneDrive in place. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, disaster could strike.
During the upgrade process to Build 1809 of Windows 10, Microsoft displays this on your PC:
Unfortunately, for some unknown percentage of people who have upgraded to Build 1809, the upgrade process has deleted all of their personal data, so their files are no longer exactly where they left them at all – they have gone – probably for good. They are not in OneDrive, they are not on the local PC, they have shuffled off this mortal coil…
It’s not the first time that Microsoft, as a result of changes to its testing procedures, has released buggy software, which, under Windows 10 design, will be installed on unsuspecting customers’ PCs automatically. But this has to be the final straw. Changes have to be made, and heads will probably roll.
So far, touch wood, we have not lost any of our personal data, but now do you see why I’m getting nervous? I only hope that Veeam Software fix the problem about backing up OneDrive data quickly. One can never have too many backups.
Selfie deaths – a report. But I disagree strongly with the conclusion. It would only serve to affect the number of Darwin Award winners in a negative fashion.
Mostly young males. In other words, testosterone poisoning.
🙂
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