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The Car-free Life…

A few years ago, following my first cycling trip up and around Scotland, I decided to part company with my car. I blogged about this at the time.
The reasons were various and included the fact that the car I owned wasn’t long for the world – it was showing its age in some places out of sight and, as expected, only survived for one more year (I assume due to corrosion). [Click here to continue reading this topic]

Uncama’s Adventure [in Wonderland]

On page 4969 (in volume 7) of Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia is a collection of short “stories told to Kaffir children”. Included is “Uncama’s Adventure”:

Uncama was a bold hunter, and, finding that a strange animal came every night to his garden and rooted up his plants, he lay in wait for it and pursued it. The strange animal ran down a great hole by the side of a river, and Uncama followed it, and entered a wonderful country underneath the Earth. [Click here to continue reading]

Ubuntu Printer Stopped after upgrade to 18.04

It seemed that after I had upgraded my Ubuntu system from 16.04 to 18.04 my Epson printer would no longer print. I would send something to print and a message would appear at the top of the screen “Printing Stopped”. The document would be stuck in the queue as “Stopped”.
I searched online and discovered many other people had experienced similar problems following the upgrade. Suggestions I found did not work for me. [Click here to read my solution]

National Survey for Wales

I received this charmingly interactive set of results from the National Survey for Wales. Click here to read the results and my responses.

Would You Rather?

Click here to read my preferences.

object ReadableByteStream

So, my mum started getting this "object ReadableByteStream" error when trying to check her email on Outlook / Hotmail / MSN. It appears in simple text at the top left corner of an otherwise blank white page. I immediately Googled the error to find that many other people had been experiencing the same issue recently, which went to my mum hadn't don't something to cause it on her system. [Click here to continue reading]

Boycotting Microsoft, promoting Linux

When it comes to computers, I'm most familiar with Windows, but when a company such as Microsoft operate counter to my way of thinking, that usually means it's time to look for an alternative.

With each version of Windows comes an "End of life support" date, which sounds drastic enough but basically means Microsoft will stop supporting that operating system, and generally other companies will follow suite, from providers of anti-virus and web browsers to hardware manufacturers of things like printers. [Click here to continue reading]

Violating Expectations

This was an interesting concept that was raised in Youtube collaboration between Matt D’Avella and Thomas Frank in a video on “How to Become a Productivity Master“. I’ve watched a number of videos by these two guys individually and they often provide me with food for thought, although I also feel like “self-help” videos such as these are often just sharing what the creators have figured out which we would actually benefit more from figuring out on our own, without resorting to the internet for answers; this is a bad habit to get into (obviously I’m telling you this because I too am now sharing something I’ve learned about myself!) [Click here to continue reading]

Vaccines and the war on "fake news"

I received a complementary copy of The Sun newspaper today; I have only rarely purchased or read a newspaper and as is the same with listening to the news on the radio or watching it on TV I find it overwhelming; too much to think about and too many things to have a say on... such as this on page 2...

My general opinion of Boris Johnson is that he is amusing and therefore I have no qualms with him having a stint at being prime minister; I know of no one else who is up for the position that interests me in the slightest. [Click here to continue reading]

Utopia 239

After reading Alone on Mars last month I looked up what other books the author Stanley Bennett Hough had written under the pen name of Rex Gordon and discovered that one had been the second and Utopia 239 the first. I sourced a copy and got reading.

From the onset Utopia 239 reminded me of Nineteen Eighty-Four but I had it in my head that 1984 had been written much later than it had (the title probably didn't help!) although I tried to keep an open mind throughout (rather than dive onto Wikipedia straight away to get my facts straight); I wondered which had been written first and which author had possibly gained inspiration from the other. [Click here to continue reading]

Insert text above a table in NVU / BlueGriffon

I mentioned in a previous post that I still use Microsoft FrontPage to create and edit web pages. Over the years I have tried out other such editors with varying degrees of success. I have more recently been renewing those efforts but I have reached a stumbling block. Help?

Since dabbling with Ubuntu Linux I discovered the BlueGriffon WYSWYG editor (also available for Windows) that can apparently be used not only for creating and editing HTML documents, but EPUB files also; that might come in handy at some point, but for now web pages...

Let's say I create a page and put a table on that page. How can I insert text above that table? (without dabbling in the HTML or cutting the table, typing what I want and then pasting the table below). [Click here to continue reading]

Old Web Wednesday #5

I mentioned Netscape Navigator in last week’s OWW blog post so I used that to get this week’s post started; I searched for “best viewed with netscape navigator”.
Netscape was a popular web browser in the 90s as an alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer; adopted perhaps by people who wanted to be different and avoid Microsoft. I think of Netscape as the Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome of the day, in fact Mozilla Organization was formed in 1998 and largely funded by Netscape. Netscape Navigator is no longer a current browser although the last release can be downloaded and installed on Windows 10, it just doesn’t like modern websites all that much and it’s probably not all that secure. [Click here to continue reading]

I Unplug to...

I discovered on Saturday that I had managed to miss National Unplugging Day; I think it takes place on the first Friday of March each year, but I had neglected to note it in my diary. Since I had been feeling increasing levels of anxiety from spending too many hours in front of my computer, namely watching stuff on Youtube and being in the virtual world that is Second Life, I decided I would make the effort on Sunday to switch off and "Unplug". [Click here to continue reading...]

From DeviantArt, Redbubble vs. Society6

I've had photographs and other creations on DeviantArt for a number of years but I was recently thinking about selling prints, in the form of mugs and notebooks. While DA have the facility of prints, those sections of their website seem particularly dated and limited, for one thing there is no preview of what a print will look like in a particular format which isn't helpful to anyone.
Having already noticed someone else I know of using Redbubble I headed on over there and signed up and began uploading artwork and editing my profile. [Click here to continue reading]

The Jacob Rees-Mogg Guide

Rees-Mogg M.P. has also deemed a number of words no longer fit for purpose. There are quite a lot of them, and I got very bothered by the list, I did. Due to this list I speculate, or rather, ascertain this will pose an ongoing and unacceptable problem; hopefully my readers will meet with understanding and not too much disappointment, however I note/ understand your concerns. I am pleased to learn that all words in this list, when used inappropriately will irritate the honourable M.P. gravely. [Read the full blog post here]

I am a Plogger!

I just discovered that Plogging is a thing. When I go out for my morning jog I often find discarded drinks bottles and cans, and as I’m returning along the road that leads to my house I will pick these up and put them in my plastics recycling box; it bothers me to see litter, especially on my street and while the council do send out litter pickers I’m not sure they target my road, and I’d rather not ignore it in the hope it will disappear on its own while in the meantime acting like kibble and leading others to believe tossing stuff out of a car window is okay… it’s not. [Continue reading...]

Old Web Wednesday #3

Just in time for this week’s Old Web Wednesday I discovered this gem of old-skool web: takingcareofbusiness.com I assume it’s an old website rather than a current website using out-of-date styling, since it’s the only old website I’ve come across this week I thought I’d go into some detail on this one, even if the bottom of the home page does state “Copyright 1996 – 2018“ [Continue reading...]

Table Borders; from FrontPage to Firefox

I still use MS FrontPage for creating web pages and ever since I switched over to Firefox from Internet Explorer all those moons ago, I’ve had an issue with table borders, or rather, Firefox has an issue with them.
It’s all down to how each browser interprets the code.
[Click here to read more and my solution]

Which stone circle is this?

I have a fascination with old standing stones, stone circles and other such ancient sites. I recently came across this story in Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia about a "ring of great stones", but I wonder which, if any, stone circle it is based on.

THE RING OF GREAT STONES [Click here to read the full story]