Week of 7th November, 2016

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Monday, 7th November

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Tuesday, 8th November

Finally, it's US Election Day. How many people are sick unto death with all the hoopla? And why does it take 19 months to get to this point? We in UK manage with a mere 6 to 8 weeks of active campaigning. I will admit that the UK is physically much smaller, and our population is only 20% or so of that in the US, but a year-and-a-half?

Not to mention the 2 month gap between election and inauguration. Here in UK, once the result is known, and that's a mere 1 to 2 days, we get the movers in - outgoing PM leaves 10 Downing Street, incoming PM moves in, on the same day. And it's all paper ballots, hand-counted. We do not have (possibly insecure) voting machines.

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Wednesday, 9th November

OK, the Donald is the new President designate - he will become President elect once the Electoral College have done their thing. And what, pray tell, is the point of that?

On the basis of campaign promises, there will be a lot of change after the inauguration. We shall see how much of all that speechifying actually leads to concrete action. On previous experience, both in US and UK, I predict, "Not a Lot." Cynical? Moi?

Moving from the ridiculous to the merely mundane, I had freelance at former $EMPLOYER, today. And there have been big changes there - to the extent that I can't call them "former $EMPLOYER" any more. I'm unsure whether the technical operations side of things has been outsourced to another provider, or whether the entire technical department hs been sold off, and former $EMPLOYER is now merely a client of that other provider - no one has specifically told me in so many words, but it appears to be the latter.

On the evidence, a number of my former colleagues are regretting not trying for the deal I got. I hope it all works out well for them, but the odds do not appear good.

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Thursday, 10th November

Our tame Polish decorator has finished working his magic at Katy's flat, and very good it looks - we visited this evening. Next up is $ky broadband and phone installation - next Wednesday morning. I will have to be there to let the $ky installer in, and accept the work. This will be an early arrival - the appointment is "between 8 am and 1 pm", and I'll catch the bus down - parking is next to impossible, and/or expensive anywhere near the flat. It's only one bus, but it's quite a trip - probably 40 minutes, each way.

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Friday, 11th November

Armistice Day

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old,
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the 11th hour, of the 11th Day, of the 11th Month,
And at the Going Down of the Sun,
And in the Morning,
We will remember them.

adapted from Laurence Binyon - For the Fallen

I will observe the silence at 11:00.

In the afternoon, I wandered in to the main shopping street. I wanted a few things, and I had instruction from Jane, "Get this non-slip mesh mat from <shop>".

Well, I got most of the stuff, but I forgot one of the main items - a new set of leads for my DMM. Or, in the alternative, a new DMM. But there's nothing wrong with the meter, it's the leads that are intermittent, so I'll try to avoid adding to the piles of e-waste.

The Invizbox folks have, apparently, started shipping the Invizbox Go, which I backed on Kickstarter last year. It's only 8 months late, but I've never yet seen a KS project that shipped on time. It's also increasingly important, if you value your privacy in these days of pervasive surveillance. It will be particularly useful for working through public wifi hotspots, because it will provide VPN-encrypted communications over the hotspot's network, or, for the really paranoid, Tor, and will provide reasonably secure communications. Main use case will be the aforesaid wifi hotspots, but I'm not sure I trust the mobile networks either, so maybe use over 3G/4G would be a good idea - it's unlikely to do harm, since 3G/4G latency probably swamps VPN/Tor delays.

The Invizbox Go comes with a limited-use free VPN tier, or pay 4 euro per month for unlimited VN service. Or you can get lifetime unlimited service for 260 euro per month if you backed the Go with 1 year VPN, or 230 Euro if you originally sprang for 2 years of VPN. Since I backed the 1 year option, I need to pay 260 euro for lifetime service, and have. All these prices will be higher for retail buyers.

The Go will chain Tor and VPN, if you so choose - so Tor to an exit node somewhere, and then VPN to your destination country. That prevents anyone (even the VPN provider) seeing your current IP address. Unless, of course, the FBI take an interest in you, and drop one of their NITs on your machine...

It's coming to something when you have to take precautions aginst your own law enforcement or security organisations - what happened to, "Innocent until proven guilty"? It now appears to be, "You are guilty of something. We just don't know what, as yet". Or, the case that worries me, "You did X when it was legal. X is now illegal, so you are guilty. Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go. Do not collect UKP200."

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Saturday, 12th November

Jane and Katy have gone to a homewares and craft show in Central London. Before she left, Katy instructed me to visit her flat (still unoccupied, as yet - still needs new carpet) and collect any paper mail.

I decided to do this by bus, even though parking is unrestricted at weekends, since I need to know how long it takes, or those occasions where I'm flat-sitting. Answer: at least 45 minutes, nearer an hour, door-to-door. Of course, there was no mail to collect... But I can stop off in the main shopping street to pick up things.

When I left I had a mental list of 2 things, to which I added a third, en route - my shoes leak, so I need a new pair.So I did my shopping, and came home with the aforementioned new shoes, and a set of leads for my DMM, but I forgot to get new refills for my preferred style of pen - a Parker Rollerball. I have 2, and they've both run out.

But before that, I installed a fix for the low audio output from the $ky+ HD box, when copying to the DVD recorder. It wasn't cheap, but I obtained a small 4-in, 1-out stereo mixer, together with the appropriate mains power brick, and sundry accessories. The mixer has ¼ inch mono jacks for input and output, so I needed adaptors to phono, plus 3-way phono leads, and a couple of switchable SCART-to-phono adaptors, since the relevant circuit uses SCART connectors. I already had some, but not all of this, so I spent about UKP75, late last week. I could undoubtedly have done it cheaper online, but I needed to archive a downloaded programme before it expires on Monday.

So I wired it all up, with only a minor battle with choice of output adaptors from the plugtop mains brick, and switched on. It worked, as expected, and I could compare audio levels direct off FreeView with the same programme via $ky, and balance them acoustically with the mixer controls. Then, after the excursion, I started archiving stuff. And it all worked well. The imminently-expiring programme is safely DVDed, as is another in the same series, and also 5 commercial half-hour "Thunderbirds are Go" episodes. I'm doing this solely from nostalgia for the original Thunderbirds - the new, CGI, version is a little too slam-bang and action-packed for my taste - it needs to have a longer running time per episode. But DVD-R discs are only about UKP0.30 apiece, so cost is negligible.

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Sunday, 13th November

Remembrance Sunday

More archiving, while Jane is Rainbow-ing at the local Remembrance observances. I didn't forget to go silent during the 2 minutes at 11 am. So that's all well.

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