® Andy’s blog of blogs

Perhaps you’re worried about experiencing rampant nomophobia when your ‘phone runs out of juice at just the wrong moment, or the thought of being without your choons on the move and having to acknowledge the world around you drives into a psychotic terror!?

Well technology is your saviour … and further more you’re going to look groovy

Piezoelectric clothing is sort of predictable but hydroelectricity on the move is more left field! I wonder if I’ll be able to get some styled by Jimmy Choo, rather than Startrite on acid?

The Mount Hospital in Bishopstoke closed a few years back in a clamour of local annoyance following years of campaigning to keep it open. It was a popular smaller hospital which mostly focused on rehabilitation for elderly patients but had various other outpatients’ departments.

The history of the site is interesting too. It started as smallish private estate with the first house built by a wealthy farmer in 1844. It was later bought by a Captain Hargreaves in the 1870s. When he died it was bought by a Mr Cotton who rebuilt it in 1893. His imposing Victorian mansion replete with impressive tower forms the heart of the site. It originally had impressive gardens too suitable for a house of its standing with an arboretum, formal gardens and a Victorian water garden. In 1927 it was sold to Hampshire County Council who converted it into a hospital reusing the original Victorian house, as well as building a range of other buildings including another impressive art deco-ish ward building. It was only when I saw the front of that other ward building that its purpose screamed out at me … massive opening windows are immediate tell tales of a TB sanatorium and I’ve since confirmed that this was the original purpose.

Overall I’m absolutely shocked by the state the site and mansion which is locally listed (but sadly does not have a statutory listing) has been allowed to fall into and so I’m currently in communication with appropriate parties to try and ensure that necessary attention is paid.

See all the pictures here.

So I’m going through the pain/joy of moving to a new laptop. My battle worn but bullet proof T42p is being replaced by an second-hand T60p to go alongside a new Macbook that I’ll be getting soon. Reckon I’ve had the T42p about three and a half years and remarkably it’s still run the original XP installation since as I said … bulletproof hardware with bulletproof software if managed properly.

However, the downside is that I have a very, very, very tweaked and personally optimized installation and now I’ve got to try and replicate that on my new machine. Hence, begins lots of headscratching as I try to rediscover how I tweaked things originally.

First off … Firefox. I’d held off upgrading to Firefox 3 on my old box, but with the Flash/Firefox 3 problems now fixed I’m starting with Firefox 3 on the new one. The vast majority of my core plugins have long been available for Firefox 3, but there was one that was never going to be there. To set the scene, I always try to maximize the useful real estate in applications and so I hate superfluous menus, toolbars and icons. Hence I’ve used a Firefox plugin called MenuX for many years which allows(ed) me to hide all the menus and instead access them via a single button in my icon bar. However, MenuX was never developed beyond Firefox 1.5! I hacked it for Firefox 2.0, but thought that for Firefox 3.0 it was probably a step to far. Consider my immense joy when I discovered a Firefox 3 plugin called Personal Menu that does exactly what I want.

Anyhow to the real purpose of this post. Basically I’m planning on capturing key tweaks and hacks in a number of posts. Both for my personal records but also to share them with others who might find them useful.

I’ve always considered the download manager in Firefox a bit of a “give away” since by default it’ll show a history of what you’ve downloaded. You can clear its entries via the privacy options, but somehow I had my existing installation delete each entry automatically once it’d finished downloading. This isn’t an option accessible via the usual options UI so …

You need to start by accessing the advanced configuration  options by typing about:config into the location bar.

• To get Firefox to clear the download manager history set browser.download.manager.retention to 0 to clean up the moment the download is completed, or to 1 to have them cleared when you quit Firefox. The default value of 2 discards nothing.
• Documents you’ve downloaded are also added to the My Recent Documents folder on the Windows’ Start menu. Disable this by setting browser.download.manager.addToRecentDocs to false.
• Finally junk the popup download complete notification by setting browser.download.manager.showAlertOnComplete to false.

Being as I am a child of the early 70s, I spent the 70s and 80s mildly spooked by the concern that it was all going to end in the bright flash of a nuclear war. A strong influence was nuclear apocalyptic docudramas and the like, most notable Threads.

However, historically more interesting is The War Game which was made by the BBC in 1965. It was never broadcast because of the fear that it’d induce panic. Watching it now you can see why, since I seriously don’t think what was still a pretty formal and up tight UK could have dealt with the horrifying reality of what it really meant to go to war in the nuclear age. It was finally shown in 1985!

“Within the next 15 years possibly another 12 countries will have acquired thermo-nuclear weapons. For this reason, if not through accident or the impulses of man himself, it is now more than possible that what you have seen happen in this film will have taken place before the year 1980!”. Thank fuck they were wrong!

Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

Stunning and very bold film making from the BBC, even if it was then sat on for 20 years by the government and Beeb!