® Andy’s blog of blogs

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!

The market may be fucked … and I may be depressed by the fact that I got greedy and tweaked a sell order a few weeks back from $125.00 to $125.50 only to see prices top out at $125.45 and so I’m currently in a dark hole … but at least this made me laugh.

Just the other night a cold can of Pepsi Max (currently half priced in my local Tesco Extra … other convenience stores are also available) had been sat on the worktop in the kitchen. I’d picked it up and poured it, and then my wife came in and noted that there now appeared to be a face on the worktop. “It’s Jesus” I exclaimed “quick call the Vatican”, though in all honesty it had no beard and was more a smiley in a 80s acid style than a religious figure. As quickly as the face had appeared, it was gone again, because I’m damned if my new work tops are staying wet ;-).

Anyhow, look at this genius bit of design.

So I’ve had a long running struggle regarding my next camera, beyond my current battle scarred Sony DSC-H1 “bridge camera”. I’ve always hankoured after the step change in fundamental image quality brought by a DSLR with its better glass and larger sensor, but have refused to budge on my requirement for a single flexible device capable of both photos and video. Then a few weeks back the Nikon D90 was finally formally announced and the world got its first DSLR with HD video support … and it was time for me to start saving my pennies.

However, Panasonic have just announced their new DMC-G1 and suddenly we’ve got a curve ball. Well actually it’s not that much of a curve ball because it appears to not shoot video (which is especially annoying since it’s ideally suited for pulling the quality video trick), but interestingly it’s a fundamental departure from the traditional DSLR / point-and-shoot divide. A camera with replaceable lenses (admittedly with a new mount format) and large sensor, the DMC-G1 does away with the traditional mechanical mirror/prism arrangement of a DSLR. Hence it has no optical viewfinder and relies instead on a high quality electronic video finder like your typical (video shooting) bridge camera. This is very interesting to me, because I love EVFs! The quality of the one on my Sony is top notch, and one of the other things that’s been putting me off the DSLR route is that fact that unless you get to very expensive bodies, the optical viewfinder coverage isn’t 100% of the scene! You can’t actually see the edges of what you’re shooting … what’s that all about! On my Sony I can see exactly what the sensor is seeing, and once I take the shot I can see exactly what it took, all in glorious strong technicolour and without removing my eye from the view finder. It’s an ideal solution for making sure that you actually frame exactly what you want at the time which is why I take pride in the fact that (unlike many DSLR carrying buddies) I don’t end up cropping my shots to get the framing right … I get it right at the time at the instant I squeeze that shutter button!

Anyhow … I’ll be watching the development path that Panasonic are on with interest, and for now here’s a good pre-production review from dpreview of the DMC-G1.

So it really shouldn’t be that difficult to be a robot that walks naturally. If tiny insects with minuscule brains can crack walking and carrying and flying … why not a robot? Well of course the reality is that for years robots haven’t moved naturally or with the self correcting characteristics of the most basic of creatures.

Hence this video of the BigDog pack robot is frankly disturbing, because it really does move like an animal and responds how you’d expect one to to external factors.

Before anybody points out that my family and I total five … my cars only got two seats mkay and we manage!

Dear Santa for Xmas I want one of these please.

So I hate clutter and pointless junk and hence I’m pretty brutal when it comes to throwing out stuff. However, and despite me driving a petrol guzzling mad two seater car suggesting to the contrary, I hate waste and landfill and the general lack of reuse in our modern lives.

Therefore I though the following jumbo reuse was a rather cool story!

I’m a proud and very devout Atheist which is why I give it a capital-A. You many not be and I’m totally cool with that as long as you respect my right to be an Atheist, and don’t try to tell me I wrong, because I’m certain I’m right! Anyhow today’s post isn’t to espouse my views on religion, and why an artificial construct used over many millennia to exert power by a minority over a majority and encourage prejudice on the grounds of gender, sexuality, and beliefs, all anchored on an abuse of peoples’ fear of death, difference and the unknown is a dangerous thing.

Instead this post is to recognize the power of Windows and how it is able to pwn anyone anywhere anytime.