You'll need an adapter for that, sir

Do you live in one of the houses that don’t have electricity sockets to run the essentials of life – so you have snakes of five-way adaptors everywhere?  My laptop is getting like that – all the USB ports are occupied –mouse – printer – dondle- which means I have to unplug one of those to plug in a camera or a memory stick or my external hard drive.  And this model is only six months old!  I need the equivalent of a five way electrical extension to be running at full speed and not be unplugging and plugging in various bits of hardware….

I am proud that I got my dondle up and running last month – and even overcame the problem of resetting my SMTP (allowing me to send mail through my e mail handler rather through a web based facility).  While the later works OK it is less than optimal.  No spell check, only basic text formats (no highlights or italics etc., available) and slow upload and download procedures.  All these are quite important for an editor! So while using a web based e mail application can be OK if you are away for a few days it was good to get the e mail package fully functioning.

The great and really surprising thing about my dondle is it actually costing me less to use than a fixed internet line.  I get 20GB via a SIM for 10 Euro.  As long as I don’t stream movies or video clips this is substantially less than I would pay for a fixed internet cable.  I charged it almost three weeks go and it is still going strong – far less than the 30-35 E per month going rate charged by fixed line internet suppliers.  True it takes a minute or two to identify the device and connect and it sometimes has bad days when the connection breaks – but in general it seems like a rather good deal.  

That's me in the spotlight

.....well actually standing in the shadows at the back of a large mob. Tonight I make a surprise guest appearance on Dutch TV! It's a surprise to me. A few years ago much of west Wales was agog (that's a not so subtle word play) when Richard Gere, Sean Connery and the lovely Julie Ormroyd rode into the area to film First Knight. As a doctoral student my timetable was quite 'flexible' so I went and got myself a role as an extra in it for a couple of days. It involved hanging around for ages in a really cold slate mine outside Dolgellau dressed like, and acting the part, one of an impoverished and angry Arthurian mob. This meant wearing poorly fitting and scratchy felt clothing and having wood ash rubbed into my face and hair. It was a bit like going to Glastonbury. Except you got paid (sort of) and spent most of your time trying to get a glimpse of the fair Lady Guinievere.
Funnily enough I never watched it all the way through. Tonight I am going to tape it and find out if I really can see myself at the back of the crowd.
Oh and a bit of a spoiler. The causeway leading to Camelot is real - its part of (the former) Trawnsfynedd nuclear power station. They did some very clever graphic dubbing to transform a concrete bunker into a mythical palace.

God blogs

By this title I mean blogs about god - not the musings of the omnipotent (though that would probably attract quite a large audience).

Have any of my readers ever used the 'next blog' button at the top of the blogger screen? It can be an interesting distraction to click it a few times to see what other people do with their blogs. There's a lot of crap out there, but I have found the occasional gem.

Recently whenever I have tried this trick this has led me to a sequence of god blogs (almost universally American) - written by people who evaluate their whole lives through the actions of a potentially mythical omnipotent being. I don't want to make any comment on the content of these blogs - but am curious as to whether there is an algebraic formula by which blogspot thinks I might be interested in how Patch the dog's recovery was somehow faciliated by the force of a prayer to a higher power - or whether christians have organised a subtle coup de web which puts their blogs on the high ranking listings. Click that button now and pray it ain't so.