April 2019 was when I hit 60, I went to bed one night in my 50s and woke up the next morning in my 60s, nothing actually happened. Most of my body continued to work, the one really exciting thing was I could now apply for my bus pass. I've got one but not used it yet, but I will.
Then strange things started happening, I received a letter from the local health authority telling me they were going to send me something free, a home bowel cancer screening kit was on my way to me. It means I can officially stick some poo in an envelope and post it off to someone without worrying about prosecution, I wonder what would happen if I sent off some cat poo.
The next thing was my gas and electric supplier, they offered to send me bills in a larger font and in braille if I wanted, I could also agree a password with them so if someone called and I was worried they would give me a safe word and they also offered assistance in reading my meter in case I have difficulty (we have a smart meter). And finally if I needed a home visit I could leave an instruction asking them to knock louder and wait a bit longer before putting a no reply card through the letterbox to save me struggling to get to the door in case my Zimmer frame got caught on something.
I feel like I'm on my way out, overnight I've gone from 60 to let's let him drift off peacefully, it's what he would have wanted.
Respectfully, I have to say arse to all that, we have loads of holidays and trips planned and we intend to keep doing these while we can and then still having a go afterwards.
As far as I'm concerned I'm 59 with inflation, mostly around my middle. If you're reading this and you get to my ripe old age keep on living, doing what you want to do, when you want to do it and with who you want to do it with.
Now then, where's my wine gone?
Tuesday 7 May 2019
Saturday 9 March 2019
Social Media Overload
There's so many social media platforms out there, Farcebook, Instagram, Twitter, Diaspora, Mastodon, Hubzilla, Google+ MeWe and many others, being connected to them all is a nightmare. Especially when it comes to posting stuff as you have to duplicate the publishing of articles to each and everyone if you want to contact people.
Then there's the security issue, I had the Facebook and Messenger apps installed on previous phones for some time, downloading the data that Facebook has on me shows some scary stuff. List of every phone call I made on all the phones I had Messenger installed on, including the times and phone numbers and a lot of these calls were to people that weren't on Facebook.
I'd also uploaded a picture from a folder to Facebook but all the pictures from that folder were present in my Facebook data, not just the one picture I uploaded.
I didn't install Facebook on my new phone, I used Instagram on my phone and Facebook on my desktop. Yet they still managed to work out I was the same person even with different logins. I also used WhatsApp, another Facebook company, I'd limited access to the phone other than microphone and went to change my status during a weeks holiday. WhatsApp refused to change status unless I allowed it access to everything including, location, contacts, camera, files on the phone and so it had to go.
Onto Instagram now, I logged into Instagram with a different login than Facebook, but noticed things that I searched on my desktop which doesn't have Instagram were appearing as adverts in my Instagram feed which doesn't have the Facebook app installed. And adverts were appearing more often in the Instagram feed than actual posts, a lot of ads for things that I had no interest in and in some cases were actually very offensive, reporting these ads made no difference.
And then came the last straw with these apps, as of late I've been feeling a bit under the weather, speaking to a friend in work who's had some health problems relating to the absorption of vitamin B12. Taking my wife into work one morning, I mentioned this to her and she mentioned about it causing issues with depression, later that day during a look at Facebook on her phone she found adverts relating to the same issues, more proof that Facebook is listening all the time.
I've deactivated my Instagram and Facebook accounts at the moment, it's almost and addiction looking at them every few minutes and I'm going to try and not use them again. Instagram will almost definitely be going, Facebook may remain on my computer but using a separate browser, there's too many friends and family on Facebook and it seems that it's the only way to keep in touch with them all.
As for alternatives, I've tried Mastodon, it's a sort of decentralised Twitter, you can even run up your own server and post stuff locally which can be seen on other servers or pods. I have to say it could be OK but it's very quiet and unless some people such as RSPB, WWT, BBC and so on start using it, then it will be for a niche market.
I've started up a Hubzilla instance and have yet to find any use for it, it seems incapable of connecting to anything outside of itself unless forced but I'll keep trying it.
There's Disapora, another sort of cross between Facebook and Twitter but not a lot happening on it.
Finally there's MeWe, this is promising, it's a sort of Facebook without the data worries or ads, it is limited and because it's ad free you don't get unlimited space and certain things such as messaging will cost you.
Telegram has replaced WhatsApp as a secure messaging service, I used to use Google Hangouts but that seems to be showing it's age and will probably soon go.
And finally, we are approaching the end of my favourite social network, Google +. I really like this platform, ads are not intrusive, there's not too much fake news but April will see it being shut down, I do hope they replace it with something.
Pixelfed.social is an Instagram replacement, no mobile app but you can create a shortcut on your phone to use it but again, there's not a lot going on with it.
The problem is really that we love free stuff, but the big boys such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all use our data to pass onto advertisers who target us with ads, on Facebook no matter how much you tighten things up you can't avoid your data being shared, I blocked some groups but if you're tagged into a post in that group they get access to some of your information. If we want a truly ad free, data risk free social media platform we will have to end up paying some sort of subscription charge.
So for now, I'll be using the following:
Telegram for instant messaging, there's even a desktop client for this which works very well.
I'm on Twitter if you have an account, I'm also on MeWe at the moment, Hubzilla on my own server at the moment, not open for registration just yet. And of course there's the old bloggy stuff such as this one, family ramblings and travels are here, humorous stuff is here and finally, things to with music are here and also on Last.FM.
Please feel free to follow me on the above if you want to read about the rants and ramblings who is approaching Victor Meldrew status with a great speed.
Dumping some of the Social Media stuff means that I seem to have more time to do constructive stuff as opposed to liking posts and deleting adverts.
Keep the faith and live long and prosper.
Then there's the security issue, I had the Facebook and Messenger apps installed on previous phones for some time, downloading the data that Facebook has on me shows some scary stuff. List of every phone call I made on all the phones I had Messenger installed on, including the times and phone numbers and a lot of these calls were to people that weren't on Facebook.
I'd also uploaded a picture from a folder to Facebook but all the pictures from that folder were present in my Facebook data, not just the one picture I uploaded.
I didn't install Facebook on my new phone, I used Instagram on my phone and Facebook on my desktop. Yet they still managed to work out I was the same person even with different logins. I also used WhatsApp, another Facebook company, I'd limited access to the phone other than microphone and went to change my status during a weeks holiday. WhatsApp refused to change status unless I allowed it access to everything including, location, contacts, camera, files on the phone and so it had to go.
Onto Instagram now, I logged into Instagram with a different login than Facebook, but noticed things that I searched on my desktop which doesn't have Instagram were appearing as adverts in my Instagram feed which doesn't have the Facebook app installed. And adverts were appearing more often in the Instagram feed than actual posts, a lot of ads for things that I had no interest in and in some cases were actually very offensive, reporting these ads made no difference.
And then came the last straw with these apps, as of late I've been feeling a bit under the weather, speaking to a friend in work who's had some health problems relating to the absorption of vitamin B12. Taking my wife into work one morning, I mentioned this to her and she mentioned about it causing issues with depression, later that day during a look at Facebook on her phone she found adverts relating to the same issues, more proof that Facebook is listening all the time.
I've deactivated my Instagram and Facebook accounts at the moment, it's almost and addiction looking at them every few minutes and I'm going to try and not use them again. Instagram will almost definitely be going, Facebook may remain on my computer but using a separate browser, there's too many friends and family on Facebook and it seems that it's the only way to keep in touch with them all.
As for alternatives, I've tried Mastodon, it's a sort of decentralised Twitter, you can even run up your own server and post stuff locally which can be seen on other servers or pods. I have to say it could be OK but it's very quiet and unless some people such as RSPB, WWT, BBC and so on start using it, then it will be for a niche market.
I've started up a Hubzilla instance and have yet to find any use for it, it seems incapable of connecting to anything outside of itself unless forced but I'll keep trying it.
There's Disapora, another sort of cross between Facebook and Twitter but not a lot happening on it.
Finally there's MeWe, this is promising, it's a sort of Facebook without the data worries or ads, it is limited and because it's ad free you don't get unlimited space and certain things such as messaging will cost you.
Telegram has replaced WhatsApp as a secure messaging service, I used to use Google Hangouts but that seems to be showing it's age and will probably soon go.
And finally, we are approaching the end of my favourite social network, Google +. I really like this platform, ads are not intrusive, there's not too much fake news but April will see it being shut down, I do hope they replace it with something.
Pixelfed.social is an Instagram replacement, no mobile app but you can create a shortcut on your phone to use it but again, there's not a lot going on with it.
The problem is really that we love free stuff, but the big boys such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram all use our data to pass onto advertisers who target us with ads, on Facebook no matter how much you tighten things up you can't avoid your data being shared, I blocked some groups but if you're tagged into a post in that group they get access to some of your information. If we want a truly ad free, data risk free social media platform we will have to end up paying some sort of subscription charge.
So for now, I'll be using the following:
Telegram for instant messaging, there's even a desktop client for this which works very well.
I'm on Twitter if you have an account, I'm also on MeWe at the moment, Hubzilla on my own server at the moment, not open for registration just yet. And of course there's the old bloggy stuff such as this one, family ramblings and travels are here, humorous stuff is here and finally, things to with music are here and also on Last.FM.
Please feel free to follow me on the above if you want to read about the rants and ramblings who is approaching Victor Meldrew status with a great speed.
Dumping some of the Social Media stuff means that I seem to have more time to do constructive stuff as opposed to liking posts and deleting adverts.
Keep the faith and live long and prosper.
Tuesday 5 February 2019
The End Of The Chevy
Heading off for a nice relaxing week in Sidmouth in early February, I had to get some tyres to start with and then we loaded up and went on our way, that's when we noticed an "interesting" noise from the car. The noise went away when the clutch was depressed or the car was put into neutral which ruled out the tyres but started to quieten down a bit.
The journey down was pretty uneventful but joining the A roads after leaving the motorway made us realise that it had gotten worse.
A trip to a local trusted garage pointed the issue to be a bearing in the gearbox, there was a sharp intake of breath before the diagnosis was given. A second hand gearbox after a quick search came in at £360 and it seemed sensible to replace the clutch at the same time which looked around about £80, then there was trying to nurse the car home and labour charges and taking this into account we were looking at the best part of about £1,000 on a car that at best is worth about £600.
So we visited a local dealer down here that came highly recommended and did a bit of looking. The result was the purchase of a 64 plate Nissan Note which comes with all sorts of goodies including cruise control, time will tell how good it is.
Hopefully picking the car up in the next few days and importing it from Devon to South Wales
So the Chevy has finally gone to the levy as the gearbox was dry.
The journey down was pretty uneventful but joining the A roads after leaving the motorway made us realise that it had gotten worse.
A trip to a local trusted garage pointed the issue to be a bearing in the gearbox, there was a sharp intake of breath before the diagnosis was given. A second hand gearbox after a quick search came in at £360 and it seemed sensible to replace the clutch at the same time which looked around about £80, then there was trying to nurse the car home and labour charges and taking this into account we were looking at the best part of about £1,000 on a car that at best is worth about £600.
So we visited a local dealer down here that came highly recommended and did a bit of looking. The result was the purchase of a 64 plate Nissan Note which comes with all sorts of goodies including cruise control, time will tell how good it is.
Hopefully picking the car up in the next few days and importing it from Devon to South Wales
So the Chevy has finally gone to the levy as the gearbox was dry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)