There Seems to be a Fly in the Ointment

I have saved a post that displeased the system this morning and will post it later.

There seem to be a lot of virtual tripwires on the net today.

Bad Weather Makes Good Writers

Yesterday was an exceptionally productive time in relation to putting order on internet usage. Bored by the incredibly unwieldy way the hacking problems are being approached, I decided to drop Twitter, Facebook and Boards.ie indefinitely.

This is not a personal foible, just a reminder to myself that popularity always leads to oversubscription. Getting in and out of these systems is now awkward and time consuming and the systems that are going to succeed for me will have to be efficient and speedy.

I'm happy enough to trundle on with Flickr for the time being. The more cheerful atmosphere there is engaging and the photos are a delightful mosaic of our world, most of which I will never see in reality. People actually still exchange tips and ideas there, rather than sit in their own little universe alone.

This is purely one individual's choice and does not cast any criticism on the very successful names that are now gathering many new users daily. In an emergency, tweeting for help might be a good strategy, though calling on one's neighbour is still the best way to deal with a problem efficiently.

The numbing effect of the televised investigation into media practice was very helpful in revealing the problems that anybody choosing to work in that area will face. I had never heard of "willful blindness" and shall now avoid any situation that may bring an attack of such a strange condition on. In a nutshell, it seems to mean that a person is guilty of not knowing something that they should know. Manuel in "Fawlty Towers" comes to mind.

Having been bludgeoned with Knowledge and Truth for hours, I return happily to Blogger and shall continue a while more, hopefully.

Also, finding yesterday's post even looked dull, I peppered it with some needless commas at the time, as decoration rather than for meaning.

Just goes to show what living in a cold damp climate does for writing. There's not much else to do...

Statuesque

There is one subject that could be better represented on the Internet... Sculpture.

Statues are everywhere nowadays and they make large and obvious subjects for anybody who has little patience with nature's buzzing and flapping or the impossibility of capturing a "true portrait" of people one meets.

I am always aware of the incredible effort taken to make an object in resistant materials that is meant to last for a very long time, if not forever.

The statues in the Giusti Garden in Verona disport themselves so strangely through the formal hedging that it took several hours before I could comfortably capture them. Whoever placed them where they are must have had a sense of humour, as they don't conform to what the ordinary viewer is trained to expect.

They wanted to confuse the new visitor?
Or perhaps they did not have a classical sense of proportion?

The reason is probably lost in the mists of time.

The Diligent Student

There is much reference to "due diligence" on TV as I write.

The joint is hopping, as the pursuit of truth is always a slippery activity. I actually feel sorry for anybody caught up in the current "Hacking Scandal" and although it might not quite be "the moment", it's worth mentioning that all journalists are not evil and unethical... just as all members of the nursing profession are not gin swilling modern updates of Sairey Gamp.

If it were not so utterly frightening, the ability of some to gain access to other peoples' telephones would have my undying admiration. I speak as one who, when left alone in any office I have ever entered, found it,usually, difficult to find the 'phone in the first place and then, once staring down the uninviting mouthpiece, in search of divine intervention perhaps, to actually get a line out.

This, among the many hundred excuses I found for abandoning the workforce over twenty years ago, is probably one of the most memorable. I am a confirmed technophobe and my currect state of relative functionality can only be attributed to the age old advice to "Know the Enemy". While I cannot yet think like a smart little spybot and have little inclination to try, there is a lot to be said for knowing enough about contemporary machines to make them less easy to trick and infiltrate.

The question I now ask myself, applying as much due diligence to the question as will match my total ignorance of the subject is:

Why do some get hacked and others do not?

As ever, this will probably take several years to answer with any satisfaction. Tin foil hats are out of fashion, but even they might have a function.

Tin foil hat wearers are probably boring people who are not worth hacking.
I think I'll get one...