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Roger Ebert had it Right

5 April, 2013 1 comment

“‘Kindness’ covers all of my political beliefs,” he wrote, at the end of his memoirs. “No need to spell them out. I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

- Roger Ebert. Now, sadly, the late Roger Ebert.

I’ve Been Thinking…

28 February, 2013 Reply

Which is itself, perhaps a horrifying thought.

However…

It seems clear I’ve not had the impetus to maintain the "Medicine and the Mind" portion of this blog – just barely the Music part, and that only by auto-posts. There are a few things in that, I think: my change in jobs has left me more satisfied with my actual work, and therefore feeling less inclined to rail about them on a blog; I’m generally feeling less inclined to rail about things online anyway – leading to me muting and muffling various hashtags and keywords on twitter, and having a much more pleasant and relaxed experience; I started running, and to a lesser extent going to the gym; I got back into reading, and photography continues to take a good chunk of time. And perhaps as much as all of that together: my kids are getting older, and now are both at school.

If anything, I’m feeling more inclined to use this to post my blitherings about running and exercise, photography, and the books I’m reading. However (again), I can’t rename the blog "Music, Medicine, the Mind, Running, the Gym, Photography, and Books", nor can I very well just call it "Running, Photography, the Gym, and Books", and invalidate what’s gone before.

Maybe the title of my Tumblr would suffice here as well: "The Running Reprobate". That might do it. ;-)

Anyhoo… the point is, I’m thinking I should get this blog active again, but it’s probably going to be less of the medical-psychiatric-sociopolitical-ranty-pants stuff, and more general blithering about my running, gym stuff, books, and photography.

Hmmm … That’s body and mind, right there. I might come up with something else clever. Or not so clever, who knows? Watch this space, anyway.

Which is it, Mr Crichton?

4 February, 2013 Reply

Ok, I usually just sit back and enjoy books, but something in Michael Crichton’s “Timeline” has just bugged me: the “time travel” actually isn’t; it’s travel between universes, which – being infinite – exist at all possible times, thus it’s like time travel.

Ok. Fine. However…

The professor travelled “back” to one of these other universes and got stuck. He wrote a note, which was found in the present time … in the original universe.

So it is time travel, not multiverse travel then? But you explained that time travel was impossible. Which is it, Mr Crichton?

Oh hell … now they’re preparing to go back in time. They can take little aluminium canisters of sleeping gas, but can’t take a lighter because it’s “Not correct for the period. You can’t take plastic back there.”

So plastic’s out, because not period, but aluminium canisters are fine. Again, which is it, Mr Crichton?

And oh my! What a terrible analogy to explain away time paradoxes.

I want to like the book; I recall liking it years ago. However, it’s simply not drawing me in. It’s not *badly* written (like the Star Wars novel I abandoned partially-read last year, but it’s really not that engaging.

Frozen Crystals of Awesome

12 October, 2013 Reply

From the sky.

In Spring.

This was my shot of the day:

http://static.blipfotos.com/uploads/45902/2012/2025256715077d33a799917.82042199.jpeg

And here’s a bunch of other photos. It was absolutely magical (find more blithering about it at that first link).

Hella-cold, but I really kind of wish I’d had my running gear with me.

Restricted Restrictions

3 October, 2013 Reply

I am sooo not a fan of the implementation of “restrictions” in iOS; specifically the inability to recover the password. This “issue” has come to my attention because my memory is somewhat on the useless side at times, and it turns out it’s useless for remembering passwords. Not only every password for every web service I use, but the passcode for the restrictions settings on my iPhone.

Perhaps that wouldn’t be such a problem, except that I suspect, from the re-energised activity of Game Centre, that my restrictions settings disabling Game Centre multiplayer games or whatever it is were ever-so-helpfully reversed in the upgrade to iOS 6. But I can’t check whether that is in fact the case, as I can’t get at my restrictions, because I can’t remember the passcode.

I’ve tried every 4-digit code I can think of that I would generally (or even conceivably) use. After the last attempt it’s locked me out of trying another code for an hour.
Incredibly, it appears there is no way to recover or reset this passcode. At least, Apple has given us no way to do so. It can be got at on a jailbroken iPhone; there’s also a tool that can peer inside iPhone backup files, and prior to iOS 6 the restrictions passcode could be identified within that backup file … not any more.

So unless I restore my iPhone as a new device – not gonna happen – it seems I will never be able to change (or even review) my current restrictions settings. I just can’t see the logic here.

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