While browsing through a magazine my flatmate had left, I came across an article about Facebook and security.

So you think you're being safe and secure. Like me, you limit your profile, so only friends can see it. You only put up a very limited amount of information.

Then you maybe join a network.

That's where you went wrong. Facebook automatically changes your privacy settings when you join a network - instead of being "Friends Only", all your settings will be changed to "Networks and Friends", making your information visible to everyone on the network.

If you're in London, that's 2.5 million people able to see the info that you thought only your friends could see.

Even if when you signed up, you chose the option that only your friends could see your profile, you'll still need to go into the Privacy option on the top right of the screen, and change everything back from "Networks and Friends" to "Friends Only".

What isn't made clear on Facebook is that Networks count as Friends, from a privacy point of view.


It's possibly worth passing this on - I thought I was being very secure, until I went and checked my privacy settings - which were not, as I had selected when I signed up, "Friends Only."

The "joys" of reading reports from the 1930s...

Sir Leonard Woolley, in The Royal Cemetery at Ur:

"Questions are often asked as to the quality of the Arab diggers and whether they take an intelligent interest in the work they have to do... As a mere labourer the Iraqi is excellent material but requires a great deal of supervision and encouragement, in fact teh quality of the workman is in direct proportion to that of his foreman: given a man like Hamoudi [Woolley's foreman], who combines tremendous driving power with a very real sympathy and a sense of humour, the amount of work that can be got out of the Arab is remarkable. When as sometimes happens it is merely an affair of navvy-work, shifting dirt which has to be excavated and carried by trucks to a distance of, say, a hundred and fifty meters, the daily output should average rather more than a cubic metre of hard soil, something above three-quarters of a ton, for every man employed; i.e. the basket-man will carry between a ton and a quarter and a ton and a half in the course of his eight and a half hours' day. This is much more than would be expected of European labourers. More often the demand is for careful and therefore slower work, and when graves are being dug,... skill and intelligence, not energy, are the requisite qualities. It would be absurd to ask for a scientific interest in the work from men so ignorant as the Arabs of southern Iraq; they have no historic background, not even a tradition that goes back for more than two or three generations, and neither names nor date can mean much to them.... Of course their main incentive is money, but they can be taught to take a more or less disinterested pride in doing a job well - that is for them a totally new experience, but they appreciate it..."

This from one of the "Great" archaeologists, who instigated proper methods of recording and excavating in the field.

Good grief.

So. Vitally important evidence from a site called Nuzi (also known as Yorgan Tepe/Yorgan Tepa). It's a tablet with a list of animals which were given to a particular shepherd. Next to the tablet was found a clay ball with the same list of animals on the outside, and clay counters on the inside which matched the number of animals.
Really important.

The site was excavated in 1929-1931. The chap who dug it up didn't give it a find number. Didn't include them in his list of found objects. Didn't include any of the important stuff in his found objects list, actually - he just randomly mentions them in his write-up of the digging. This is a problem because the book is one and a half times A4 size, and has 615 pages of very small type.

Additionally, the way the finds and digging are written up means that it's impossible, totally impossible, to attribute any finds to any particular level. Which means none of the levels can be dated. Which means this vitally important evidence that I am trying to use, has no date. It could be from 3000BC, or it could be from some time after 1000BC. I'm only studying the period from 4000 to 2000BC.

So I'm more than a little annoyed. If he wasn't dead, the author would be getting some nasty letters from yours truly. I mean, it's not a case of, "Oh, things have progressed". Yes, they have - but that's no excuse for a total lack of common sense!

Then, I came across this. This is Richard Starr, in Nuzi, Volume 1, pages xxxii and xxxiii, talking about the area of Nuzi/Yorgan Tepe at the time he was digging there.

"The social life of the village centers about a tea house where the men not a work sit, and gossup, and carry on that stream of languid, inconsequential talk so puzzling to the Occidental. Or perhaps they squat in the friendly shade of a wall near the door of the village Croesus, while the children play and shout from the prominent elevation of the communal dung heap."
"The population is composed entirely of Sunnite Moslems: simple minded, stolid, and illiterate. They perform the required rites in a matter-of-fact fashion, but betray neither fanaticism nor deep religious emotions. Most of them pray with regularity, they abstain from pork and alcohol, and only the godless fail to keep, at least in part, the fast of Ramadan. It is of interest to not that frequently the industry and energy of a man working on the dig is in inverse ratio to his devoutness. In fact, the amount of time consumed in ablutions and prayers during working hours by certain of our more leisurely workers was astounding. Such creditable godliness eventually found its reward in a permanent release from all paid labor so that the pious could devote their entire time to these holy pursuits!"

It's worth noting that natives worked alongside European workers - but that the natives got paid significantly less than their European counterparts.

So he's clearly a lost cause, then.

Grr.

You know you may have problems when your (45 year old, practicing for a long time) physiotherapist winces and jiggles up and down in discomfort because of the horrifying ways your shoulders and shoulder blades move.

Apparently they are so amazingly horrifying that she suggested filming them for posterity. Because what they do shouldn't be physically possible.

My physio is exceptionally good, and we are going to work on the shoulderblades, but we're starting with my lower back - because she needs a few weeks to figure out how to go about correcting something that's not been recorded because it's supposedly impossible.

Well, I always knew I was unique....


Aside from that, she also diagnosed one of the problems I have with the loss of sensation in my left hand. For some months now it's felt as though I'm losing both the ability to move it, and the ability to feel. The movement we have yet to figure out. It turns out that most of my lower arm, wrist, and part of the back of my hand are all hypersensitive. So the bits of my hand that feel numb actually are experiencing normal sensation - but because the bits next to them are hypersensitive, and my brain thinks the hypsersensitivity is normal, they feel numb.

Did I mention my physiotherapist is rather fabulous?

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I have been eating well recently. Last week was quite difficult thanks to having a mini flare up - probably the result of my working 14 hour days every day, with 11 till 5.30 off on Saturdays, to go to the farmer's market and take my Grandmother to Dobbies in the afternoon.

So on Monday, Paul had a day off and suggested that we meet up for food when I finished work at 5. In the event, I was too tired to wander about, so let him know I'd just head straight home. When I got home, he met me at the door with a big hug. He was in the process of making dinner, so ensconced me on the couch with my crochet, to watch Dogma. A glass of rather lovely white wine was also produced. Such luxury!
He'd also laid the table, with candles, and napkins folded into amazing shapes. (I'm sure there's an official word for the type of fold, but I don't know it.) We had mini garlic breads with homemade garlic butter. The garlic butter had rosemary in it - a genius idea, It made the butter slightly sweet and brought out the flavours of the smoked wild garlic. used in the butter.
The main course was Penne con Ragu. The meat was a mixture of veal[0] and pork, which worked really well - rich, but not too rich. The tomato based sauce - made from scratch - was also yummy - a little spicy, a little herby, and very flavoursome.
We had more wine with the meal too. It was a lovely colombard, Turning Leaf, I think. Afterwards, we watched the rest of the film, curled up on the couch.

As a pick-me up in a difficult week, it was so luxurious to come home to ready-made food, drink wine, and not to have to worry about cooking or washing up. I really like the civilised method of eating together at the table - not something that happens often because of my lifestyle. I eat breakfast at home, but usually lunch and dinner are eaten out of plastic boxes at my desk at work.

On Tuesday, I had to come home instead of working in Archaeology in the afternoon. When I arrived, there were Very Intriguing Smells wafting down from the flat. On entering the front door, there was a definite smell of Baking.
I dumped my rucksack and headed to the kitchen....
...to find that the Scone Fairy[1] had been in before he went to work, and there was a rack of 15 or 16 scones cooling, with clotted cream in the fridge.
The scone recipe is marvellous. Needless to say, they didn't last long. The recipe is so good that even when the scones are a couple of days old, they can be revived in the microwave - whereupon they're very nice with some Nutella on them.
I took some scones into work, and my colleagues have accused me of "eating scones at them".

My new and cunning plan is to figure out a way to make enough money to employ Paul to stay at home and cook for me. (Although hopefully he'll also be occasionally dabbling in various other media projects at the same time).

Perhaps I should consider buying a lottery ticket.



[0]I've not had veal very often, and am a little bit leary of it - not sure that I would like the flavour, not to mention the methods of farming. However, we bought this from the farmer's market, from a farmer that has very ethical methods. Judging from the taste, it was from very happy cattle and pigs.

[1]Otherwise known as Paul, Supreme Overlord of All Flesh, and all-round general good egg.

Not exactly a plot spoiler, but if you consider knowing anything about reactions to the episode to be a spoiler, then don't click.

( Read more... )

More computer woes.

(Bruce, thank you for your link to the uninstaller - I can't get it to run, but it has pointed out what the problem might be!)

I have two drives in my computer. One has the OS, the other is just for Data. It failed, due to "bad sectors". I had it ghosted, apparently it worked fine... I put the new copy into the computer, could access everything, all was well.

Then I got a BSOD after the computer hung. It told me that it wanted to scan the drives, so I let it. It found two .jpgs on the new drive which were apparently bad, and they were deleted and fixed automatically.

However, the windows uninstaller refuses to run due to "errors on [the new] disk". It doesn't tell me where, though.

My question: I'm considering just wiping the disk and reformatting. If there is corrupted data on there though, if I back it up by copying the data elsewhere (onto an external drive/another computer), the corrupted data will just get copied too, won't it?
So is it worth trying to copy the data off the drive, and wiping it? Or should I try and get the data written to DVD/CD so that it doesn't corrupt any further drives?

Urgle. These things always happen when one doesn't have the time to fix it....

I'm looking forward to seeing this. It may be a terrible travesty of archaeology - but it's a hot very entertaining specimen of the male variety. He has a SuperFabulous!Hat, and Whip. What more could one want?!

Anyway, I am going to go an see it Very Soon. In my oh-so-copious free time. (That means probably in the middle of the night, then.) I'm looking forward to it! But I've managed not to read or hear anything about it - even so much as to whether it's good or bad. I am keeping Spoiler Free - so far. Yes, knowing that other people think it's bad - or good - would be a spoiler. It's a part 4. It's probably going to be terrible - but I don't know that yet. I have a teeny tiny spark of hope that it could be Very Entertaining.

After all; it's Harrison Ford. With a Whip. And a SuperFabulous!Hat.

What could possibly go wrong?!

The castle looks very ominous today; as I came down Candlemaker Row, bits of it appeared through breaks in the mist, looming ominously above the Cowgate before resuming their shroud.

The mist smells more like a haar than a mist; there was a smell of sea and seaweed as I tramped up the hill towards home. It made me a little bit homesick for North Berwick. Mostly because my parents are doing work on the house. It's entirely reasonable, they're going to be living there into their old age, it's not been renovated really since we bought it twenty years ago (I was just turned seven!). I've been consulted about all the changes (we've already threshed out the inheritance issue, thanks to the inheritance tax, so we know I'll be inheriting the house.), which is incredibly kind of them - of course, I've said yes to everything, and even suggested stuff. But it's a funny kind of homesickness, because the home that I remember isn't there any more. I remember everything, down to the feel of the carpet beneath bare feet, the creak of the stairs, the way my the house smelled good in the summer, the woody smell of the wardrobes in my bedroom, the way the wind came in round the windows in the family room in the winter... But my room's all different now, walls have been knocked down, some of my room has become the bathroom. I won't be able to sit on the windowseat in the family room at night, watching the lighthouse light up a thin streak of sea and rocks and sand, cracking the window open to smell the salty air and listen to waves rustling. They're putting in a balcony there instead; I tell myself that now, at night, I'll be able to go out in my pyjamas, feel the wind in my hair, I'll be able to breath in the sea-smell around me, without having to bend my face to the little gap in the window. I know I'll love that. I know that as an adult, one day I'll be able to do what I've always longed to do, and sneak out, go for a walk on the deserted beach. But there's always going to be a part of me that longs for home. Longs for childhood, really. The swimming pool, the beach, the cave, Havoc II, sun and wind and sand and salt and spray.

All that aside, however, today has been pretty good. Thank you to everyone who wished me happy birthday. Smooches to you all!

I went in to see my Grandmother. That was nice; not only was she lucid, she could remember conversations. She even tried to manipulate me! I had a long chat with my parents this evening, and we all laughed: She wants to go out next weekend, but asked if perhaps I could go along, since my mother "isn't very strong". I said my father would no doubt be going too, but she said, "Yes, but he's not very strong either."
Now, my parents are getting older, and yes, my father's not as fit as he once was, but he's an ex-rugby player, and built like it. My mother's got a slighter build, but she's still got the stocky Shetland-pony-type physique. They were being accused of being weak and wembly by a little old woman, no more than four feet tall, who's not eating enough so that her bones are showing through the skin. It was so refreshing; she's been fading quite fast in the last two or three weeks, not just her body but her mind, so the best present I had today was to sit and conspire and giggle with my Grandma. It was really good.

Now, I have a friend staying this evening, so perhaps I should go and do some of this thing called "tidying" and that other thing called "dusting"...

Hope you've all had a good day too.

I was just chatting to a lady at the Farmer's Market. I'm making some crochetted items for her stall, which led us on to discussing where I'm working, and what I'm studying and where (Her son's 19). On hearing that I'm doing an MSc, and wanting to go on and do a PhD, she said, "How old are you? 20? 21?"

I fell about laughing, of course; I'll be 27 tomorrow. Naturally, I said thank you very much.

She looks much younger than she is, too. We agreed that acting the age you are inside, even if that's much younger than you really are, is one of the secrets to looking young. Next time my mother tells me off for behaving like a child, I have a riposte!

Deciding that we both needed to have a rest and get out of town, gominokouhai and I went adventuring. We went first to Linlithgow, where there was tea, and orange juice, and a pattern book for crochet was bought, and there were a couple of rather good bacon rolls eaten while wandering round the outside of the Palace. We negotiated the tourist information, acquired bus times, and then lurked at the bus stop until the bus for Blackness came along.
Ten minutes later we got off in Blackness village. There is a Victorian tenement, 15 houses, and a pub (closed for refit), a Sailing Club (exclusive), and Blackness Castle, built in the shape of a ship. An unsinkable ship. You have to see it from the air to really appreciate it, but there's a bow-shot below. One of the towers is the "Stern Tower", and another the "Mainmast Tower", in deference to the shape. Oh, and there's the first castle well I have ever seen with water in it.
It was bloody freezing, so much so that despite our cold-weather gear and cloaks, we had to go inside to warm up. After giving the castle a good explore, we pottered back into the village, and back to Linlithgow, where there was lunch, and bacon-and-black-pudding-from-happy-pigs were acquired, along with some wool, which has now been crocheted into a rather nice pair of gloves.

All in all, a good day out. And I got some pretty good pictures. If any of you are on dial up (I hope not, for your sakes!) then potter away and get a sammich once you've clicked on the link.

( Pictures. )