Death throws

The Gorse Fox notices that Rupert Murdoch is threatening to block Google from indexing his newspaper sites. Sounds like the the death throws of dead tree media that has been unable to adapt to the new world of the internet.
Smatterings of the recording industry and movie industry.

Plans

The Gorse Fox has had a busy day reviewing project plans and developing additional detail for aspects of the project. Unfortunately it looks as if the decision regarding the project is being delayed. Given some of the deadlines that the project faces - delays at this stage are not helpful - and it may mean that Starfleet are not going to be chosen to do it.

Once finished, plans continued to feature in his activities as he reviewed various plans in preparation for this week's Parish Council planning meeting on Thursday.

Content

It has been a most pleasant day with friends.

Waiting

As a gentle rain washes the south coast, the Gorse Fox and Silver Vixen await the arrival of Betty and Barney Rubble. A pleasant day is planned with lunch at the Thai restaurant in Rustington.

Continuing a theme

Continuing the theme that Gorse Fox started earlier today he has just read Clarkson's latest missive. Pure genius. GF only wishes he was as eloquent and reached as many readers.

He finishes:

I see no reason to be miserable. Yes, Britain now is worse than it’s been for decades, but the lunatics who’ve made it so ghastly are on their way out. Soon, they will be back in Hackney with their South African nuclear-free peace polenta. And instead the show will be run by a bloke whose dad has a wallpaper shop and possibly, terrifyingly, a twerp in Belgium whose fruitless game of hunt-the-WMD has netted him £15m on the lecture circuit.

Ah, maybe not

The Silver Vixen pointed out that it was bonfire night and that the barrage that had been going on for the last hour or two wasn't the Estate Defense Force snapping into action... but just neighbours having a parties.

Protection

Obviously the recent debate over security gates for the Estate has left some concerns over protection. Tonight the Gorse Fox has witnessed what seems like a scene from the first few days of the invasion of Baghdad. Rockets and various incendiaries rent the night sky as neighbours tried to get the range of some hidden intruders. Small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) patrolled the skies over the estate looking for targets as the next barrage of missile was fired into the neighbours. Evidently there were some casualties as you could hear whoops of excitement across the gardens. (We have put the flak-jacket on the cat).

We take Estate security seriously here.

Upgrade

Whilst the Silver Vixen has been out with her coven, the Gorse Fox has made the most of the time and upgraded her laptop to Windows 7. Being and Acer, like GF's desktop, the driver disk he received yesterday was equipped with all of the relevant code. All went remarkably smoothly... and the long standing printer sharing problem we had experienced with Vista has melted away.

Research

Research published this week showed that when the sick give up hope they actually feel better. The Gorse Fox wondered to himself if that was the Government's strategy for the next election. Finally reduce the population to utter despair, hope that they give up - and then feeling better they vote again for the government that:

• Destroyed the nation's pensions
• Gave away its sovereignty
• Sold its gold reserves at the low point of market
• Presided over the biggest recession in living memory
• Took us to war
• Made us the most watched in the world
• Added nearly 4000 new laws to the statute book
• Promised a referendum in their manifesto - and refused to go to the country

and if the Gorse Fox could be bothered he could probably add several thousand more items to the list.

Reboot

The Gorse Fox was pleased when his nice Mr Postman dropped and envelope through the door containing the Windows 7 disks for his new computer. He was well prepared. Backups were done, spare drives spinning and hot (in case they were needed) and various articles reviewed to ensure there would be no unpleasant surprises.

CDs were duly inserted and the process began. Some 2 hours later it was over. Everything seems to work that worked before... and some things that were giving trouble - still give trouble (namely printing across the home network). Initial impressions are that Windows 7 is a lot faster than Vista.

Most satisfactory.

Response

The Gorse Fox responded to the invitation.

Dear xxxxx

I am indeed thrilled to be enrolled in the course identified below. I have studiously reviewed the attachments regarding the course and its logistics, but find no mention of any time-travel or time-travel enabled device. As the course was held three week ago, I will find attendance difficult without bending the space-time continuum (not currently in my research portfolio). I must therefore respectfully decline the offer to attend this course, and assume that as this was more than 14 days ago I will not be liable for the penalty charge.

Timetravel

Starfleet is an extraordinary organisation; perhaps the greatest technology company on the planet. There are times, however, that its mastery of technology defies the Gorse Fox. This very morning he has received a notification:

Your enrollment in TLMC4GB - Technical Leadership Communications Master Class has been approved, and you are confirmed, unless you are on the waitlist. If you are on the waitlist, you will receive a notification if your enrollment status changes. Your manager has been informed of your enrollment. 

Please add this offering to your calendar.  Please check for an attachment below regarding logistics.  If an attachment is included, it will contain important instructions that you must read. 

Is this so strange? Well as the course was scheduled and took place several weeks ago, the Gorse Fox can only assume that there is some new Wellsian means of transport available that GF hasn't yet come across. Maybe that is part of the reference to the logistics in the attachments

Misread

The Gorse Fox misread the headline "Sinn Fein MPs should still be allowed to claim hotel expenses when in London"... thought it said explosives.

Ooops.

Nearly done

The Silver Vixen has been spending every spare minute for the last week or two trying to get one of her quilts finished. She's on the final leg as she completes the binding. The Gorse Fox has seem may quilts over the last few years - both close up and in photos. This one is a real masterpiece and whilst it has been time consuming and filled many months it is looking superb.

Town again

The Gorse Fox was back in London today. It was an interesting day - should we continue with the work, or should we call a halt. The pros and cons started to fill the slides, the sums started to stack one way, the reality of the project was on the brink. Recommendations were made - and now we wait.

The Legend of Sleepy Hellhole

The Gorse Fox had to make his way to "The Department" today. This was his first meeting with them for many, many months. With a spring in his step he bounded from the train and skipped away from Victoria heading for one of many indistinguishable government buildings. Despite yesterday's rain it was bright and sunny and a pleasure to be out and about.

He sprung, cat-like, into the Square and entered the building.

It was at this point that a pall of depression descended. Whilst awaiting his escort for the building, he watched as faceless, humourless zombies shuffled in and out of the airlocks, sneaking outside for a cigarette or wandering off to some meaningless meeting in some remote building or office. The Teddy Bear arrived to escort the Gorse Fox to his meeting room. The recently refurbished offices were chaotic and untidy. More of the Zombies sat there staring at the glowing screens in front of them. Their hands clattered occasionally against the keyboards. Propaganda was hanging from the pin boards and walls. Lighting was reminiscent of a Tromso back street in mid-winter. It was good to be back at the heart of Government, knowing that their collective finger was firmly on the pulse.

The meeting revealed much that the Gorse Fox chooses not the share at this time. He would say, however, that as he left he heaved a huge sigh of relief.

Free speech

Not with this Government. If the science doesn't fit the political method then silence the scientists. That's what has happened to the Government drugs advisor. Disgraceful.

Contact

Delighted to have made contact with Cousteau-cub for the first time in weeks. Evidently they are working hard (with long hours) and have just moved into their own place closer to the dive shop.

Spelled G.N.U.

The Gorse Fox faced several problems during the on-going saga of Microsoft Money and personal finance software. (To recap - the files that MS Money creates on one machine do not work on the new machine - with exactly the same version of the MS Money software, and files it exports from old machine will not import into the new machine).

• How would he structure the Spreadsheet to prove a single input sheet for transactions that automatically summarised them against separate account sheets?
• How would he import OFX and QIF files into OOCalc?

The first issue was soon resolved with some judicious use of MATCH and OFFSET functions and GF was pleased to see the automatic population of individual account sheets from the input sheet. A test run of 1100 transactions was applied in the blink of an eye.

The second problem was more intractable. GF found a routine online that purported to meet the bill - but on examination of the detail it seemed to fail and just ignore certain transactions. Plan B might be to rewrite that code - but not wishing to gain a long-term maintenance load, GF decided to review once more the product he examined yesterday.

Eventually he downloaded the open source GnuCash. It immediately was able to consume all the files that Microsoft had barfed on and in about 3 minutes GF had a working personal finance system again. The underlying paradigm is a little different and will take some acclimatisation, but so far it looks pretty good. He'll stick with it for now and keep the OOCalc sheet as Plan C!

If it can...

As November starts with a vengeful blast of torrential rain and high winds - the Gorse Fox reflects on the fact that Urban-cub was meant to be accompanying a friend of hers to an external photo shoot. He suspects this falls under one of Murphy's many Laws.