Observations on the world and its inhabitants
I’m totally uninterested in whether you or anyone else who reads this has no need to italicise text between quotation marks. As I don’t like wasting time I find automated solutions. A common task is italicising text between quotation marks. When using the Writage plugin to edit Markdown files within Microsoft Word, a common formatting ...
Decision-making is something I’ve explored before. I go deeper this time. Everybody believes that they are making the best decisions for themselves. But how good are those decisions, actually? No psychologist is coming to tell you what’s what in the confines of your own cranium. We humans make countless decisions every day, from the trivial ...
Well you (meaning me) live and learn. I made an assumption over 40-odd years that petrol was a particular molecular compound. It turns out from my investigation that it is a mixture of compounds. Ahhh.. so somebody will be wondering, “Why the devil is he researching that, now? Has he not got anything better to ...
Well, I do spend time on forums as some know to wrestle with parts of human nature that some totally avoid. Today I am led to infer that the reading ability of doctors in some significant proportion could be stuck at around UK year 9, based on the captioned encounter below. This post is not ...
Some people – there are always ‘some people’ – will not know about Camtasia and Snagit. The Semmelweis reflex takes care of that lot. The way it works is that if you hear about something that sounds technical or comes from somebody you think is a nerd, you move on swiftly. After all ‘what’s it ...
What causes you a pain in the neck or backside is important. So ‘cause‘, ‘causation‘ and ‘causality‘ should be important to everybody! But these words don’t mean exactly the same thing, though they sit in relation to each other. Who said this? I did! And you bet – I see these concepts pretty differently to ...
Just in case – I am not referring to any known person’s mind! This post is inspired by the book Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills – Course Guidebook by Dr Steven Novella. Nothing in this post refers to any identifiable individual, except where explicitly stated. This site cannot cater for ...
This is for ‘bookworms’. ?? If others don’t know what this means – tough, Google is not your friend! But I say be cautious. This is not a recommendation to purchase anything. I derive no advantages in the past present or future by sharing the above information.
It may sound like a stupid question to some. If you ‘know the answer‘, move on swiftly. This post is motivated by a web-based conversation I had the other night. I mentioned some book in a forum as a reference – not a recommendation to purchase. Someone then responded, within a few minutes that they ...
To be clear at the outset, I do not like the COVID-19 virus. It has caused a large number of deaths, chronic disabilities and economic chaos. Technology & work Right – once that’s out of the way, what I will say is that COVID has pushed all sorts of systems to adapt. You don’t ...
One of the commonest words I hear from my close circle of contacts is ‘later‘. The next is ‘I’ll check’ – like do I need to know? Why not check first and then say ‘done it’? I don’t know. Jeeez! Maybe people feel they are being polite or some nonsense. If in the odd chance ...
Well, well – it is been a funny old day! LOL. I was just at a meat market in a big city and in a 60-second conversation with a meat trader – he told me “..people are stupid! They don’t know what they’re doing or where they’re going.” This chap owns the business and he’s ...
It has been a terribly busy time. 'Some' immediately know, "..making money hand over fist" etc. It is so amusing how people get ideas in their heads and before long that turns into reality. But strange is it not - that when it comes to really big ideas about making money 'hand over fist', I ...
I’ve found it!! There are some nifty little applications to change the dates of file images and exif data – in batches. Why is this important? Well – because I use Robobasket to sort my photos into folders, I need Robobasket to pick up ‘Date Modified’ and Exif data from these files. Robobasket will then ...
Negative things are often avoided by lots of people. Everybody likes a nice positive story. But it’s strange though, how bad news sells more than good news. Talk to the media houses. So at least people say to themselves and others that they don’t like negative stuff, but they’re all tanking up on it in ...
I’ve been using labels and filters on Gmail for quite some time. But like many things you come to appreciate them better with time. So I’ve been reviewing how I use these features. Lately I’ve been flooded with all sorts of emails. Many of them I don’t need to look at immediately, so I didn’t ...
Within the last 24 hours I received an email from someone asking for some thing or the other. It caused a waste of my time. How? 1. I had to read it about 4 times in attempting to understand what was being asked. 2. In the end I did not understand. 3. I had to ...
“Understanding how much one has learned is also about appreciating how much one has forgotten.“ – Captain Walker, March 2014.
I’m so technologically advanced that I only just realised 2 hours after awakening this morning that the time-keeping devices I usually use (wrist watch, bedside clock and computer) had gone back (end of BST that is). This only occurred to me when I spotted the clock on the wall which isn’t synchronised by radio to ...
Why should this TED video annoy me? I have no problem with the content of what is said per se. So what could be the problem? It’s this syndrome that the humans are developing where: 1. Some big-fish researcher with fancy machines investigates some fascinating thing – and comes up with some answers. 2. Then ...
Well as I’ve said so many times, the truth knows no restraint and respects no confines. George Carlin – is famous for sick humour. The clip below is one of his finest. It’s not intended for Brits, who from my experience find difficulty seeing below sick American humour – and who are easily offended by ...
Like pearl being trampled by swine – grunting that this was ‘just about America’ – many a crawler on Rocks big and small forget this important day in history. A man spoke, a man died – for our freedom!! A man spoke the truth. And the truth survives even death!! On this day I shed ...
The definition of accountability is not very sharp, from sources accessible via the internet. I decided to define the concept as I see it. I thought hard about persons in my life who I had considered to be ‘accountable’. I drew up a list of descriptors and then grouped them as shown below in my ...
Word of the day: ‘tamasic’. I’ve been judged by an intelligent individual (who will remain nameless – and no it is not a mental patient) as being involved wholly or in part in “tamasic” qualities. This is taken as intended to mean any one or all of the following: I’m a lazy irresponsible cheat, who ...
When I say I’m living in a different world and wish to be beamed up, some people think I’m being arrogant. What about if I’m just right!? Look, at these two situations which assaulted me in quick succession this morning. Breakfast – waitress looks at me vacantly and utters something barely understandable. So I respond ...
I just calculated that approximately 570 hours of my life between the ages of 5 and 11 were spent compulsorily participating in the singing of bhagans in a language I did not know or understand. I was told to believe in God – and that this was the way. Today, I cannot recall a single ...
To most people Kindle is an A5 sized electronic device (left) that holds ebooks and other e-content. What I have discovered is that most people I’ve met don’t know that you can read Kindle content on computers and mobile phones. In fact Amazon Kindle allows you to install their Kindle Software on several devices and ...
Recently I was in the company of a colleague who is a psychiatrist (aka shrink). We were walking into a large supermarket. He’s saying hello to the chap who’s greeting customers. The conversation goes as follows: Chappy: So what if you don’t mind I ask do you do? Shrink: I’m a forensic psychiatrist – which ...
It has been a bit of a mystery to me, up until a few days ago. I used to wonder why talking about the weather was such an easy icebreaker in England. It suddenly dawned on me – and the answer was pretty simple. Here goes. In England we all share the weather. It is ...
It is an amazing phenomenon that makes me wonder how the human race has survived this long – yeah ‘answering off the point’. WTF does that mean? It means like when you ask somebody a simple question you get an answer that does not address your enquiry. Or you ask a question of someone and ...
Captain Walker
Captain Walker
