Inside View

Getting Ideas from @vincenthaywood via @johnpeavoy

I'M GETTING A SLOW START to 2021 but that means having time to read a Twitter thread containing clever time-saving tips from Vincent Hayward. I've an opinion on several of Vincent's ideas.

What to do when eir Vision Freezes @eircare

WHILE PREPARING for an extra week of school holidays, we discovered our eir Vision box freezes. Suggestions appreciated to help restore normal service to our Netgem STB.

UPDATED 2 JAN 2021: An eir call centre tech thinks there's a possible over-voltage condition on the line so he's sending a tech out to the house to look into the line quality.

UPDATED 3 JAN 2021: On a Sunday, an eir technician spent more than an hour opening access panels next to our home and throughout our housing estate before he found the cause of spurious voltage on our line. He solved the eir Netgem STB problem and sorted out a landline issue I had not reported.

I'm Smarter After Importing h/t @readwiseio @inoreader

I TRY TO WORK SMARTER by adopting intelligent routines. Perhaps the most important routine I've adopted involves using Readwise behind the scenes to import highlights from things I've read. I started reading wiser because I wanted to squelch FOMO.

After Spending €3186 with @ThreeIreland #billshock

WE HAVE SPENT more than 3000 euro in data charges with Three Ireland to power two different iPad since 2010 but after being charged €689.91 for "out of allowance" usage, it's time to cut our losses.

15 Years of Christmas

I'M SPENDING SOME DOWN TIME regretting that Ruth and I didn't save Christmas cards from the six different homes we've had through the 22 Christmas holidays we've shared. Instead, I scrolled back through Flickr to find images from Christmases past, starting with a candle flickering in our home in Kilkenny from 2004. I need to find snaps I think I've saved inside traditional photo albums buried in our attic.

It's Manta Claus forom Yahoo Photos on 22 Dec 05: A South African diver sporting a Santa Claus outfit feeds fish at Africa's largest marine theme park the UShaka Marine World in Durban. (AFP/Rajesh Jantilal). We had just moved into our new home in Cashel, County Tipperary.

Our first Christmas candle of 2006. It's been years since we bought new Christmas ornaments for the house, mainly because we've moved into smaller homes and there's less space to decorate. But we have outdoor space now and if you check back on my blog next year, you'll see interesting illuminated spaces.

Dark Christmas

WE KEPT OUR CHRISTMAS lights turned off for several days during this Christmas season to honour two neighbours who died in their homes on our street. Their passing, along with continued COVID-19 restrictions, marked Christmas 2020 as the darkest in my lifetime.

Deaths During Christmas

ON THE RUN-UP TO CHRISTMAS, we've had several sad events unfold near our home. First, an arthritic cat adopted us and was deemed so ill that our vet recommended putting her to sleep. Then a neighbour a few doors down died of a heart attack in his home. And now a steady parade of cars park outside our front door as an elderly man works his way through his final days of terminal cancer.

Because of @dens I have contact tracing

WE EXPOSED OURSELVES to the largest number of people since March 2020 by making a pilgrimage to Mahon Point Shopping Centre. And during our exposure, I let Swarm by Dennis Crowley check me into the places where we lingered the longest.

A Holistic View of Competition #privacy

Image from Alex Castro in The Verge.

IN A MAJOR case against Facebook, the US government is defining "harms" in a holistic way. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alleges harm occurs if a company buys another company specifically to hinder its ability to compete.

Facebook's dominance in the market has degraded privacy, eroded user experience, increased the number of fake accounts, and facilitated misinformation. Each of these side effects is harmful. The FTC seems to be arguing that all of these harms would not have occurred if Facebook had to compete with the services it now owns. One of those services is Octazen, an exceptionally capable data scraping service that I wrote about 10 years ago.

 

When Comments Encourage Focused Reaction #billshock

AFTER BEING CHARGED approximately €150 per day for mobile data usage, I dove into comments accompanying mainstream articles and I learned from friends who posted their views on a Facebook item I wrote. I do not intend to pay for data I did not authorise.