How To Vote This Time (in Scotland)

In Scotland, the upcoming election is actually pretty straightforward: most people have three meaningful choices, depending on the answers to two questions. There are just a couple of wrinkles in one scenario. I'll get to that.

If you want Brexit... In this case, it's pretty simple - vote Tory. The Brexit party (and UKIP) don't have any meaningful chance in any seat in Scotland, so that would be a wasted vote, and the SNP, Lib Dems, and Labour are all in favour of a second referendum, and thus stopping it. So if you want Brexit, you have one choice.

If you want Independence... Again, a very simple case - vote SNP. The Greens have no meaningful chance in any seat in Scotland, and everyone else is opposed.

If you want both... This is now actually a pretty small group - about a third of people who voted Yes in 2014 did so because they really wanted to be out of the EU, and now that the UK is heading that way most of them no longer actually want independence. But if you do want both, decide which you want more (or want first), and vote according to the questions above.

If you don't want either... This is the more complex case, and depends on who currently holds your constituency.

• If your seat is currently held by a Labour or Lib Dem MP, it's easy - vote for the party that holds the seat.
  
• If your seat is currently held by an SNP MP, the choice is slightly tricky. Basically, you should vote for whichever of Labour or the Lib Dems did better last time, except for two caveats. If you are absolutely determined to avoid Brexit and willing to sacrifice independence to achieve that, your best bet is to vote SNP. Alternately, if you're absolutely determined to avoid independence and are willing to sacrifice Brexit to achieve that, and the Tories came second last time, then you should vote Tory.
  
• If your seat is currently held by a Tory MP, you unfortunately don't really have any good choices - neither the Lib Dems or Labour party have any real chance of taking any of those seats, so you're stuck. If you're absolutely determined to avoid one of the two, and are willing to sacrifice the other to achieve it, then hold your nose and vote accordingly. If not, I guess you should vote for whoever came third last time, and accept your vote is probably wasted.

And that's it. For me, it's an easy choice - I'm still opposed to Brexit, still in favour of independence, and live in an SNP-held constituency. Furthermore, my current MP is also both pretty formidable in the Commons and also a good representative for the constituency. So that's an easy vote to cast... this time. That said, I'm rapidly losing confidence that the SNP are actually able to achieve independence, and even confidence that they even really want it. And given that their domestic record is mediocre at best, I'm very strongly considering coming to the view that this will be my last vote.

Leaving Narnia

After seven months, Funsize and I have completed our read-through of "The Chronicles of Narnia". I had, of course, read these before, but it was a long time ago - I read all but LWW back in high school, and then read LWW a few years ago. (I skipped LWW in high school because I was extremely familiar with the story thanks to TV and stage adaptations.)

My general feeling with the novels is that they're patchy in quality - some bits are very good indeed (I especially liked the underworld in "The Silver Chair"), but some bits are pretty dull. "The Last Battle", in particular, seems to be about waiting for the Deus Ex Machina to come up and fix everything, and then duly watching as it does exactly that. (Of course, several of the books feature Deus Ex Machina endings, but given the nature of the series that's not a valid complaint, as it would in other cases.) I also can't really see myself revisiting the series again any time soon, and certainly not on my own behalf.

The other thing to say is that the books were perhaps a poor choice for Funsize - after a bit of this she seemed to lose interest, so I found myself mostly reading them aloud while she happened to be there, rather than necessarily reading them to her. But that may well not be a feature of the books, so much of the stage she's at - she doesn't really seem to want any storybooks read to her these days; her attention just about runs to "Pip the Puppy" rather than even "Zog" or his kin. The current book doesn't really seem to have proven any more successful, despite a significant change in topic, and I don't expect much from the next one either.

And that's all I have to say about that.

A Missed Opportunity

An opportunity has popped up at work that would have been ideal if:

• It had come up a year from now, and
  
• I hadn't moved project a year ago.

As it is, it's just not a good fit, so I'll need to let it go. Which is a damn shame, because I'd finally hit on an answer to "where do you see yourself in five years?"

#50: "The Last Battle", by C.S. Lewis (a book for Funsize; and this completes "The Chronicles of Narnia", which is a book from The List)
#51: "Nightflyers", by George R.R. Martin

Day 300: Update on Goals

Edit: Somehow, this got posted prematurely. As it happens, everything in the post is up-to-date and accurate, but it's still annoying. I expect this will sort itself out over the next few days...

Day 300, so time for the penultimate update on my goals for the year...

• Books: By day 300 I should have read 49.31 books. Despite a very significant slowdown in the last couple of months, I remain ahead of that target, if just barely. The current estimate remains that I'll end up slightly over the 60 books for the year, but that I'll fail to finish off the British part of The List.
  
• Weight: Nothing to report. I have however had a meeting at the gym to revise my exercise routine, with the hope that this will allow me to make better progress with this in future. We'll see - I'm not hugely hopeful.
  
• Blogging: This remains on target for the Imaginarium, but I have slipped slightly behind over here. I expect to rectify that in the next week or two.
  
• Redecorate the Study: Done.
  
• The To-Do List: Done.

Another short update this time. Two items are now complete, one remains on target, and a fourth is close to the target. The final item remains an embuggerance, but there is at least the hint of some movement.

Boris Is Right

Much as I hate to admit it, Boris Johnson is right about the need for a General Election.

The simple fact is that his government clearly doesn't have a stable majority with which to get their agenda through the House. Were it not for Labour playing silly buggers, they should be laying a Motion of No Confidence, forcing the issue and bringing down the government. And yet it's also true that nobody else has the numbers to form a government - Corbyn won't get the support of the Lib Dems or the former Tories, and so can't do it, while nobody else has the support of Labour and can't do it. And so, since there's no alternative government available, it should be a General Election.

The only reason Labour haven't pulled the trigger is, bluntly, that they're sure they'll lose... but that's not an acceptable reason for them not doing their jobs. The country needs a government, and to get that we need an election.

(Incidentally, it's worth noting that Boris Johnson shouldn't even have been appointed Prime Minister. When she tendered her resignation, the outgoing Prime Minister was required to recommend her successor, but that successor had to be someone who could command the confidence of the House. That was the standard that needed to be applied, not "who has been elected leader of the Tories" or even "who has been elected leader of the biggest party." Given that Boris manifestly does not command a majority, and indeed never did, he should not have been recommended in that manner. And, indeed, since Theresa May could not actually recommend anyone who could command that majority, she should have been required to stay in post. But never mind.)

What's unfortunate is that I'm convinced that the Tories will win a comfortable majority in the election, whenever it happens, which will allow them to push aside any opposition to Boris' deal and bring about their hard Brexit. The SNP will probably make gains, but it will avail them nothing - Boris won't be minded to grant a Section 30 order, there's no way to compel him to do so, and the SNP refuse to contemplate any Plan B. So I'm finding it really hard to see any hope in politics right now.

More IT Musings

I've run out of hard drive space on my PC. That is actually not a surprise nor indeed is it particularly a problem - hard discs are fairly inexpensive these days and installing an additional drive into the PC isn't impossible.

However, I'm back to considering whether it's really worth it. There are a few things going on:

Firstly, there's still a question of how long the PC will realistically last. My latest check on the state of the art suggests that it's still not hugely behind, at least for the tasks that I make use of it for. Of course, if I used it for games or video editing, that would not be true... but I don't. However, there's always the risk of a catastrophic failure hitting the machine, at which point there's a need for a new one. (Then again, that doesn't negate the benefit of adding an additional drive, since it could just be extracted and moved to the replacement PC... probably - see below.)

Secondly, there's a question of whether what the PC really wants is a second, high-capacity drive, or whether I should install a smaller solid state drive, move the contents of the C partition across, and thus free up about a terabyte of space on the existing drive. That would have the advantage of giving a significant performance boost as well as adding more capacity, but is one step less portable when the time comes to completely replace the machine. (And it's worth noting that the existing hard drive is one of the components most likely to fail and thus force that move. And any new PC would have an SSD already installed, so that wouldn't be coming with.)

But, thirdly, I'm also leaning towards the benefits of setting up a NAS device, and thus moving all of our data storage off the PC almost entirely. The effect of this is that the existing hard drive on the machine would suddenly become much more open, and the need for a second hard drive (of any sort) would disappear. The only real problem there is that that is also by far the most expensive approach in the short term.

Finally, I find myself considering what our long-term computing needs really are. At present, we have a desktop PC (nominally my PC) and a laptop PC (nominally LC's). I really quite like this arrangement, in that it covers all of our bases, gives a lot of flexibility and, crucially, gives us access to a big, fixed monitor for long-term work. (I was never particularly happy working with a laptop.) However, at work we have now been issued with very powerful desktop-replacement laptops, complete with docking stations that allow us unfettered access to external monitors, keyboards, and mice. In effect, it's very much the best of both worlds.

Based on that, part of me considers that when the time comes for a replacement, what we'll actually want to do will be to replace both computers at the same time, with two identical, powerful laptops. And then invest in a docking station and all the kit to allow one of these to be plugged into the workstation in the study, giving access to everything else.

Which is an even better approach than what we have now. But with two downsides: firstly, sufficiently powerful laptops are necessarily expensive, where it would be considerably cheaper to instead go with a good, but less powerful, laptop and a fairly powerful desktop. Secondly, switching to the two-laptop approach would mean that any second hard drive I purchased now (whether the high-capacity one in the first approach or the SSD in the second) would immediately cease to be useful.

So, it's a tricky one, with lots of options to consider.

The upshot is that I'm thinking that the way to go is to add the NAS device. That gives us plenty of storage and also has the advantage of giving us the most flexibility when considering future upgrades. Given the expense, though, it will be a while yet before any purchase is made... unless the storage issue becomes urgent in the meantime.

The Purple Room Returns!

Well, the redecoration is done, and we once again have an official Purple Room. The various steps proceeded mostly as I outlined in my previous post on the topic, and were performed mostly over the course of four days (day one to empty the room, day two for the ceiling and starting the walls, day three for finishing the walls and doing the gloss, and then day four to put everything back).

We ordered the new computer desk shortly after starting, and were rather surprised when it arrived on the next day. We've therefore been able to assemble it, though I haven't yet had chance to take the other to the tip. We've also rearranged the room, which gives a bit more space for the various bookshelves, and actually leaves the room feeling a bit more, well, roomy. However, the working area for the computer does seem a little cramped. There may be something we can do about that - certainly, there are a couple of adjustments that need to be made, after which there may be scope for some shuffling of contents.

All in all, I'm pretty happy with that as a good job well done. And I'm especially happy that we've now completed the last of the tasks that we identified as wanting done as soon as we moved in.

#49: "The Amber Enchantress", by Troy Denning

Heating Woes

One thing that has never been quite right in the house is the heating. It seems we can get it "far too hot" easily enough, and we can get it "far too cold" easily enough, but Goldilocks is just not for visiting.

I'm really not sure why that is. I'm not sure if it's that the thermostat is badly placed, or if it's just bad. Or maybe the individual radiator thermostats are badly set up, or just bad. Or maybe the insulation just isn't what it should be. Or maybe the heating program really needs revisited - it comes on too late in the morning and goes off too early at night.

(There's also the issue that the radiator in the spare room is set to a much lower temperature than the rest of the house. Which is fine, since that room is seldom used, and not at night... but it only works if the room to that door is kept closed, which is not reliably the case.)

Part of me would quite like to have someone come and inspect the system and make some recommendations. Unfortunately, the cynical part of me thinks that any such visit would just happen to conclude that what's needed is the special package of upgrades that they happen to have on offer at that particular time.

Anyway, it's a frustration. I think the upshot is that I'm going to have a go at refreshing all the settings in the system again to get that back to where they 'should' be, and at some point, probably next year, we'll have to look into upgrades, probably to one of the "smart home" systems.

How Things Work

I use a lot of software, mostly for work although also for entertainment purposes. But I'm not a particular fan of software. I'm especially not a fan of the tendency towards "the new hotness" - the tendency for some fields to see a constant ongoing churn of new tools doing almost exactly the same as the old, but that people jump onto en masse because it's new.

My preference, frankly, is to use a much smaller set of tools, but to use them well. That in turn requires stability in the toolset - ideally, you should choose one tool for each job, and then stick with it until and unless something comes along that demands that you change.

(That "something" is of course subjective. You might find that a tool that was previously free starts charging and so requires a change. Or maybe the tool simply stops being supported. Or perhaps the new tool has some killer feature that means it's vastly superior to the old, to the extent that the change is warranted. But simply being newer is, for me, not sufficient, and neither is simply being presented with a marketing brief that has a few more check-boxes filled out. New features are only worth anything if you're actually going to use them, and if you're constantly switching from one tool to the next, you're never going to make good use of anything but the basic features.)

Funnily enough, two examples of the benefit of this approach have cropped up quite recently. Yesterday there was some discussion of how to use a particular feature of Excel, which is a tool that I'm definitely not expert in using, but it's also a tool that I've used basically forever and expect to continue using forever. So there was value in digging through various guides and tutorials to find the answer, and thus expanding the set of things I can now do with Excel. If we were in the habit of replacing our spreadsheet program every six months, it would not have made sense to do that. (And, equally, it's likely that the knowledge of how to do it wouldn't have been so easily available.)

The second concerns one of the uses of our build tool. This one is new (to us), but it's also a tool we'll be using very heavily, and it's also a tool we'll continue to use for the lifetime of the product (probably five years or more). So, again, it make sense to keep learning the intricacies of the tool with a view to getting really good with it.

Badminton Again

Many years ago, a number of my colleagues and I played badminton occasionally on a lunchtime. We haven't had occasion to play for several years now, which is a real shame - not least since my gym have various courts available for use, and they're free for members. So there's a golden opportunity there, and we've been missing it.

Until today that is. This lunchtime four of us went over and played badminton. It was a lot of fun, even if I didn't play at all well. Hopefully that will change over the next few months as we play a bit more... assuming we do, indeed, play a bit more, of course.

Microsoft's Worst Decision

I use a lot of Microsoft software. I don't, however, consider myself either a fan or a hater - they're just tools provided by a company, some of which are good, some of which are not so good, and some of which are good but not really worth the money. And, in fairness to them, those tools have generally, very slowly, been getting better.

However, there is one boneheaded decision, made some years ago, that still drives me mental every time I hit it. Specifically, they decided that PCs should be much more like any other appliance, and hide as much of the internals from the user as possible. And, in particular, they should hide all the BIOS feedback during startup.

That's all well and good, until you get to the point where the PC is busy doing something and gives absolutely no feedback as to what that "something" is - I see the HD light blinking on and off, but there's nothing at all on the screen, no response from the input devices... is it busy working on a task that's just taking a long time, or has it crashed and needs me to take action.

For goodness sake, tell us what's going on, and give an indication that progress is actually being made! And I don't mean showing us the spinny dots - all that indicates is that the UI thread is running, but it may well not be connected to anything else. That way, I don't need to either leave a PC that might be stuck sitting indefinitely, nor do I need to take a punt on a power-cycle that might do more harm than good.