Religion in Bute House

On his first night as First Minister, Humza Yousaf posted a picture on social media of him leading his family in prayer as they broke their fast (it being Ramadan, and he and his family being Muslim). Which, frankly, is entirely fine, and normal, and in a multicultural society is to be celebrated.

Of course, this was then met by wailing and gnashing of teeth from certain quarters on social media. Often, the refrain was "if Kate Forbes had won, and posted a picture of a Christian prayer meeting, would the response have been the same?"

Well, leaving aside the fact that she would have been unlikely to do so, two quick things:

1. There's no actual evidence to suggest that the response wouldn't have been broadly supportive. Granted, there would be some people on social media taking umbrage at the whole thing... but then, that's no different either.
2. Even if the response had been wildly different, though, that's not a valid criticism of Humza Yousaf - it's a reflection of the intolerance of some sections of our society, and especially on social media.

Hopefully, this extremely intolerant focus on the religious convictions, or lack thereof, of the two highest-profile candidates in the recent contest will prove to be a very short-lived thing. Because if we really are the tolerant and inclusive society that we like to think we are, it really shouldn't matter.

Of all the things Humza Yousaf has done in his time in politics, that is one of the least worthy of remark.

Finally Finished

At the weekend I finally reached the end of "Cytonic", the third, but not final, book in Brandon Sanderson's Skyward 'trilogy' - as with many of these series, it has grown somewhat in scope since he began. (And, in fairness, it's a setting and a story that can bear a little expansion, so that's not too bad.)

This novel has had the unfortunate distinction of being one that I've been reading since last year. It has just taken me a veritable age to get through. Although, in fairness, that has very little to do with the quality of the book (which is fine, though it's very much a bridge between the start of the series and its end), and more to do with just not finding time to do any reading at the moment.

Anyway, with that done I'm hoping to pick up the pace rather - I'm still hopeful of finishing off the two remaining books from The List this year, and have a massive backlog of books to get through!

Honestly

Congratulations to Humza Yousaf on becoming the SNP leader, and soon the next First Minister of Scotland. He wouldn't have been my choice, but maybe I've misjudged him. He certainly deserves every chance to prove me wrong.

And I do sincerely hope that I'm wrong.

#6: "Cytonic", by Brandon Sanderson

Backup Plans

After a lucky escape with the hard drive from my old PC, we've been hit with a not-so-lucky event - the portable hard drive the LC uses for her work failed. Unfortunately, much of the content of that drive wasn't copied elsewhere, and although much of the drive was salvageable it certainly wasn't all.

Which is all a bit of a disaster, really.

The key lesson to learn from this one is quite simple: backup early and often, and try never to have a single copy of anything that's really important. And, ideally, set up your systems so that those backups are made automatically on a regular basis so you don't have to remember.

Which is an expensive lesson to have to learn again, but I suppose it could have been worse.

Never Simple

The task of setting up the new PC never seems to end.

We were extremely lucky to find that the hard drive on the old PC remained intact, which means that we didn't lose any data in the move. I've now copied everything across to the new PC, though for the moment it's all in a dumping ground folder - I still have a task to sort it into some sort of order and get rid of any files that truly are obsolete. (That's not as big a job as it may sound - I did a massive digital declutter a few years ago, so there are only a few stragglers to sort out.)

However, this has meant that the list of jobs to do for the new PC has dropped from 3 to, er, 4:

1. I have to set up a recovery image. Annoyingly, the advice I saw said this needed to be at least 16GB, with 32GB recommended, so I duly bought a 32GB drive, only to have it turn out that 32GB is the minimum and, worse, that "32GB" drive was effectively just very slightly smaller than that.
2. I have the aforementioned reorganisation to do.
3. Once that reorganisation is done, I need to install Dropbox - I want to do this near the end so that the file locations dovetail properly.
4. I need to switch the anti-virus software from the (perfectly good) version installed to the (also perfectly good) version we've been using for years.

I'm hoping to get all this done by the end of the weekend. But I'm not entirely hopeful - these tasks just seem to be growing arms and legs constantly.

Going to the Polls

The polls open for the SNP leadership contest today. The winner will be both SNP leader and, barring an absurd shock, the next First Minister of Scotland, so while I don't have a vote (not being a member of any political party), I obviously have an interest.

There are three candidates: Kate Forbes, Ash Regan, and Humza Yousaf. But, realistically, there are only actually two - Ash Regan is the least well-known of the three, she has had virtually no media coverage, and so regardless of any other factors she's not going to win. (In the same way that the Lib Dems aren't actually going to win the next General Election.)

The problem with that is that there isn't really a great choice available. On the one hand, Humza Yousaf is undeniably the more experienced of the two, having held almost all the big roles in Sturgeon's government at one time or another. Unfortunately, he's made a mess of all of them. And he seems extremely cold on the topic of Independence - the de facto referendum notion would be off the table, being replaced by, well, nothing. Which means that a Humza Yousaf-led SNP wouldn't be getting my vote - I wouldn't be voting on the competence of the government, and neither would I hold my nose and vote for independence.

On the other hand, we have Kate Forbes. She's much less experienced, but in the big job that she has had she has done very well (and, indeed, did well at extremely short notice). She also presents far better than Yousaf, and has made no bones about identifying that the SNP government has been slipping for a long time. She might just make for an SNP government that I wouldn't have to hold my nose to vote for.

But...

There are two big negatives with a Kate Forbes-led SNP. The first is that she's also very cold on independence, dropping the de facto referendum plan. Her replacement plan is slightly more credible than Yousaf's, but not meaningfully so.

The other one, though, is her social conservatism. As I noted before, I don't agree with many of her views. The truth is, though that they wouldn't be a block on my voting for her - but that's the nature of the privilege I enjoy. For those more directly affected, I can well understand that those views would make for a much more significant problem - and that might be an absolute block on her running the type of government that we really need.

It's fair to say that it's a tricky one.

Only, not really. Because as I've indicated, a Humza Yousaf-led SNP is almost certainly not one I could vote for; a Kate Forbes-led one probably is. So while I'll readily accept that others may come to a different conclusion, and while I understand entirely why, my support, caveated and wavering as it is, basically has to go to Kate Forbes.

Her Two Front Teeth

Funsize has her first wobbly tooth, scant days after her final birthday party. The tooth fairy has been contacted and is on standby.

I'm surprised by this development, as it feels awfully early. Bluntly, I'm not ready for her to have her permanent teeth, and all the pressure that goes with that. But that's academic now - apparently, five years old is on the early end of the 'normal' range, and therefore nothing to worry about, and so onward we go.

Still, it's a pain. There I was thinking things were settling down for a bit (especially as Surprise! is no longer moaning about being taken to nursery), and now it's all change again.

Expensive!

I've just received my credit card bill for the month, and ouch it's expensive! It's not unexpectedly so, given that in the past couple of months we've bought a dishwasher, a new PC, paid for a holiday and started booking another holiday, and Funsize somehow managed to arrange to have multiple birthday parties all of which had cost associated with them.

And, luckily, we have reserves in place for precisely a circumstance like this.

Still, it has been rather a shock. We'll need to make sure to cut back on the expenses for the next couple of months. Which will be tricky, since there's the other part of that second holiday to book.

The Setup Games

When I ordered our latest PC, I was advised it would be available around mid-March - later than I'd hoped, but I figured it was worth the wait. Plus, it was coming on a Monday, so it shouldn't be too much of a hassle for LC to arrange to be in for the delivery. But on Wednesday there was 'good' news - the PC was coming on Saturday! This was a bit more of a hassle, as we were busy entertaining on Saturday, but at least we'd be around for the delivery...

Then on Friday, just as I was walking out the door to head to work, I received a text telling me it was coming between 12.20 and 13.20 that day. Um, great... I think? Anyway, I had to hastily switch to working from home on Friday in order to take the delivery - I neither wanted to have to wait for the inevitable rescheduled delivery (which no doubt would be a hassle anyway), nor did I want to risk them leaving it in a 'safe' place.

So the new PC arrived on Friday at 11.30. Which is almost one of the times they said.

The PC then sat in its box until Saturday, when I dug it out, connected it up, and got started. And inevitably found that I didn't like it - Microsoft have, in their wisdom, decided to change the desktop layout again and don't provide a handy "put it back the way we like it" option. Sigh.

The requisite moan about that out of the way, I then got started with installing the various bits of software: a replacement browser, the office suite, PDF and ZIP tools, and so on and so forth. It really does feel like there should be an easier way to do all of this, but unfortunately right now it looks like there's just an easier way to do some of this.

So we're now more or less set up. As far as I can see there remain three things to do: recover as much of the data from my old PC as possible (we have backups, but I'm hoping that the hard drive remains intact so I can get the definitive most up-to-date version of everything), reinstall Dropbox (which is best done after getting the data, so the folder can be set up easily), and switch the anti-virus software (from the installed free trial to the one we've been paying for).

It's funny how getting a new and better PC still involves hours upon hours of work getting it ready.

Willow

I was rather surprised, but actually rather glad, when Disney announced a TV series continuation of "Willow" - although it's not the absolute best film in the world it was a lot of fun, and if everything else is getting a revival then why not? We finally sat down to watch it over the past few weeks and... it's not the best show, but it's fun.

The truth is that "Willow", like "Wheel of Time" and "Rings of Power", is pretty much just "fantasy lands of generica" - a mismatched fellowship of characters gather for some quest, have some adventures, and then there's a big showdown at the end. You've seen it before.

What sets "Willow" apart from the other two is that this one doesn't really take itself too seriously - yes, there's a world-ending menace out there, but it's not the po faced doomscape that we've come to know and 'love'. That's a good thing.

That said, "Willow" does start rather badly and then gets better as it goes (although the very best episode is at the halfway point). So I'd suggest trying to stick it out for those first few episodes before passing judgement.

And that, I think, is all I have to say about that. Except to note that we'll watch a second season if there is one, which isn't the case for "Wheel of Time".

Freeze!

After eight and a half years of sterling service, my home PC has finally failed on us - for the past few months it has sporadically suffered from random freezes, which finally reached the point where it would consistently freeze while booting up. Frustratingly, I saw this coming just a little bit too late to get a really good backup of everything from the main PC - although we have multiple backups, there's one I don't entirely trust and another that is 3 months old. (Which isn't actually all that bad, given the way that PC is used - worst case scenario is that we've lost a year's worth of photos, mostly photos of randomness taken by Funsize.)

I have a new PC on order, which should arrive at the weekend. Once it gets here, and I've reconfigured the machine to my liking and installed the five key bits of software, I'll try attaching the old hard drive to see what can be recovered. With luck, it will just work and I can recover everything.

But it has been a frustrating couple of weeks, having to manage without the PC, but also kicking myself for not grabbing a definitive backup in the final day, and also having made several failed attempts to repair the machine (to enable that backup).

Then again, it has been time for a new PC for quite a while, and it should represent a significant improvement in performance.