2018-07-01 17:42:19

Welcome to the second half of 2018! Can you believe the year is half over already?

Here's wishing everyone a great and safe July.

@Dark

(huge toothy grin)

2018-07-01 22:31:49

Haha, I was going to do the same.
Wish you the rest of the year to be good for you.
Is the half of the year already?
Well, time passes and even I am 15, I think I am getting old.
smile
I was at the country for the last part of june and I am stil here, until the half of July, waiting for my aunt to get maried.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-07-01 22:42:14

Oh, you just until you are 50 or 60, then we'll see how time seems to fly! (wink)

2018-07-02 14:29:28

Well, that is true, butt I am thinking of good, old memories from when I was 6 or 7, everithing was fine, now more stress, more things to do in a short time, so, time flies.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-07-02 15:52:16

That's kind of true for everybody these days.

I wonder where Dark is, or do I recall that he said that he and his lady were going on a holiday for a brief spell?

2018-07-02 16:48:11

I think so, I remember something about what he said about this.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-07-02 21:53:01

Has anyone checked Orko's basement? LOL!!! No, but in all seriousness, though, Someone posted this topic for the month. I was quite surprised to see it was not Dark. Dark is either on holiday, or writing a paper or something. I don't remember which. As for me, another month, another part of 1Q84 is complete. If I remember correctly, the book is 3 books/parts in length, so I should be finished by the end of this month. Otherwise, It's my philosophy class that I must work on.

I have a website now.
"C: God's Programming Language
C++: The object-oriented programming language of a pagan deity" -- The Red Book
"There, but for the grace of God go I"

2018-07-02 21:55:20

Hi people.

I did wonder if I might come back to find someone had started a monthly chat topic, very cool that someone did, I've now also made this topic sticky too big_smile.

As Orko said my lady and I were indeed away for a couple of days.
the final hand in date for the corrections on my thesis was last Saturday, that is why I haven't been that active around the forum or website recently and haven't been playing too many new games.

Everything got in okay though, so we'll see where things end up. If anyone was wondering it was on a new definition of disability, the epilogue I wrote includded a major book review on the historical concept of blindness which was at least interesting, even if I did slightly resent the fact that I only had to read it because it was written bby one of my examiners big_smile.

Either way, hopefully its done now and I can move on to something else, since yee gods this thing's consumed my life for waaaaaay too long.

So after all those shenanigans were finished, we basically went with my parents to skegnesss, where they have a small chalet, its a place we used to go on holiday a lot while I was growing up, but I've not been there for a few years.

didn't do anything particularly astounding, but a lot of relaxing things, like going for a paddle in the sea (you can't really swim in that part of the ocean, the currents are murderous, but you can at least paddle), went for a swim in a lovely out door pool, had a brief game of mini bowling, bought some hot doughnuts, which, like fish and chips and icecream are really an English seaside tradition, stroked some of the donkeys on the beach that give kids rides and generally just relaxed. I also bought my lady a fluffy unicorn which she was rather pleased about big_smile.

A little sad from a gaming perspective that the arcade which used to have all those great old games from the nineties is now wall to wall fruit machines and those dreadful crane games and such, but so it goes.

either way I'm back now, though goodness knows what I'll be up to now.
I have started playing avalon mud which has been interesting, but I'm really looking forward to trying the new sequel to king of dragon pass, as Kodp is one of my favourite games ever!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-03 03:04:59

@Dark

I had wondered where you had gotten to until I recalled that very foggy memory.

Congratulations on finishing your thesis, that's an accomplishment you can be proud of even if you were sick of it by the time you finished. Here's hoping you get a good grade or review or whatever they do with those things.

I hope you had a good time watching the grass grow at your parents chalet.

And, welcome back to the rat race!

2018-07-03 16:43:44

Rat race? My money is on rabid, true, he's not as fast on the long straight as killer or scratchy, and he doesn't have the multiple support team the way the rat king does, but he's really got his eye on the finish line, or at least on the styarter's ankle big_smile.

Btw, who's going to create a rat racing game now?

Either way I'm in a very good mood since the two examiners got back to me and have confirmed that yes, everything I did was fine and I've actually passed! hurrah!
So about bloody time I'm actually officially a doctor of philosophy, albeit I'll have to hit the post graduate school with a stick to get them to A, accept a word document rather than a pdf (since I have no idea how to convert to a pdf and wouldn't want to try anyway), and B, let me actually email it to them rather than using their silly upload service that requires a username and password, the same username and password you can only get from their default webmail client that is inaccessible to screen readers, ---- or at least it was, I don't know whether it still is, but hayy I'm not going through god knows how much bloody rigmarole yet again just to comply with their stupid system which has never once complied with me.


Hell my department have had to have my private email address just to communicate with me because the university IT services are so insanely stupid.

Either way I'm glad its finally done, considering the thesis was first submitted in 2012 and since then I've had to go through two vivas (that's aural examinations), two different sets of examiners after the first set cocked up the marking and four separate rounds of corrections, its been quite a slog! so finally! its done hurrah!

It'll be nice to at last think about doing something else with my life.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-03 16:49:07 (edited by Orko 2018-07-03 16:51:46)

Congratulation, Doctor Dark, Sounds sinister, doesn't it?

If you use a recent version of Microsoft Office, it has either a Save As or a Print As feature that lets you choose PDF as the output format. I used it ocassionally at my last job before I lost my vision. As I recall it worked quite well.

2018-07-03 23:30:02

Thanks orko, I didn't know about the save as feature that's handy.
At this point its just miner bureaucracy, the hard bits done and hopefully this will be sorted soon enough as well.

Yes Doctor dark does soundd a bit like a marval villain, and of course I don't want to rule the world muahaha!

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-04 03:19:22

That being said, Dark, will that thesis be getting published anywhere? I am sort of interested in reading the thing, as it sounds interesting.

I have a website now.
"C: God's Programming Language
C++: The object-oriented programming language of a pagan deity" -- The Red Book
"There, but for the grace of God go I"

2018-07-04 13:35:31

It'll be available publicly on the university of Durham website when everything is sorted out etc, though annoyingly it'll be a pdf because Durham are stupid, and yes I'm quite aware of the irony of a thesis on disability being in a potentially inaccessible format.

At that point I  could always bang an ms word copy on sendspace for anyone who fancies reading it, but bare in mind, its a serious piece of academic ethics, and so its not exactly light reading big_smile.

For now though, since I've had the confirmation of reciet from the uni I can basically sit back and relax, which is pretty much what I want to do.
so I spent the morning curled up in bed with my wife, alternately listening to Holst's planet sweet and the latest big finish  fourth doctor story. Actually the fourth doctor range is getting really interesting at the moment.

We're now going out for lunch at our favourite local Italian, both to celibrate my phd thesis getting in, and to celibrate our second wedding anniversary which was yesterday.

Unfortunately, there are still a lot of none thesis related things I want to sort out that I've been semi unable to do, including doing some work on the db, sorting out thunderbird and getting myself a new private email address, not to mention doing a huge backup session and playing lots of six ages, but for now its very nice just to not have to read about or write about post modernist conceptions of the disabled body big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-04 15:20:27

Congratulations Dark.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-07-05 15:38:28

congrats dark, well done on your way to rulling the world, becomming a doctor is always the first step. smile
I wouldn't suggest trying to convert it to pdf yourself it will most likely break it's formatting and that's quite difficult to detect and fix with a screen reader in a pdf file.

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”
Stephen King

2018-07-05 21:36:21

Thanks for the congrats, I got the confirmation on Wednesday along with the certificate, though I'll be getting a hard  copy in the post and I'll also be going to Durham in January for congregation, that's when I actually get an official presentation in full academic robes etc.

Unfortunately Mastadant I've already saved as pdf and uploaded, God! I hate! formatting! really its been the bane of my life since academic formatting is so damn finicky, but if anyone doesn't like it at this point  they can frankly shove it big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-17 02:54:39

Okay I'm not sure what other people are up to, but as  been nearly two weeks methinks its time I had another reply.

Basically I've been completely, totally and thoroughly enjoying not! having a phd thesis to write big_smile.

I've played a lot of swamp, and a lot of crazy party, I've been watching through season 5 of Buffy the vampire slayer, I've written several book reviews for different books and generally been enjoying myself enormously big_smile.

Buffy is awesome, indeed its surprised me how long its taken me to get back to it since I last  watched angel season 2 last year. its remarkably how much fun the program is, and how well written the dialogue, especially in an era where writing quality seems to have gone out of the window.

I don't seem to have been settled to a given mud onr mmorpg, and haven't yet got fully into six ages, but hay I've got time now, even my game playing seems to have improved, though not when I got myself killed last time around on swamp aftter getting cornered by a bunch of zombies and forgetting to switch my keyboard language so I couldn't use a field kit big_smile.

I'll likely be doing something else a bit more substancial soon when the initial shine  busy doing nothing" fades off, indeed to an extent I have with book reviews, (my last one was for chocolat by DJoanne harris), but at the moment its just so nice to be able to chill out for once and not have this great murderous thing looming over my shoulder, albeit I have rather been avoiding topics on the forum about  since I'm a wee bit sick of discussing disability at the moment big_smile.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-17 05:38:54

I have mentioned earlier that my youngest sister passed away last April, and that it appeared to have been suicide because the medical examiner could find no reason for her death in his autopsy.

Today we finally got the results of the toxicology tests the medical examiner ordered, and it was suicide. She over dosed herself on bath salts. I have heard on the news that using bath salts to get high was a new and concerning trend because it's too easy to take too much. According to the toxicology report, the amount of the chemical from the bath salts that was in her system made it clear that this was no mistake, but intentional.

Very sad, but at least she isn't suffering from her demons any more.

2018-07-17 16:44:23

First, sorry again for your sister.
Second, I played CP alot in the last week and if you want, we can play online together, I can host a server.
Now I am on my old crap computer because I moved it to the country because I did not want to move again and again my new, fully functional laptop.
Howp you have a great rest of the month.
BTW, my mother is comming back from UK for 20 or 25 days at the end of July, so, I am quite happy.

I am myself and noone is ever gonna change me, I am the trolling master!

2018-07-17 18:32:04

@Orko, I'm really sorry to hear about your sister, I can appreciate the situation for her, and for you.

Hoep your doing okay  yourself at the moment.

With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)

2018-07-17 19:38:14

Other than having to deal with a cantankerous browser, I'm fine. Although my sister's suicide was sad, it was also three months ago, so I'm pretty much over it by now, though I still think about her from time to time, and will probably continue to think about her for a long time to come.

---

One of the things that has kept me using Internet Explorer is it's integration with Windows and the ability to use Windows Explorer to manage my bookmarks, rather than some half baked bookmarks manager these alternate browsers all seem to have.

Well, I think I may have found an answer, a program called Link Stash by XRayz Software, it's supposed to be an advanced bookmarks manager for most of the popular browsers, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera. One of its features that has me intrigued is its ability to keep the Windows Favorites folder and the proprietary bookmarks files synchronized, if that works, it would give me the best of both worlds. The one downside it has is that it isn't free, but having been a long time customer of one of their other products, if Link Stash is as good as that other product is, it will be worth the asking price. Fortunately, it has a 30 day trial, so I can try it out to see how it works and how accessible it is.

Either way, I will probably switch to Opera before too long, Internet Explorer is slowly becoming too much of a problem that can't be fixed because it can't simply be removed, its settings deleted, and just start over, to do that with Internet Explorer involves reinstalling the whole Windows operating system. Ugh!

2018-07-18 05:58:17

@Orko.

in the latest update of the windows 10, you won't even find the internet explorer. you have to go program files to access that browser.

also, sorry to here about your sister.

2018-07-18 15:37:05

@Dark Eagle

I am using Windows 7 and refuse to upgrade, or more accurately, to downgrade, to Windows 10.

2018-07-19 01:42:39

Opera

  1. I have already tried Firefox and didn't like it.

  2. There are other forum members who use Opera that say that it is quite accessible. Probably especially since they now use the Chromium engine instead of what they used to use.

  3. I like that it has a built in ad blocker and a VPN.

  4. The last time I tried to install Chrome it's installer just stuck its tongue out at me and laughed.

Windows 10

  1. You don't have the option to decide whether you want a particular update or not, you are forced to accept all of them.

  2. Microsoft has seen fit to load it down with all kinds of spyware.

  3. The new user interface wasn't designed for accessibility, just look at how long it took to get Edge and the new desktop apps to work properly with screen readers, it even took Microsoft quite a while to get Edge working with Narrator.