This in turn landed a somewhat onerous task on my lap.
As some of you may be aware, I had the privilege of restoring Anna Raccoon’s site a while back. This involved combining multiple files from multiple sources into one coherent form. It was reasonably successful and I would estimate that I got the vast majority back in readable form.
As websites go, it’s a quiet little backwater with visitors in the double figures each day. It’s not the busiest site in my little nest but it’s not the quietest either. I’m glad that people are reading it and that Anna’s work still lives.
The email yesterday was from some legal crowd in the UK and was about Anna Raccoon.
It appears that some nasty little troll has been up in court, or rather one of his victims; I’m not quite sure which. Anyhows an injunction has been obtained and all the Troll’s work has to be removed. And that’s where Anna becomes involved as he was somewhat active on her site.
The problem is simple. Or rather it’s very complicated, depending on which way you look at it.
The simple view is to go in and delete all the Troll’s comments.
The complicated view is that there are thousands of files where each has to be searched and paragraphs of coding removed without disturbing the surrounding code, as comments [contrary to appearance] are now actually embedded in each post.
On the other hand, I have a deep antipathy towards Trolls and hate to see them get away with anything. I have a nasty feeling my conscience is getting the better of me.
This is going to take awhile as our Troll friend was prolific in the extreme.
Anyhows, we have a new health panic on the horizon and they are just waiting for things to develop a bit further before hitting the panic button. They started with Hepatitis. This was meant to be scary but it only affected kids, and who cares about them? A panic amongst five to twelve year olds isn’t going to bring the country to a halt.
So along comes Monkeypox.
Now Monkeypox is endemic in parts of darkest africa amongst the Negro population but we can’t mention that as then we would be racist. The latest research indicates that it is transmitted by intimate [i.e. sexual] contact between homosexual men, but we can’t mention that as then we would be homophobic. Seriously. There is also a strong rumour that Monkey World is applying to the High Court to obtain an injunction to prevent the word “monkey” as it discriminates against an entire species.
So we end up with a virus that can’t be named and we can’t say where it comes from. Nor can we say how it is transmitted. How scary is that?
I suggest it be renamed Covid-22 and state the origin as Wuhan [or maybe Moscow] and it spreads via light waves. That should scare us?
But suppose people just shrug and say we don’t care? We survived Covid-19 and nothing could be worse than that?
For various reasons I want to clear space in the garage, but was hindered by an amazing selection of cardboard boxes and crates. Why is it that when some company wants to send you something small, they pack it in a massive box full of scrumpled brown paper?
So I attacked all the boxes and crates with a very sharp knife and produced a huge pile of flat cardboard. I filled the back of the car completely [an estate car with the rear seat flattened to give you an idea of the quantity]. A quick trip to the recycling centre in Skobieville and that was that.
Yesterday Daughter arrived with Navanman [an excellent replacement for Husband]. Her idea was to help with cutting up the cardboard and to get rid of it. But of course I had already done it. She decided to mow the lawn instead. But this left Navanman twiddling his thumbs and anxious to do something.
I should explain that Navanman is extremely enthusiastic about the Manor and loves nothing more than helping around the place. Ask him to trim the hedge a little and he will proceed to trim every hedge on the property and won’t stop until it’s all done and tidied. So there he was yesterday almost in tears that there was nothing for him to do.
“How about the tree?” says he.
I have a tree that is weird and beautiful. I haven’t a clue what it is and I love it apart from its weird growth pattern. It starts in the front garden. It then ties its trunk in knots and then shoots off horizontally in various directions before changing and growing vertically instead. Its highest point is in the back garden about twenty feet away from its starting point. Anthows one of the trunks had decided to grow towards the garage meaning everyone had to duck under it to get to the back garden. Even worse, it was starting to press against the garage wall and had also grown around the telephone [broadband] cable. I had idly talked in the past about removing this particular trunk of the tree but it was a massive job.
Massive job or not, Navanman decided to do it, and nothing I could say would dissuade him. He attacked it with loppers and saws and shaved all the branches off the lower part. The trunk now looked somewhat strange – a bare[ish] trunk leading up to a bottle-brush top. Removing the top part [about fifteen foot of it] meant pushing from one side using a ladder on the garage roof and pulling on a rope down at ground level while I cut through the trunk with a chainsaw, again standing on the garage roof. This was an interesting exercise as potentially we could drop the tree through the garage roof, drop the tree on top of daughter, drop the tree on top of Navanman or crown me with the ladder. Miraculously the tree fell exactly where we wanted it to go.
I left them to it. The tree, or rather a large part of it, is now removed almost to ground level. I can now walk through in safety and the garage wall is now no longer threatened with demolition during a storm. Navanman had cut up all the bits and dumped them in a massive heap down in the North Wood.
I keep telling Daughter: he’s a keeper!
The new stump and a knot. The tree root is way off to the left.
Part of the tree at the back and the side path.
Any ideas on its make and model? It’s an evergreen with red flaky [very attractive] bark.
First of all we started hearing about an abnormal number of kids coming down with Hepatitis and liver failure. Nasty! But these were apparently unconnected with each other – just scattered around through various countries.
Now we have a series of cases of Monkey Pox. Frankly this is something I have never even heard of. Chicken Pox? Yup. Cow Pox? Yup. Monkey Pox? What? Is there a whole series of poxes out there I have never heard of? Elephant Pox? Dolphin Pox? Squirrel Pox? The mind boggles.
Like the Hepatitis, the cases of Monkey Pox seem to be completely random, and just appear in different and unrelated spots [sorry – I couldn’t resist that]. Why is there a sudden rash of these cases? [sorry – I couldn’t resist that either]
What disappoints me is that I haven’t heard any conspiracy theories about these outbreaks. Come on lads! What’s holding you back? How about 5G? Or jet-trails? Have Aliens been dropping fever bombs at random places? Is it an Islamic plot? Here is an area that is beautifully ripe for outlandish theories yet I haven’t heard a single one.
Where are the Conspiracy Theorists when you need them?
