Forgetting a whole language

Head Rambles Posted on by 8

I have been having some fun.

I use the word fun purely in the sardonic sense.

I had a little problem.

I use the word little in the trivial sense.

I have been using my Kindle on a daily/nightly basis. As a result I have been fairly hammering my reading list. I no longer have to ration myself in case I run out of books, because of course that isn’t a problem any more. The problem now is that I can’t remember all the authors I have enjoyed in the past, and can no longer just browse the library shelves.

The library does have a neat function in their on-line thingy: I can download a list of all the books I have borrowed in the past. However, this list includes all sorts of shit such as the location of every copy in every library in the country along with information on the publisher and stuff like that. The list is huge and if I were to print it off it would give me 146 pages of mostly crap.

Now the thought crossed my mind that it should be a simple enough job to write a little program to sort the wheat from the chaff. Basically all I was looking for was a list of my authors and preferably a list of books by each author. No sweat? After all, in the past I have written an entire e-commerce website from scratch for a major Irish company [in the days before WordPress] and also wrote a whole series of programmes to extract the Anna Raccoon information from a load of different types of file into one database. Manipulating one little file should be easy peasy?

It wasn’t.

I had forgotten how to code!

Fuck me but I had to look up every single command and function to remind myself how things work. It was like writing a story where I had to look up every word in the dictionary. My head was in a mess. I had forgotten everything even down to the most basic level.

I managed it in the end after a major struggle. It’s just a wee program with a mere 30 lines of code but it took a lot of sweat. The output has reduced my printout from 146 pages to just 4, with a simple list of each author and their books.

This growing old lark brings new challenges every day.

Running out of popcorn

Head Rambles Posted on by 2

Chaos reigns supreme once more in Ireland.

They have locked down Dublin. But it’s not really a lockdown.

What they have actually done is to move Dublin from Level 2 to Level 3 on their remarkably simple coding system. Except it’s not really Level 3 but more a mixture of Level 3 and Level 4. Do you see now how clear and simple the new system is?

Under Level 3 all pubs and restaurants are allowed open. But in Dublin they’re not. All pubs are actually shut and restaurants are only open provided their clientèle all eat outdoors. It’s tough shit if it’s raining.

Weddings are allowed proceed but only today and tomorrow. After that you’re only allowed 25 guests which is an excellent excuse not to invite that aged aunt you haven’t seen in years.

Travel is banned. You can travel around Dublin to your heart’s content but you can’t leave. This is of course excellent news for the rest of Ireland. Us non-Dubs are allowed to travel into Dublin but only if we are going somewhere else that isn’t Dublin.

I gather that essentially all other restrictions such as anti-social distancing and face nappies remain. They don’t seem to have worked in Dublin but maybe they’ll work this time?

In the meantime, all pubs in the rest of the country can open from Monday. That is to say, those pubs that haven’t closed permanently will open but with fierce restrictions.

Life is so simple these days.

Living on the level

Head Rambles Posted on by 6

I feel so much safer now.

Our Magnificent Mighty Masters have published their “roadmap” which dictates how I’m to live for the next nine months. The Virus must be quaking in its boots.

As an aside, hasn’t anyone told our gubmint that very few people use roadmaps these days? Most people now rely on SatNavs or smartphones to do their navigation and roadmaps are sadly mainly a thing of the past.

Anyhows, they have published their roadmap and there are five different levels of panic [from Level 1: just be cautious, to Level 5: all out blind hysteria]. These are to simplify things so we know where we stand. Currently we are all on Level 2 [have sleepless nights with worry] except Dublin which is also on Level 2 but with different restrictions. Do you see how the Levels System simplifies things?

Each level varies slightly from the one above or below. For example at Level 1, I can have ten visitors from three other houses, while at Level 2, I can have visitors from one two or three other houses but only up to six visitors at a time. At Level 3, I can only have visitors from my own home which means I can get together with Herself. At levels 4 and 5, I’m apparently on my own.

So I can currently have six visitors. However if I decide to hold a funeral I can have fifty, so presumably the virus respects the dead [which explains the low mortality rate]? Equally if I were to get married at home I can have fifty which is good to know.

Those of a curious or insane disposition can view the entire thing here.

There is one delightful footnote which is common to all the levels –

Those aged over 70 years and over and the medically vulnerable should exercise judgement regarding the extent to which they engage with others and in activities outside home.

Grand. I shall exercise my judgement.

I shall ignore the whole fucking thing.

The Irish are revolting

Head Rambles Posted on by 6

There is a glimmer of hope in this blighted isle.

Yesterday there was a large demonstration in Dublin protesting against the wearing of face nappies. It was only a matter of time before people started to revolt against the widespread laws and restrictions that have torn normal life asunder. I’m just surprised it didn’t happen earlier in the year.

Another notable item of news yesterday which in my book is far more important is an article by a high ranking doctor –

‘Draconian’ restrictions around Covid-19 condemned by HSE doctor.

At last there is someone prepared to stick their head above the parapet and say what a lot of us have been thinking for a long time. The hysterical over-reaction to a bit of a virus has baffled me from the start. Okay, it’s a new strain of flu that we haven’t seen before. Okay it’s quite contagious and can be infectious even if the victim is asymptomatic, but is this reason enough to destroy an economy and condemn people to misery and even death?

Remove the restrictions. Let the virus do its worst. It may be a nasty dose of flu but sooner or later we’ll have to learn to live with it. They talk about “defeating” it by imposing “social distancing” and lockdowns but you can’t defeat a virus. It will just linger until there is an opportunity to infect again. All they have really done is to postpone the infection rate until the beginning of the normal flu season which is going to cause chaos as the medical profession frantically tries to discern the difference between the two flu strains. What difference does it make whether you have the “old” flu or the “new” one? The symptoms are much the same and by all accounts the death rate will also be much the same also.

We live in interesting, if somewhat hysterical times.