Fragile world

On my morning spin, I pondered a little about my difficulty with the small amount of extra & unwanted white space after Figure 16 in the previous post, that is to say reference 1. White space which even fiddling around in HTML view had failed to remove. 

A salutary reminder that while one might think that one is finished and can wrap up, there are plenty more layers of software between you and the customer. Seemingly innocent changes in any one of which might have side effects on one's work of art - or whatever. Layers of software over which you as a one-man-band have no control. In a corporate environment you might be able to afford an IT department which can shield your PC from unwanted changes out in the wide world, but few individuals have the time or the skills needed to do that. And even then, the software might well include references to data out on the Internet which it would be hard to bring inside one's stockade. Data which is managed, possibly badly managed, by someone else.

And one has no control at all over the PC's of all the other people with whom one might be interacting. Hard to be sure that what you see is what they see. Which must be a problem if you are into advertising and you really do care what they see.

I associated to a chap at the National Archives who, some years ago now, told me that with government departments starting to supply records in digital format, there was a danger that the Archives would become a museum of ancient word processing software. Part of their answer might have been to require departments to submit digital documents in pdf form - but even then you can't be sure that some well meaning upgrade from Adobe is not going to rock your boat. Furthermore, the original Microsoft Office documents might well lose stuff in the process of conversion to pdf. Internal pointers, for example, might stop working. Pop-ups might stop working. Stray academics trawling the archives might not see what the original recipients saw.

Which all goes to show that that the (IT) world is a more fragile place than you might think.

Diverted from these maudlin thoughts by a nattily decorated van from people called Deadcert, the people at reference 2. All good fun, but maybe one would not think so if it was one's own car that they were coming to take away.

Then I passed a car with number 'MG02 ABC' or some such. Which reminded me of the game noticed at reference 3. I think I will give it a go, although it remains to be seen whether I will be able to remember what number I am on once I get past No.1. Maybe I will have to tell Cortana so that she can keep track.

Epsom quiet, roads quiet. Which was just as well as hedge cutting had closed a lane on Ewell by-pass. But the good news is that the work at the Bridge Road/Hook Road roundabout has now been more or less finished. Bridge Road mostly open.

Passed two aluminium washers, which might have been added to the collection, but neither was in a good place to stop. I continue to wonder how all these washers find their way onto our roads and why nearly all of them are aluminium. Washers on my various bicycles have invariably been steel.

BH had forgotten to pick up our weekly copy of the Guardian from Sainsbury's, so I made my first visit for a while to Costcutter in Manor Green Road to pick one up, the last one they had at around 1115. Usual diet of moans and groans, but supplemented with a modest bottle of Bells - the prices of booze in this shop being very reasonable for a smaller outlet.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-updated-introduction-to-lws-r.html.

Reference 2: https://www.deadcertuk.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-new-to-me-game-for-long-car-journeys.html.