google chrome vs microsoft explorer

london

Yesterday, simon was so frustrated with his explorer browser that he downloaded google chrome, with some encouragement from me.

He had a laptop running microsoft and it wont start anymore. so he bought a windows 8 software program (costing £100)  and installed it. usually it would wipe out the existing windows and install the new one as if like new. but he told me even though he clicked the box which says this will delete all your files, he found that it did not. then i get him coming to me occasionally throughout the evening complaining of this thing or that thing which dont work. haha. I was real glad that i dont have to bother with microsoft explorer now i got my chromebook.

Anyway, after he installed google chrome, he began to learn how to use it. he found he had to download iplayer from google chrome to get it to work . before he was complaining to me that his iplayer did not work . he found out that when he deleted that (downloaded using explorer) and than reinstall with the download using google chrome, the iplayer used google chrome as the default ,instead of explorer,and so it worked.

Nowadays each system does its utmost to shut out the other… i have noticed that. in the past they allow others using a different system to access each other… i guess this was due to microsoft windows letting others access windows, because everyone was using windows. now windows is realising that their free access is allowing google chrome to steal business and customers from them.

I have noticed that google chrome do not let explorer users (and i presume other browsers too ) full use of their system. you are forced to get google chrome. That is why simon could not run his iplayer downloaded using explorer, to play on his google chrome browser; it is google stopping it from accessing google chrome.

That might explain why so many have switched to google chrome. AS well as the fact that google chrome is much easier to use and u dont have to bother with upgrades and virus attacks like you have to when you are using explorer windows.

I can say this, their strategy is working because even i have switched and i am very resistant to change my browser.

Google chrome have so attracted me that when i have to buy a new laptop, i was sure i dont want a laptop with windows 8 on it.  The ideal would be a windows 7 explorer with google chrome in it.  That way u get the easy use of windows for saving stuff and copy and paste things, with the quick response of google chrome in opening web pages. But windows 8 destroyed this easy marriage.

Or rather, i should correct myself and say people just got confused using two systems, and google chrome being the easier to understand, people just shut off explorer instead.

simon has a windows 8 and he was able to download and use googlechrome, so i guess he will get the best of the two systems. But i noticed his laptop is v heavy, now that i can compare it with my chromebook. somehow when something is so heavy u feel very reluctant to carry it about. certainly i noticed i carry my chromebook out and about now whereas when i got my laptop  i never carry it outside.

the mystery that is the internet

london

i have windows vista and we have two users in this laptop. simon is the main administrator and i am the added standard user. The funny thing is this… 4 times now the laptop has said it is unable to access my part of it.

i dont know why. my solution is to go into simon’s part of the laptop, and delete my account, and reinstate another one. then i go back into this new account and reinstate the windows sidebar where i have notes of things to do, mainly reminders of when my books need renewing.

After the 2nd time it happened and all my files disappears, i have learnt to put them in dropbox, or do without. luckily i use chrome now and i can get back all my stuff when i log onto my chrome account and so the disruption is minimal. but i wonder why it happens.

ah well, i suppose i shall carry on until even simon’s part of the laptop becomes irretrievable , then i shall get a new laptop. I am really glad of google chrome, as it is quite fast. But now i find i cannot get back to using explorer. for some reason this laptop is very slow to open explorer. maybe because i have not kept up with their updates. it might be my laptop is a source of viruses and worms which have penetrated my laptop security because it has never been updated as i have not used explorer for ages. maybe that is why they keep shutting me down. and maybe that is why i get phone calls from this chap in india who tells me he is from microsoft and pleading with me to let him solve my problem.

Maybe there are plenty of people like me, ignoramus who are the biggest unwitting sources of those scammers who can take over our laptops to send everyone else denial of service attacks or scam mail. i have AVG, but maybe it cannot stop attacks that are exploiting windows vista weaknesses. Well, lets hope by deleting that old user and reinstalling this new one, i have stopped whatever is happening.

My laptop is slower and slower. haha. now and then it perks up and gets faster. i have no idea how and why it does that. so far i dont have need to get a new laptop, and just as well, because i cannot make up my mind to get a 15″ screen like this one, or a chrome book with a 10″ screen. i like chrome but the small size of the screen puts me right off. if only they make a big screen chrome notebook. i think in the end i shall chose the one with the big screen. 

For some reason, my wordpress wont let me chose the color of the text anymore. i have to post it and then edit it , then the color button becomes operative. Ah well, perhaps it is another of their ‘improvements’. I am not complaining, because it is free after all. And I am grateful to them for providing a free platform for blogging. 

I am reading lawrence osborne’s ‘bangkok days’. or rather i am re-reading it. It talks about his time in bangkok. I am always curious to know how people spend their days and it gives a very good account of his thoughts and what he do when he lived there. i think it is semi autobiographical. it was with surprise that i see an article in the 23.3.14 copy of culture magazine of the sunday times, ( I found it thrown away in my local library in their trash bin. i retrieved it and took it home to read) talking about him.

the article was written by robert collins, headed ‘late flowering of a modern graham greene’ and mentioned two books of his ‘the ballad of a small player’ and the forgiven. it mentioned Osborne in his mid 50s producing a superbly compelling novel ‘the forgiven’ about an english couple in morocco, who knocked over a local man on their way to a lavish weekend party attended by wealthy westerners. it is fiction, like his other book , the ballad of a small player. 

the bangkok book may be fictional too but it reads quite real. the characters might be amalgams of others, but reads true. He lives in a block with other foreigners, some of whom he becomes drinking partners with. his days are filled with drinking and walking the streets at night. eating the local foods, even the insect food, and describing various parts of bangkok. he becomes involved with a local woman prostitute. that is as far as i got. i have forgotten how it ends, so it is like i am reading it for the first time. but now i am searching it for finding out what people do with the spare time in a city like bangkok.

He is a straight guy so there were none of the gay adventures that gay guys can get in bangkok.  haha.I mean the  brief encounters and unexpected shagging. i have first hand experience of that myself. I would have thought that,  to me,  would be the biggest attraction to living in bangkok. though i am realistic to know that that kind of life will soon get a bit too much if u live there a long time. it is a  great city to visit, esp if u are horny, but not a place to live full time and long time. At least that is what i think now, but who knows. it would be lovely to read of someone who lives an adventurous gay life there. though i remember reading of such a blog once upon a time, and after some time of reading it,  it can get quite repetitive, the sexual trysts. i am sure it is more fun in the doing than in the reading of the descriptions. 

 

 

 

2nd day without internet, dan brown’s inferno

London friday

update, 12.35pm . library. 

just got a call from the talk talk engineer telling me the service is back on. i asked him what went wrong. he said it was a wire got loosed and touching another. and he is calling to tell me that because the line is working he will be disconnecting the routing of calls to my mobile from now. so i am back online now.

Yesterday I was at the library using their free wifi to get online, because my landline phone had stopped working.

It is still not working today, and I am back at the library again.

But yesterday I saw a copy of dan brown’s new book, inferno , on the shelf, and borrowed it.

It is a really good read, and I finished it.

There are lots of red herrings, so much so that sometimes I have to pause and leave reading it, because I got kind of frustrated at it all, but still had to return to it to find out what happens next.

Another thing that i find tedious is the re capping of a lot of scenes, that video recording that was meant to be broadcast on that date in the future for eg, it was replayed so many times when it was viewed by different people. the description of it rehashed from the beginning everytime; so boring really. and stretching out that video, letting us see only snippets of it, each time… 

That guy really knows how to string u along, and keep u coming back for more, even though u sometimes feel like throwing the book across the room.

For eg, after a big chase across the city , Langdon chasing sienna, she jumped onto a boat and was free to ride off and disappear forever, having thrown the pilot overboard, and then what do u know, the boat stopped when it could have dashed off to freedom, and he made the woman come back… saying to Langdon she did not know where to run to anymore.

Ha!! Double haha!! That was the one time when I felt like throwing the book across the room.

But it is all part of the fun of reading this book. He is real good at telling a story.

The whole story was supposed to have taken place in a day. Bloody long day I can tell you. Haha. And no stops to eat… at all… only once were we told Langdon had something to eat. Ha. There were many flights on planes, and I was thinking no delays at airports… that is the only unreal feel about the story. Haha. I mean ‘unreal real’ feel, (if u know what i mean) as the whole story is unreal of course. 

So many chases. I can see it will make for a great action movie as I am sure it will be. I bet he wrote it with half an eye out for the movie contract.

 

And the final piece of the puzzle makes a lot of sense to me. Some reviewers were not happy at it, but to me it was a brilliant solution.

And I only wish it was true. Haha.

thoughts prompted on losing my phone signal and unable to get online

London
I am at the library using their free wifi to get online.
I lost my phone line signal last night and it is still not available today. Usually they, (talk talk) fix it quickly and the disruption is a short period, but this time it has been unusually prolonged so that even after a whole night had gone by, the phone is still dead. It also means no one can call me on the phone, or me use the phone to call talk talk and ask them to fix it.

This connection in the library is very slow. It is provided by btopenzone, and does not require a password but I guess the downside is the slowness of it. Cynical me would suggest it is a ploy by bt to get people to pay up rather than tolerate such a slow service. At first I could not get online, but when I told the reception, she kindly asked one of the helpers to come to help me with it. Rather good of him to do so.

I guess it brings home to me how much I depand on having an online service at home and being able to log on anytime in the comfort of my home.

Being online and being able to contact friends via email has taken the place of a phone call to friends.

There is the nub, when u neglect or let go of friends to call, the danger is that when u do want someone to chat with, there is no one.

Of course, if the friend died, that too would make u lose a contact. So maybe it is wiser to keep a few friends to chat to in case one of them dies on you. Haha.

I was thinking of this because of the death of a friend who lived in Thailand. I don’t chat with him over the phone nor do I write regularly, but I know a friend of his in uk who does and I expect the death will hit this friend much harder than me.

But I know that it wont make u less lonely even if u have loads of people to call and chat. I think we are alone, every one of us, we are on our own. We enter this world alone, and will leave it alone.

You could surround yourself with friends and family, but u will still be alone because none of them will be able to share your feelings.
That is why I believe it better to strengthen your own internal mind so that u can cope with those times when you will feel alone.

Anyway, I am online now at the library and so was able to get online to my talk talk account to let them know of the fault in my landline.

They actually did not know of the fault, because when I logged on, they say there is no fault with my landline at present.
It is only when I reported the fault using their fault report form, that the information changed to there is a fault with the broadband and we are looking into it.

I knew I had to report it, because it took so long to resolve and still remain unresolved this morning. Usually any fault is very quickly solved.

Ah well, it is not crucial for me to have my landline open. I am not doing any business that rely on a depandable phone line.

And as u can see, I can get online in my library for free.

It is a pleasant library, with desks along one wall, for us to plug in our laptops and use their electricity to keep our laptops charged. Very useful in my case because my laptop’s battery has lost its ability to keep its power for long. It takes only a few minutes for it to discharge all its power and shut my laptop down.

I think with this internet revolution and being able to be online and connected to everyone all over the world wherever we are, it makes things so much less lonely.

Or rather, let me put it another way, it allows us to write to the world and get some connection with another human being who might be prompted to respond.

By its very nature these contacts will be fleeting and sporadic, but it will have to do and can provide some human contact for us who have lives that are very self absorbed and private and self sufficient. At least speaking for myself. My life is really very self sufficient. I am not depandant on another for my livelihood nor for my health or care.

But that is the danger, because I am so self sufficient, I see no need to cultivate friendships with others that are mutually helpful.

For eg, if I need care, I would try to find someone who wants a place to stay and in return can provide me with some hours of care. That would be the solution I would use if ever I need care. Rather than rely on social services to provide the care.

I know the wise thing to do is to find those people now whilst I still am healthy and don’t need it, but it is difficult to do so, as even if u do find someone who is potentially fit for the job, there is no guarantee what the future brings, and that when the time comes to need his help he might change his mind, or his circumstances may be altered so he is no longer available.

In cases like this, maybe the new age adage that things will come when u need it ; you would hope that is true.

Anyway, this is me reminiscing, and being thoughtful and insightful about my condition, and future condition.

Nothing like a death of a friend to make u look afresh at your life.

I guess inertia will make me not do anything. That is also typical of life. But I will bear it in mind and get some things sorted out.

But things are not all doom and gloom today. haha. Life is still wonderful. 

if the uk economy is so lousy why is employment rising?

interesting because it tries to account for why inspite of a falling gdp, employment is rising.

it says maybe the measuring of gdp is not accurate because there are lots of things we are getting free, via the internet, that is not measurable. for eg, spending 3hrs on facebook , playing games online, seeing films online, etc and so not going out and spending money. we get entertained free but that is not measured by gdp.

http://theleisuresociety.tumblr.com/post/41292962236/labour-hoarding-or-over-adjusted-inflation

it is also saying maybe the gdp is lagging behind and might be adjusted a few months later. it seems the office of statistics is prone to revise its estimates . the buggers!! though not its fault as the data lags behind events.

so calm down dears.

anyway,I think a flat economy is not all bad.

in my opinion, nothing the govt can do will change it as the banks are not lending. they are so deep in debt they are borrowing cheap money from govt to prop up themselves, nevermind lending to businesses.

just goes to show we are all speculating as to what the future will bring.

i suggest u ignore all this messages of doom and gloom and enjoy life. because  if u just see your life, you are really having a great time. we are enjoying free entertainment via the internet, and free time with friends, and family(those of us who have family they are talking to,haha). we have freedom of movement and association and thought. thank goodness they have not invented anything to read our thoughts and censor it. we are free to think what we like.